THE YALE-HOOVER SERIES ON AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES

SECURITY EMPIRE

THE SECRET POLICE IN COMMUNIST EASTERN EUROPE

MOLLY PUCCI

Hoover Institution

Stanford University

Stanford, California

Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS

New Haven and London

Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Amasa Stone Mather of the Class of 1907, Yale College.

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Yevgeniy and my family, with love

Every security official and interrogator must understand that this is a period of great transformation of people’s souls. Such changes do not come about mechanically. People around us are hesitating. Thousands are hindering our work. They have doubts. They raise problems. But only now are we taking the first steps toward reorienting people’s psyche and winning it for socialism.

—JÓZEF RÓŻAŃSKI, head of the Interrogation Department of the Polish Secret Police, March 1949

Under the German occupation it was possible to see our country in black and white. The Germans were black; we were white. Today it is impossible to think in those terms. Today there are twilights, half-lit areas, partial illuminations. We have something in common with the regime: the fear that it is impossible to know whom you are speaking with unless you have known that person from birth. The regime has the same worries we do: it can never be certain.

—STANISŁAW MIKOŁAJCZYK, former premier of the Polish Government-in-Exile in London and chairman of the Polish Peasants’ Party, August 1948

Acknowledgments

It is exciting and overwhelming to think back on the many people who have supported me in my work and academic life over the past years. The project would not have been possible without the support of my adviser, Norman Naimark, who helped me conceive of and complete a project that seemed at first impossible in scope. I would like to thank Norman for helping me in countless ways and always providing advice, support, and encouragement. I am much indebted to Tamar Herzog, who continually encouraged me to ask new and interesting questions and has been a source of counsel for many years. As historians and mentors, Norman and Tamar have shaped how I think about history and scholarship, for which I am very grateful.

Several scholars have provided critical help on the project at various stages: Amir Weiner offered sage advice and fruitful discussions on the secret police; Andrzej Paczkowski answered my many queries on the Polish archives; Piotr Kosicki was a wonderful friend and always willing to debate the complexities of East European history; Mark Kramer shared stories from the East European archives; Jonathan Bolton taught me how to read the subtleties of the Czech language even in the most ossified of show trial documents. My Czech and Polish language teachers, Jara Dušatko and Gerardina Szudelska, helped me to work through many a difficult translation, turn of phrase, and idiosyncrasy of the language of communism.

I am grateful to the organizations that funded my language training and research: the American Philosophical Society, Stanford University, The Hoover Institution, Fulbright IIE, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Foreign Language Area Studies program, and the German Academic Exchange Service. My time as a Geballe fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center was one of the most enriching academic experiences of my life. My experience as a Max Weber fellow at the European University Institute in Florence was immensely enjoyable. I am grateful for the support of Pieter Judson, Pavel Kolář, and Simon McDonald during this year. The months I spent as a Leibniz Fellow at the Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam helped me complete the manuscript, as did the advice of Jens Gieseke and Jan Behrends. The encouragement of my friends and colleagues Laura Brade, Orysia Kulik, Susanne Schwartz, and Emily Gioelli has been invaluable. My friends Balázs Apor, Patricia Walker, and Isabella Jackson deserve special thanks for their kind words and support. I am grateful to Carole Holohan, Katja Bruisch, Joseph Clarke, Joanne Lynch, and Graeme Murdock for keeping me on my feet during three difficult years.

My family has unfailingly supported my endeavors. I would like to thank my parents for their encouragement: my dad for reading Cold War spy novels to understand my work, my mom for getting lost in historical problems with me, my sister Jenn and her husband, James, for being willing to talk me through difficulties, and their children, Alice, Xan, and Owen, for making me laugh. Thanks to Lauren Coombs for always being there for me. And to Yevgeniy, my editor and partner on journeys to California, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Berlin, Florence, and Dublin. This book would not have been possible without you.

