1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910778093603321

Autore

Gregory Paul R

Titolo

Terror by quota [[electronic resource] ] : state security from Lenin to Stalin : (an archival study) / / Paul R. Gregory

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New Haven, : Yale University Press, c2009

ISBN

0-300-15278-7

9786612353376

1-282-35337-3

1-282-08962-5

9786612089626

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (1 online resource (viii, 346 p.) ) : ill

Collana

The Yale-Hoover series on Stalin, Stalinism, and the Cold War

Disciplina

366.28/30947

Soggetti

Internal security - Soviet Union - History

Political persecution - Soviet Union - History

Soviet Union Politics and government

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

"Published in cooperation with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University."

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Stalin's Praetorians -- Ranks of the Chekist elite -- Organizing state security -- Political enemies -- Deadly Kremlin politics -- Planning terror -- Simplified methods -- The repressors' dilemma -- Conclusions.

Sommario/riassunto

This original analysis of the workings of Soviet state security organs under Lenin and Stalin addresses a series of questions that have long resisted satisfactory answers. Why did political repression affect so many people, most of them ordinary citizens? Why did repression come in waves or cycles? Why were economic and petty crimes regarded as political crimes? What was the reason for relying on extra-judicial tribunals? And what motivated the extreme harshness of punishments, including the widespread use of the death penalty? Through an approach that synthesizes history and economics, Paul Gregory develops systematic explanations for the way terror was applied, how terror agents were recruited, how they carried out their jobs, and how they were motivated. The book draws on extensive, recently opened



archives of the Gulag administration, the Politburo, and state security agencies themselves to illuminate in new ways terror and repression in the Soviet Union as well as dictatorships in other times and places.