Policing Stalin S Socialism

Policing Stalin's Socialism is one of the first books to emphasize the importance of social order repression by Stalin's Soviet regime in contrast to the traditional emphasis of historians on political repression. Based on extensive examination of new archival materials, David Shearer finds that most repression during the Stalinist dictatorship of the 1930s was against marginal social groups such as petty criminals, deviant youth, sectarians, and the unemployed and unproductive. It was because Soviet leaders regarded social disorder as more of a danger to the state than political opposition that they instituted a new form of class war to defend themselves against this perceived threat. Despite the combined work of the political and civil police the efforts to cleanse society failed; this failure set the stage for the massive purges that decimated the country in the late 1930s.

Since its creation immediately after the Russian revolution,the militia has had a broad range of social,political and economic functions necessary to direct and control a highly centralized socialist state.However,as the communst party lost its legitimacy the militia was increasingly thrust into the front line of political conflict.A task it was unsuited to perform.Despite the efforts of perestroika to reform it,the collapse of the Soviet state also led to the collapse of morale within the militia. Louise Shelley provides a comprehensive view of the history,development,functions,personnel and operations of the militia from its inception until after the demise of the Soviet state.The militia combined elements of continental,socialist and colonial policing.Its functions and operations changed with the development of the state,yet it always intervened significantly in citizen's lives and citizens were very much involved in their own control.Over time the militia became more removed from politics and more concerned with crime control,but it always remained a tool of the party. This is the first book to analyze the militia,which was one of the most vital elements of control within the Soviet State.It will be a crucial aid to understanding the authoritarianism of the communist system and its legacy for Russia and the successor states. Louise I.Shelley is Professor at the Department of Justice,Law and Society and the School of International Service at the American University,Washington D.C.

"Maybe some people are shy about writing, but I will write the real truth. . . . Is it really possible that people at the newspaper haven't heard this. . . that we don't want to be on the kolkhoz [collective farm], we work and work, and there's nothing to eat. Really, how can we live?"-a farmer's letter, 1936, from Stalinism as a Way of Life What was life like for ordinary Russian citizens in the 1930s? How did they feel about socialism and the acts committed in its name? This unique book provides English-speaking readers with the responses of those who experienced firsthand the events of the middle-Stalinist period. The book contains 157 documents-mostly letters to authorities from Soviet citizens, but also reports compiled by the secret police and Communist Party functionaries, internal government and party memoranda, and correspondence among party officials. Selected from recently opened Soviet archives, these previously unknown documents illuminate in new ways both the complex social roots of Stalinism and the texture of daily life during a highly traumatic decade of Soviet history. Accompanied by introductory and linking commentary, the documents are organized around such themes as the impact of terror on the citizenry, the childhood experience, the countryside after collectivization, and the role of cadres that were directed to "decide everything." In their own words, peasants and workers, intellectuals and the uneducated, adults and children, men and women, Russians and people from other national groups tell their stories. Their writings reveal how individual lives influenced-and were affected by-the larger events of Soviet history.

Placing Stalinism in its international context, The Stalinist Era explains the origins and consequences of Soviet state intervention and violence.

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.

Chapters include:The Dialectical MethodThe Materialist TheoryProletarian SocialismNotes

Bernie Sanders (BS) self-identifies the same way that Adolf Hitler self-identified: SOCIALIST. In voluminous speeches and writings Hitler glorified the identical word touted by BS as his political philosophy. Hitler’s swastika was “S” letter shaped symbolism for his socialism. BS proudly classifies himself in the same fashion as Hitler and the world’s other genocidal psychopaths. Bernie Sanders was endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) in the 2020 presidential election and AOC actively campaigns for BS. Why does AOC support such an old white male? She promotes him because they share the same extremist dogma. How did they both become socialists? AOC was heavily influenced by BS. The USA’s two worst national socialists were both born and raised in New York City. AOC grew up during BS’s years as a career politician. She learned a lot about socialism and wanted to get on the dole too. BS is the oldest white male who is running for nomination. BS is so elderly that he could be AOC’s grandfather (he is 48 years older than her). AOC was born a year after BS’s infamous honeymoon (1988) in the USSR just as Soviet socialism self-destructed. Sanders was born in 1941 shortly after Soviet socialism’s partnership with German socialism. Soviet socialism (under Stalin) and German socialism (under Hitler) had joined to launch WWII, destroying Poland together, and going onward from there in a pact to enslave Europe. After German socialism was defeated, Soviet socialism continued (as Sanders grew up) to ruin millions of lives and increase its record-setting mass-murders. As a child, Sanders had learned about socialism from his parents and other relatives. They attended government schools (socialist schools) in the USA where students were forced to perform the Nazi salute and chant robotically to the flag each morning at the ring of a bell. The Pledge of Allegiance to the USA’s Flag was the origin of the infamous stiff-armed salute (and other propagandistic behavior) that was borrowed decades later under German socialism and under other socialists worldwide. The pledge was written by an American socialist (Francis Bellamy) in order to spread socialism. Anyone who refused the ritual in the socialist schools was persecuted. At that time the socialist schools taught racism as official policy and imposed segregation by law. Sanders also learned socialism from government schools that he attended, and he chanted in unison each morning to the flag too (although the gesture had changed to hide socialism’s putrid history). During Sanders’ youth the socialist schools continued to teach racism as official policy and continued to impose segregation by law. “America’s Nazi salute” was often performed by public officials in the USA from 1892 through 1942. What happened to old photographs and films of the American Nazi salute performed by federal, state, county, and local officials? Those photos and films are rare because people don't want to know the truth about the government’s past. American youth groups (Scouting) adopted Bellamy's American Nazi salute (with Bellamy’s encouragement) AND saluted swastika badges (卐) worn by fellow scouts. Many Americans were accustomed to “Nazi salutes for swastikas” long before German socialism (and Hitler Youth) adopted similar behavior under Hitler. That helps to explain another shocking revelation: swastikas were promoted in the US military and worn as a patch on the upper left arm of American soldiers in a fashion that would become uniform under German socialism. There are photos in this book!

Distinguished historian of the Soviet period Robert V. Daniels offers a penetrating survey of the evolution of the Soviet system and its ideology. In a tightly woven series of analyses written during his career-long inquiry into the Soviet Union, Daniels explores the Soviet experience from Karl Marx to Boris Yeltsin and shows how key ideological notions were altered as Soviet history unfolded. The book exposes a long history of American misunderstanding of the Soviet Union, leading up to the "grand surprise" of its collapse in 1991. Daniels's perspective is always original, and his assessments, some worked out years ago, are strikingly prescient in the light of post-1991 archival revelations. Soviet Communism evolved and decayed over the decades, Daniels argues, through a prolonged revolutionary process, combined with the challenges of modernization and the personal struggles between ideologues and power-grabbers.