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

by Alexander Vatlin
edited by Seth Bernstein
foreword by Oleg Khlevniuk

University of Wisconsin Press, 2018
eISBN: 978-0-299-31083-7 | Cloth: 978-0-299-31080-6 | Paper: 978-0-299-31084-4
Library of Congress Classification HV8225.7.N37V3813 2016
Dewey Decimal Classification 363.283094709041

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

ABOUT THIS BOOK

During Stalin's Great Terror, more than a million Soviet citizens were arrested or killed for political crimes they did not commit. Who carried out these purges, and what motivated them? Alexander Vatlin opens up the world of the Soviet perpetrators using detailed evidence from one Moscow suburb. Spurred by ambition or fear, local secret police rushed to fulfill quotas for arresting "enemies of the people"—even when it meant fabricating evidence. Vatlin confronts head-on issues of historical agency and moral responsibility in Stalin-era crimes.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

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 an assistant professor of history at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

REVIEWS

"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 —David Shearer, author of Policing Stalin's Socialism

"Only a handful of case studies consider how the purges took place at the grassroots level. One can only hope that Agents of Terror will inspire more research on the purges' perpetrators and victims as well as on the broader sociology of this brutal period." —David Brandenberger, author of Propaganda State in Crisis

"A sensationally significant, detailed microhistory, 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, author of The Unknown Gulag

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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

REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you with an electronic file for alternative access.

Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.

It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.

See other books on: Agents | Genocide & War Crimes | Political persecution | Russia (Federation) | Terror
See other titles from University of Wisconsin Press

Nearby on shelf for Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology / Criminal justice administration / Police. Detectives. Constabulary: