Mark Faralli
The Soviet Secret Police
by Mark Faralli
The Topic to be Considered:
One of the most terrifying and important secret police forces to ever be put together was that of the NKVD, also known as the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs. Over time, this government agency was to be fully integrated into the Soviet Union as the main actor in carrying out intelligence, police work, and internal security operations. Its development is key to understanding some of the inner politics of the early Bolshevik government and in the consolidation of power within the Soviet Union in the early and later years. In many ways, the NKVD was essential in keeping the regime in power for seven decades. To be researched is the development of the NKVD, the different organs that were incorporated into it, and their importance in the revolutionary period of the USSR.
Relevance:
The Russian Revolution, which began in 1917, was a massive turning point in the new world order after World War I. The proletariat had overthrown the imperial regime of Russia in a move that astonished the world. During the revolution, many factions had vied for power and many different constituencies of the former empire began to develop their own factions that in turn would cause internal security problems for the new Bolshevik government. One of the instruments used by the new Bolshevik government was their secret police which began in infant form as early as 1917 and developed into a widely feared and organized branch of the Soviet government. For the purpose of this research guide, the timeframe will encompass the years from 1917 until the end of the “Great Terror” in 1938.
Source Overview:
The majority of sources for this research guide are secondary in nature as it is a difficult process obtaining many primary sources regarding the secret police of the Soviet Union. These secondary sources include works from during the during the cold war that paved the way for future research once the iron curtain fell and foreign scholars were able to more thoroughly conduct research on the secret police. Many of the primary sources for this guide also come from this time period. For the most part, they are victims or ex secret police themselves that had left the Soviet Union and were able to give first hand accounts of what had occurred. The secondary sources from post-Cold War tend to be more developments from previous research done during the war. In some of these works, they go directly against popular beliefs that were held by western countries throughout the entirety of the Cold War.
The Sources, Annotated:
Seventeen Moments in Soviet History
The majority of sources for this research guide are secondary in nature as it is a difficult process obtaining many primary sources regarding the secret police of the Soviet Union. These secondary sources include works from during the during the cold war that paved the way for future research once the iron curtain fell and foreign scholars were able to more thoroughly conduct research on the secret police. Many of the primary sources for this guide also come from this time period. For the most part, they are victims or ex secret police themselves that had left the Soviet Union and were able to give first hand accounts of what had occurred. The secondary sources from post-Cold War tend to be more developments from previous research done during the war. In some of these works, they go directly against popular beliefs that were held by western countries throughout the entirety of the Cold War.
www.soviethistory.org
The Soviet Police System
This book includes a very clear and general overview of the beginning of the secret police in Soviet Russia. It starts with the Cheka and its movement into a more institutionalized secret police force that carried out executions essentially free from any judicial process. Praeger also includes some of the techniques used by the Cheka and NKVD to show how they were able to be such an effective secret police force. This general overview is a good starting point for developing an understanding of the Cheka and what would develop into the NKVD in the later years of the revolution.
Conquest, Robert. The Soviet Police System. 1st ed. The Bodley Head Ltd, 1968. Print.
The Soviet Secret Police
The soviet Secret Police is a collection of personal statements of some victims and also former secret police members themselves and relevant research regarding the secret police. It takes a comprehensive approach to try and understand how the secret police formed with the Cheka in 1917/1918 and how it later developed into the institutionalized secret police that operated with a free hand in protecting their “internal security.” As the editors note, many of these are personal accounts of former citizens of the USSR illuminating aspects of the secret police that were formerly unavailable behind the iron curtain. This may cause some biases, especially with victims’ accounts, but overall this is a collection of essays that give light to a complicated issue that at times can be difficult to understand. These primary sources are very useful for research as they give first hand accounts of how this government sanctioned police authority was created.
Wolin, and Slusser. The Soviet Secret Police. Praeger, 1974. Print.NKVD Execution
Victims of the Soviet NKVD, executed in 1941. The photo may be from a later date but shows what a GPU or NKVD execution squad was capable of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD
The Cheka
Leggett argues in The Cheka that terror was an essential component of Lenin’s new regime from the very beginning of his ascent to power. This book takes a very specific look into the beginnings of the Soviet Secret police force and how it all began with the Cheka. The overall points argued in Leggett’s book are whether or not the idea of terror was a premeditated clause in Lenin’s plan for power or if it was merely an essential component that came with his regime. In the end he argues that terror itself, regardless of whether or not it was premeditated, was in fact the main resource he relied on to attain and keep his power during the Russian Revolution. Although there are absolutely some counter arguments that terror was not the essential component of Lenin’s regime and consolidation of power, it is a point of debate that creates useful information in research.