Abbreviations

AAN | Archive of Modern Records in Poland (Archiwum Akt Nowych)
ABS | Archive of the Security Services of Czechoslovakia (Archiv bezpečnostních složek)
AIPN | Archive of the Institute of National Remembrance in Poland (Archiwum Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej)
AK | Home Army in Poland (Armia Krajowa)
BA | Federal Archives at Berlin-Lichterfelde in Germany (Bundesarchiv)
CKKP | Central Party Control Commission in Poland (Centralna Komisje Kontroli Partyjnej)
CPSU | Communist Party of the Soviet Union
GDR | German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik)
HIA | Hoover Institution Archives
KBW | Internal Security Corps (Korpus Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego)
KPD | Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, up to April 1946)
KPP | Communist Party of Poland (Komunistyczna Partia Polski, 1918–1938)
KSČ | Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Komunistická strana Československá)
KSK | Party Control Commission in Czechoslovakia (Komise stranické kontroly)
KSS | Communist Party of Slovakia (Komunistická strana Slovenska, 1939–1948)
MBP | Ministry of Public Security (Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego)
MfS | Ministry for State Security, known as the Stasi (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit)
MGB | Ministry of State Security (Ministerstvo gosudarstvenniy bezopasnosti SSSR)
MO | Citizens’ Militia (Milicja Obywatelska)
NA | National Archives of the Czech Republic (Národní archiv)
NKFD | National Committee for a Free Germany (Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschlands)
NKGB | People’s Commissariat for State Security (Narodnyi komissariat gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti SSSR)
NKVD | People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (Narodnyi Kommissariat Vnutrennikh Del)
PKWN | Polish Committee of National Liberation (Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego)
PPR | Polish Workers’ Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza, Polish Communist Party, 1943–48)
PSL | Polish Peasants’ Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe)
PZPR | Polish United Workers’ Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, 1948–1989)
SBZ | Soviet Zone of Occupation in Germany (Sowjetische Besatzungszone)
SED | Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands)
SKK | Soviet Control Commission in the GDR, from 1949 (Sowjetische Kontrollkommission)
SMAD | Soviet Military Administration in Germany (Sowjetische Militäradministration)
StB | State Security in Czechoslovakia (Státní bezpečnost)
UB | Security Office in Poland (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa, the name for lower-level offices up to 1954)
ZPKK | Central Party Control Commission in the GDR (Zentrale Parteikontrollkommission)

SECURITY EMPIRE

Introduction

ŠTĚPÁN PLAČEK WAS arrested on 22 November 1949. Recently a high-ranking officer in the Czechoslovak secret police, he could not make sense of why he had been arrested. From prison, he wrote a letter to KSČ General Secretary Rudolf Slánský asserting his innocence and describing his role in building a communist secret police force. In Czechoslovakia, he explained, his efforts to create a political police force had been essential to the establishment of a communist state. And unlike the Polish secret police, which had arisen out of the Polish military that fought with the Red Army in the Second World War, and the Bulgarian secret police, which was created with help from the Soviet-dominated Allied occupation administration, the Czechoslovaks had built their force on the basis of their “own experiences and mistakes.”¹

By 1950, the year Plaček composed the letter, communist secret police forces had been created not only in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Bulgaria but also in Albania, Romania, East Germany, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. His letter showed familiarity with the histories of other East European secret police forces, and the way the militaries and occupation forces that emerged during the Second World War had become, through Soviet and local efforts, the building blocks of new communist institutions. Plaček’s concern with the other countries of the region also demonstrated the connections forged between East European secret police forces since the end of the war. From the middle of the 1940s he had scrutinized organizational charts of the Polish secret police, translated security terms from Russian into Czech, analyzed the message of vigilance propagated in the military parades organized by the Bulgarian secret police, and toured the secret police forces of Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Yugoslavia.²

These trips and the efforts of local communists and their Soviet advisers to construct secret police forces in Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1954 are the subject of this book. Security Empire compares the earliest years of communist rule in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and eastern Germany, countries shattered by the Second World War, foreign military occupation, violent population exchanges, and postwar retribution trials. It ends as the curtains fell on the show trials of East European communist leaders in the 1950s, which marked the close of the Stalinist era in the region. Its subjects are the people, sentiments, debates, and decisions that turned postwar chaos into centrally planned communist institutions. It asks how East European and Soviet leaders transformed the countries of the region from a patchwork of nations with roots in Habsburg, German, Russian, and Ottoman political cultures into a set of nearly identical police states. Or so the story goes. In fact, a central aim is to question whether these states were as similar to each other and the Soviet model as they claimed to be and have frequently been represented in popular accounts.

This book approaches the era not only in terms of communist takeovers of power, but also through the lens of communist state-building projects. It was one thing, after all, to ordain the creation of institutions from above and quite another to persuade millions of people that they belonged to these new states. This perspective, while considering the role of ideology in the making of early communist states, shifts attention also to issues common to state-building projects more generally: relations between the center and the periphery; the challenge of standardizing institutional practices; the training of tens of thousands of new officials; the clashes between East European and Soviet methods of procedure such as laws, jurisdictions, and standards of evidence, and the cultural assumptions these clashes reflected.

It seeks also to understand the people who helped build these states, to uncover the faces behind institutions long depicted—and which depicted themselves—as faceless. Those holding party and state positions in the Stalinist era are often portrayed as cogs or cadres in a monolithic apparatus of power. The term “cadres” was introduced to East European languages in the late 1940s to imply that officials were highly disciplined or even interchangeable.³ The term spread a “cult of nonpersonality” across the region that depicted the communist rank and file as impersonal enforcers of the will of the state. Leon Trotsky, Josef Stalin’s famous and outspoken critic, agreed with Stalin’s characterization of his own bureaucrats. He described the Stalinist state as an “apparatus of compulsion,” “uncontrolled force dominating the masses,” or, most simply, “the bureaucracy.”⁴ For decades totalitarian theorists have similarly described officials using images derived from the industrial revolution (such as cogs, machines, apparatuses, or transmission belts). Secret police institutions were, in these formulations, instruments or machines of terror.⁵ Such descriptors, echoing Stalin’s and Trotsky’s views, assume that officials enacted decrees with little reflection on their meaning or attention to personal interests.⁶

