The Secret Police and the Soviet System

Reviews / Votes

The quality of the scholarship presented in this volume is consistently very high indeed; there is a lot of original and innovative work here on a diverse range of topics. This is a book that will long be mined by scholars working on various aspects of Soviet history. * The Russian Review * The authors in this collection have broken much new interpretive ground, and the essays are universally engaging and provocative. The result is a state-of-the-art portrait of one of the world's most notorious institutions, the legacies of which are directly relevant for understanding Vladimir Putin's Russia today. * New Books Network * The Secret Police and the Soviet System is an essential read for any scholar interested in the topic. At a time when the archival landscape in eastern Europe is rapidly changing, it is especially important to take stock of the work scholars have achieved and to devise ways to develop the field under these new conditions. * EuropeNow * There are many excellent studies of the Soviet political police, but none cover the range of topics, geography, and time span that the essays in this collection do. A number of contributions delve into subjects previously untouched and are based on regional as well as central archives that have long been underutilized. The collection brings together the work of scholars from numerous countries, and an insightful introduction weaves together the strands that run through the essays. -- David Shearer, coeditor of Stalin and the Lubianka: A Documentary History of the Political Police and Security Organs in the Soviet Union, 1922-1953 The study of the history of Soviet terror has received a significant new impetus in recent years. Its driving force was the massive opening of the archives of Soviet state security in Ukraine and other countries of the former USSR. This book presents the impressive results of creating a new history of terror in all its manifestations. -- Oleg Khlevniuk, author of Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator This collection of thirteen essays interrogates interrogators, and is the must-read for understanding not only of the Soviet past of Europe and Eurasia but also of Russia's post-Soviet present. -- Serhii Plokhy, author of The Man with the Poison Gun: A Cold War Spy Story