Agents of terror : ordinary men and extraordinary violence in Stalin's secret police / Alexander Vatlin ; edited, translated, and with an introduction by Seth Bernstein ; foreword by Oleg Khlevniuk.
Material type: TextLanguage: English Original language: Russian Publisher: Madison, Wisconsin : The University of Wisconsin Press, [2016]Description: xxxlv, 171 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780299310806 (cloth : alk. paper)
- 0299310809 (cloth : alk. paper)
- 9780299310844
- Terror raĭonnogo masshtaba. English
Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book | Main Library | NonFiction | 363.283 V347 | Available | 33111008488096 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
In the Great Terror of 1937-38 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.
"Originally published as Terror raionnogo masshtaba: 'Massovye operatsii' NKVD v Kuntsevskom raione Moskovskoi oblasti v 1937-38 gg. ©2004 by Alexander Vatlin and Rosspen, Moscow."--Title page verso.
Includes bibliographical references and index.