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Stalin's Police

Public Order and Mass Repression in the USSR, 1926–1941

Paul Hagenloh

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Stalin’s Police offers a new interpretation of the mass repressions associated with the Stalinist terror of the late 1930s. This pioneering study traces the development of professional policing from its pre-revolutionary origins through the late 1930s and early 1940s. Paul Hagenloh argues that the policing methods employed in the late 1930s were the culmination of a set of ideologically driven policies dating back to the previous decade. Hagenloh’s vivid and monumental account is the first to show how Stalin’s peculiar brand of policing—in which criminals, juvenile delinquents, and other...

Stalin’s Police offers a new interpretation of the mass repressions associated with the Stalinist terror of the late 1930s. This pioneering study traces the development of professional policing from its pre-revolutionary origins through the late 1930s and early 1940s. Paul Hagenloh argues that the policing methods employed in the late 1930s were the culmination of a set of ideologically driven policies dating back to the previous decade. Hagenloh’s vivid and monumental account is the first to show how Stalin’s peculiar brand of policing—in which criminals, juvenile delinquents, and other marginalized population groups were seen increasingly as threats to the political and social order—supplied the core mechanism of the Great Terror.

Reviews

Reviews

The near torrent of works attempting to reconstruct and rectify the historical record of the Stalin era continues, and this one is a worthy example.

Hagenloh has written an important book on Soviet policing between Stalin's rise to power and the advent of WW II. It is a fresh, fascinating study.

A very serious contribution to the field.

Hagenloh's insightful and provocative examination of the Soviet police—civil (militsiia) and security (political)—fills a glaring gap in our understanding of the Stalin era... Such a study is long overdue.

This is a book that transcends disciplinary boundaries and deserves to be widely read by scholars of criminal justice.

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About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
480
ISBN
9780801891823
Table of Contents

List of Tables
Acknowledgments
A Note on Translation
Glossary
Introduction: Soviet Policing, Social Categories, and the Great Terror
1. Prerevolutionary Policing, Revolutionary Events, and the New Economic

List of Tables
Acknowledgments
A Note on Translation
Glossary
Introduction: Soviet Policing, Social Categories, and the Great Terror
1. Prerevolutionary Policing, Revolutionary Events, and the New Economic Policy
2. "Chekist in Essence, Chekist in Spirit": The Soviet Police and the Stalin Revolution
3. The New Order, 1932–1934
4. The Police and the "Victory of Socialism," 1934–1936
5. The Stalinist Police
6. Nikolai Ezhov and the Mass Operations, 1937–1938
7. Policing after the Mass Operations, 1938–1941
Conclusion
A Note on Sources
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Author Bio
Paul Hagenloh
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Paul Hagenloh

Paul Hagenloh is an associate professor of history in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. He was a Title VIII research scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in 2004-5.