The "Special" World: Stalin’s Power Apparatus and the Soviet System’s Secret Structures of Communication

This groundbreaking two-volume study offers a comprehensive examination of some of the most secret structures of Soviet society–and in particular of Stalin’s power and control mechaninsms. Having gained personal access to formerly closed archives in the 1990s–partly opened in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union but subsequently subject to restricted access due to the new Russian leadership–Niels Erik Rosenfeldt presents a detailed description of the principles and procedures for secrecy in the Soviet System of the 1920s. Leaving no stone unturned, Rosenfeldt investigates and discloses a labyrinthine development of Stalin’s secret chancellery–the “Secret Department,” the “Special Sector”–from the early 1920s to the death of Stalin in 1953.