• Michael David-Fox, "The Secret Police and the Soviet System: New Archival Investigations" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2023)

  • Sep 21 2024
  • Length: 56 mins
  • Podcast

Michael David-Fox, "The Secret Police and the Soviet System: New Archival Investigations" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2023)

Listen for free

View show details

  • Summary

  • The Secret Police and the Soviet System: New Archival Investigations (U Pittsburgh Press, 2023) compiles an array of recent scholarship that draws on newly available archival evidence. This interview with the book's editor, Dr. Michael David-Fox, summarizes what these new findings add up to, and highlights specific arguments made by the collection's authors. While Russian archives are presently difficult to access, Ukrainian archives have proved to contain a trove of information about the Soviet-era secret police. The authors in this collection have broken much new interpretive ground, and the essays are universally engaging and provocative. About the book: Even more than thirty years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the role of the secret police in shaping culture and society in communist USSR has been difficult to study, and defies our complete understanding. In the last decade, the opening of non-Russian KGB archives, notably in Ukraine after 2015, has allowed scholars to explore state security organizations in ways not previously possible. Moving beyond well-known cases of high-profile espionage and repression, this study is the first to showcase research from a wide range of secret police archives in former Soviet republics and the countries of the former Soviet bloc—some of which are rapidly closing or becoming inaccessible once again. Rather than focusing on Soviet leadership, The Secret Police and the Soviet System integrates the secret police into studies of information, technology, economics, art, and ideology. The result is a state-of-the-art portrait of one of the world’s most notorious institutions, the legacies of which are directly relevant for understanding Vladimir Putin’s Russia today. Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT. He teaches courses on Russian and Soviet History, World History, and Philosophy of History. His research interests include the sociological theorist Philip Rieff and the influence of Russian nihilism on American libertarianism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies
    Show More Show Less
World Social Sciences
Show More Show Less
activate_samplebutton_t1

What listeners say about Michael David-Fox, "The Secret Police and the Soviet System: New Archival Investigations" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2023)

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.com.au reviews

Amazon Reviews
No Reviews are Available
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.