Stalin's Instruments of Terror

by Rupert Butler

Book Overview

The infamous KGB of Cold War renown was the successor to a series of equally infamous and lethal state security agencies that date from the early days of the Russian Revolution: Cheka, OGPU, NKVD,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1904687970
• ISBN13: 9781904687979
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: Amber Books
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 1.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.7" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

history and anatomy of Soviet Union secret agencies and their tactics

The author, who has written works on the SS and other instruments of Nazi terror, turns here to the notorious Soviet Union state agencies, like their Nazi counterparts, playing a key role in instituting and perpetuating a malignant ideology. The Russian--Soviet Union--terroristic, gangster-like agencies reached their apogee under Joseph Stalin. The quotes "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic" and "Death solves all problems - no man, no problem" attributed to Stalin were actually principles of his dictatorial governance. His terror squads which went under varied and sometimes simply changed names effected Stalin's whims and plans from murdering government officials suspected of betrayals largely on the basis of a Stalin's paranoia to relocating entire ethnic populations to inhospitable places. But Stalin built on the sociopolitical theories and related practices urged by Lenin and Trotsky; which had precedents in the rule of the Russian monarchs. Butler follows the course of this infamous state security system by relating the organization and respective and often overlapping purposes of the various agencies, profiling their masterminds and apparatchiks, describing their activities and technological devices, and outlining their tyranny against specific groups and plots to arrest or murder individuals seen as rivals or threats.