The Soviet political police : establishment, training, and operations in the Soviet Republics, 1918-1953
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation examines how the Soviet Union's domestic intelligence service, or political police, functioned across its republics from 1918 until Stalin's death in March 1953. It traces the establishment and evolution of the Soviet political police specifically in the Soviet Union's western republics—Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Soviet Moldavia, and Ukraine—as well as Georgia to explain how the political elite in Moscow endeavored to employ the political police to pacify and transform multiple insubordinate populations into loyal Soviet citizens. Both an institutional and social history, this dissertation charts the development of the political police in the Soviet borderlands and the influence this institution exerted on both individual behavior and collective action, while also analyzing the experiences of the ordinary men and women who staffed the republican departments of the political police. This dissertation yields three major conclusions. First, in an effort to combat the image that the Soviets were a neo-colonial force solely bent on subjugating non-Russians, Moscow endeavored to form an intelligence service staffed by loyal, local nationals who would willingly police their own neighbors, friends, and family. Second, while the Communist Party leaders in Moscow sought to create a professional domestic intelligence service in the republics, they continually had to adjust their expectations as they encountered unforeseen challenges posed by local circumstances and their own ideology. Finally, Moscow had less control over the republican political police departments than historians have commonly assumed, and officers in the republics both influenced and shaped the implementation of Soviet policy at the local level. The result is a broader institutional and social history of the Soviet's domestic intelligence service that considers the complex nature of local-level interests and conflicts while providing a more nuanced view of how the political police contributed to the creation of the Soviet Union.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2021; ©2021 |
| Publication date | 2021; 2021 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Sukalo, Alexandra Lauren |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Weiner, Amir, 1961- |
| Thesis advisor | Weiner, Amir, 1961- |
| Thesis advisor | Holloway, David |
| Thesis advisor | Kollmann, Nancy Shields, 1950- |
| Thesis advisor | Naimark, Norman M |
| Degree committee member | Holloway, David |
| Degree committee member | Kollmann, Nancy Shields, 1950- |
| Degree committee member | Naimark, Norman M |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of History |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Alexandra Sukalo. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of History. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2021. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/wr142hx9913 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2021 by Alexandra Lauren Sukalo
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...