Security Empire

The Secret Police in Communist Eastern Europe

Bibliographic Data

ID11477339
AuthorsNed Richardson-Little (0000-0001-8529-6485, University of Erfurt, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume40
Issue1
Pages140-141
Publication date2022-02-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGerman History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0266-3554 • E-ISSN: 1477-089X
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/gerhis/ghab083
OpenAlexW4226062051
LanguageEN
Citations received2

In this engagingly written and exhaustively researched book, Molly Pucci explores the emergence of the secret police in state socialist Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany. Through extensive research in an impressive number of archives across several countries and the creative use of first-person accounts in various languages, Pucci has produced a fascinating comparative and transnational account of how the infamous security services of the Eastern Bloc—the Ministry of Public Security (MBP) in Poland, the State Security (StB) in Czechoslovakia and the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) in the GDR—were created from the ashes of the Second World War. Emphasizing both national particularity and contingency, she argues that ‘while the Soviets frequently set a general line from above, particularly after 1948, campaigns were acted on or ignored, and succeeded or failed, based on local initiative and participation’ (p. 17). In the first section, ‘Postwar as Revolution’, Pucci ably demonstrates that the...

Christian ministry · Communism · Economic history · Political science · Politics · Public security · State (computer science) · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · European history and politics · German History and Society · History · Law · Public Administration

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