Stalins Secret Police

Download or read book Agents of Terror written by Alexander Vatlin and published by University of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2018-07-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.