Agents of Terror: Ordinary Men and Extraordinary Violence in Stalin's Secret Police

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Alexander Vatlin Seth Bernstein

Agents of Terror

Ordinary Men and Extraordinary Violence in Stalin's Secret Police

Alexander Vatlin, Seth Bernstein, Oleg Khlevniuk

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English

University of Wisconsin Press
03 July 2018

History; Police & security services; Espionage & secret services; Human rights

In the Great Terror of 193738 more than a million Soviet citizens were arrested or killed for political crimes they didn't commit. What kind of people carried out this violent purge, and what motivated them? This book opens up the world of the Soviet perpetrator for the first time. Focusing on Kuntsevo, the Moscow suburb where Stalin had a dacha, Alexander Vatlin shows how Stalinism rewarded local officials for inventing enemies.

Agents of Terror reveals stunning, detailed evidence from archives available for a limited time in the 1990s. Going beyond the central figures of the terror, Vatlin takes readers into the offices and interrogation rooms of secret police at the district level. Spurred at times by ambition, and at times by fear for their own lives, agents rushed to fulfill quotas for arresting """"enemies of the people""""even when it meant fabricating the evidence. Vatlin pulls back the curtain on a Kafkaesque system, forcing readers to reassess notions of historical agency and moral responsibility in Stalin-era crimes.

By: Alexander Vatlin
Foreword by: Oleg Khlevniuk
Edited by: Seth Bernstein
Imprint: University of Wisconsin Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 13mm
Weight: 525g
ISBN: 9780299310844
ISBN 10: 0299310841
Pages: 206
Publication Date: 03 July 2018
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

List of Illustrations Foreword by Oleg Khlevniuk Preface to the English-Language Edition Introduction to the English-Language Edition by Seth Bernstein List of Abbreviations Introduction: Why Kuntsevo? Setting the Stage Part I. Executors of Terror Part II. Patterns of Victimization Epilogue: New Kuntsevo Forgets the Past Notes Index

Alexander Vatlin is a professor of history at Moscow State University. The author of many works in Russian, he is the editor of Piggy Foxy and the Sword of Revolution: Bolshevik Self Portraits. Seth Bernstein is assistant professor of history at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

Reviews for Agents of Terror: Ordinary Men and Extraordinary Violence in Stalin's Secret Police

Groundbreaking. In the first detailed description of Stalin's mass terror, Vatlin unfolds the day-to-day working of the Soviet political police who carried out orders to select, arrest, interrogate, and often murder their fellow citizens. An absorbing, heartrending account. - David Shearer, author of Policing Stalin's Socialism A sensationally significant, detailed microhistory of Stalin's Great Terror, based on the criminal files of NKVD agents who were arrested as scapegoats at the end of the terror what some historians have called the purge of the purgers. - Lynne Viola