Soviet Secret Police Chiefs, 1917-1953: commissars of fear

REVIEW BY ANDRÉ VAN LOON To get straight to the point: the strength of Soviet Secret Police Chiefs lies in its weakness. It is an engrossing read and yet a partial historical account, which leaves the deepest questions about the Soviet Union’s murderousness unanswered. As much as you are likely to be fascinated by the book’s individuals, not least the forbidding mystery of Stalin, you are also bound to scratch your head about the system that engineered so much loss of life. Just how did this happen? The book’s pleasure and its trouble starts with its fairly classic structure. We get the different police chiefs in turn: Feliks Dzerzhinskii (police chief in 1917-1926), Vyacheslav