Stalin's Secret Police

Chapter One: Russia and Despotism
Russia has ancient links with despotism, such as Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. This chapter puts forward the notion that this heritage made Stalin's task of establishing a terror network easier.

Chapter Two: Early Bolshevik Terror
The repression of the Cheka, the organisation for battling counter-revolution, and Stalin's rise to power.

Chapter Three: Mass Starvation
Stalin's use of the OGPU and Red Army in mass collectivisation to establish 'Socialism in One Country', in which 10,000,000 peasants died.

Chapter Four: The Purges
Stalin's NKVD roots out the 'enemies of the state' in the purges of 1934-38, in which millions were sent to prisons and forced-labour camps.

Chapter Five: Deportations
The MGB and NKVD administered many mass deportations during the 1930s and early 1940s. This chapter looks this oppression of minority groups, such as the Tartars, Chechens and Kalmyks.

Chapter Six: World War II
The Red Army's role in the liquidation of Stalin's opponents as it liberated Eastern Europe from the Germans during and immediately after World War II.

Chapter Seven: The Iron Empire
Stalin's empire at its apogee: after World War II until his death. This chapter looks at the vast network of spies and informers, the secret police organisation and the host of prisons and forced-labour camp scattered throughout his empire.

Chapter Eight: The KGB
The establishment of the KGB in 1954 and its role and excesses as the largest secret police and espionage organisation in the world, links with Eastern European organisations like the STASI and the system in present-day Russia after communism.

Appendices:
Complete lists of the gulags
Organisation charts for the secret police
Casualty lists List of leading figures

Glossary
Bibliography
Index