Leggett, George. The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.
Inside Stalin’s Secret Police
This work comprises some of the later developments of the soviet secret police forces, especially regarding the NKVD in the years from 1936 to 1938. Conquest delves into the complex topic of the NKVD as the instrument of Stalin’s “Reign of Terror.” This book gives insight into the later developments of the NKVD from what it had started as in the beginning years of the revolution. It provides much statistical data on many executions carried out by the secret police and is a great source to see lists of different awards, massacres, and general inner workings of the NKVD.
Conquest, Robert. Inside Stalin’s Secret Police: Nkvd Politics, 1936-1939. Hoover Inst Pr, 1985.
The Black Book of Communism
The Black Book of Communism is an extremely detailed account of the secret police and dark dealings of the communist party in the USSR and other areas of the world. For the sake of this research guide, only part one and possibly some bits of part two (in reference to NKVD works abroad) should be used. In part one, the authors illuminate many of the crimes and acts of terror used by the Soviet Regime from the very beginning of 1917 up until the end of Stalinism. In so doing, it illustrates a portrait of the NKVD as the arm of the communist party and an instrumental part in the consolidation of power within the USSR. This book is to be used for the more in depth and detailed analysis of the development of the soviet secret police.
Courtois, Stèphane, and Werth, Pannè, Paczkowski, Bartosek, Margolin. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1999.
Empire of Nations
In this book on the different peoples of the Soviet Union, Francine Hirsch brings to light the idea that the consolidation of power within the union came because of maps, the museum, and census. This is a revisionist text that goes against the typical views of the Soviet Union being a nation breaker state. In the final part, which is to be focused on for this research, Hirsch addresses the NKVD and its use of the passport to systematically confront and discredit undesirable groups within the union. It sheds significant light on this issue and how the union, in her mind, went away from the idea of self-determination (a founding point of the USSR) and made the secret police and government the main deciding body of nationality for their political and geographic security.
Francine Hirsch. Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005.
Caheirs du Monde russe
There are two parts of this collection of articles that will be key components to researching the development of the secret police within the Soviet Union. Overall this is a collection about the “Russian world” during and after the Russian Revolution but there are key parts pertaining specifically to the NKVD.
- The Surveillance File of Mykhailo Hrushevsky- This article pertains specifically to the story of Mykhailo Hrushevsky who was considered an important political figure during the early years of the Soviet Union. It looks into the surveillance mechanisms used by the NKVD and attempts to shed light on the biography of Hrushevsky who was later executed in 1934. This article is the perfect way to see into the exact ways the GPU-NKVD carried out its operations and even more so as it follows this one specific case. It is a detailed account that will supplement much of the general research already completed.
- The Role and Place of Secret Collaborators in the Informational Activity of the GPU-NKVD in the 1920s and 1930s- This looks to the ways in which the GPU-NKVD was able to infiltrate all levels of society within the Soviet Union and how they systematically set up intelligence networks from the ground up. It looks more closely in the Ukraine, specifically in the industrial Donbass region. The general idea in this article is to look into how these networks developed in the early years and their role within the secret police.
Reign of Terror
This video gives and interesting look into the proceedings of the NKVD and some of the propaganda used to support their actions. When watching, one should look at the following:
- The obvious power given to the NKVD by Stalin and the party.
- The idea of propaganda to support the actions of the NKVD. There was extensive film from this trial.
- The way that the secret police was used to purge even communist party members.
- The way fear influenced much of soviet language in public.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFB9G1HINXI#t=105
Europe-Asia Studies
The portion of this book being examined looks into that of the Reign of Terror from 1937-1938. It looks at the way the NKVD systematically targeted and executed different groups of people in the regions, who they targeted, why they targeted them specifically, and how many people were originally meant to be targeted versus the final number of victims. Although this largely looks into the Stalinist era, it more importantly shows how vicious the NKVD had become from its origins. More than that though, it shows how the NKVD had not just become more deady, but how it had expanded into this massive secret police force that was operating with government sanction.
Ellman, Michael. Europe-Asia Studies , Vol. 62, No. 6 (August 2010), pp. 915-931.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20750257