And yet, as this book shows, communist secret police officials and party members were never part of an impersonal, monolithic apparatus. They were active pursuers of a radical political and social agenda, sometimes for ideological and other times for deeply personal reasons—mostly for both, as the two can rarely be separated. The Soviets’ internal documents belie the assumption that personal motivations were irrelevant to service. The Soviets obsessively studied the private and public lives of East European party members and secret policemen: their social backgrounds, ages, families, reasons for joining the service, and interpersonal relations; who hated whom, who was anti-Semitic, and so on, all assessments that helped determine appointments and advancement in the force.⁷ East European officials, for their part, had various understandings of communism that depended on their education, national background, and personal and professional relationships to the Soviet Union. The picture that emerges, then, is one of considerable diversity in officials’ motivations for joining the service, willingness to implement orders, and understandings of what communism was. In what follows I examine the earliest years of communist power from the perspective of the secret police officer corps and rank and file: who they were, why they joined the service, and how these institutions evolved in the 1940s and early 1950s.

THE CASE STUDIES: THE POLISH, CZECHOSLOVAK, AND EAST GERMAN SECRET POLICE

The book focuses on the branches of the secret police that played a central role in the takeover and consolidation of communist power in the region. These included the department of political intelligence, which, among other things, conducted surveillance on members of noncommunist political parties; the department of economic intelligence, which monitored economic outputs and factory personnel; the interrogation department, which forced confessions from alleged enemies of the regime; and the department of counterintelligence, which assessed the loyalty and competence of party, state, and secret police officials. In the case of Poland, it also examines the Department for Fighting Banditism, which was responsible for arresting members of the Polish under ground between 1945 and 1947. In the cases of Czechoslovakia and eastern Germany, it studies the communist party intelligence networks that collected the information that determined who could serve in the new state. I touch only briefly on areas such as foreign intelligence, the prison administration, censorship, and special camps like the Jáchymov uranium mine in Czechoslovakia and Wismut uranium mine in East Germany, all of which were overseen by the secret police but remain outside the scope of this book.⁸

While scholars frequently assume that East European secret police forces were identical copies of the Soviet model, in fact, the Soviet secret police had not one but several institutional histories. It was created as the Bolshevik Cheka, or the All-Russian Emergency Committee for Combatting Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, soon after the Russian Revolution. It ended as the KGB, or the Committee for State Security, which dissolved after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.⁹ At the time the East Europeans were building their forces, the Soviet secret police was divided between the NKVD and the NKGB, both of which were highly centralized, military-style organizations.¹⁰ Most NKVD and NKGB advisers who helped train East European agents were born into the peasant or working classes. Several had been recruited to the Soviet secret police after serving in the Red Army during the Russian civil war. Others had joined during the years of Great Terror and risen in the service by arresting, interrogating, or executing their superiors. All had fought in the Second World War. When they entered Eastern Europe, these advisers wielded not only ideology but also a particular operational vocabulary, political language, view of political enemies, and set of convictions about legal procedure, policing methods, justice, and evidence that had been forged in domestic and international conflicts.¹¹

East European agents came to the postwar period from different national backgrounds, political systems, and policing cultures. In translating the Soviet model of the secret police, they were faced with the challenge of interpreting its texts. This process entailed a large degree of adaptation: the necessity of balancing literal and figurative meanings of words and uncovering the original intents of a text.¹² I argue that the transfer of Soviet institutions to Eastern Europe is best understood as a process of imperfect translation rather than of reproduction or transplantation.¹³ This was evident in the case studies selected for this book, namely, the Polish Ministry of Public Security, the Czechoslovak State Security Service, and the East German Ministry for State Security, which were notable for their differences as well as their similarities. In each country the communists created institutions unique to local circumstances and realities.

POLAND: THE MINISTRY OF PUBLIC SECURITY (MBP)

The Ministry of Public Security (MBP, or Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego) was created in January 1945, as part of the communist-dominated Committee of National Liberation (PKWN).¹⁴ The structure, methods, and ethos of the MBP were shaped by the Second World War and the civil conflict that followed (1945–47) in which the institution was created, staffed, and trained. In 1945 it expanded from 1,640 to 26,801 officials, as men and women entered the service from partisan groups, peasant battalions, and the Polish military.¹⁵ The MBP, similar to the wartime formations from which it emerged, dressed officials in military uniforms, compelled them to carry weapons, and organized them into military units. The Soviets, who occupied large parts of Polish territory in this period, had considerable influence over the institution’s initial form and methods of violence. Soviet officers and citizens constituted much of the MBP’s core staff.¹⁶ The fact that the MBP was created in the last months of the war, the backgrounds of the men and women who entered the service, and the armed conflict against the Polish underground in the immediate postwar period also influenced the culture and ethos of the force.

CZECHOSLOVAKIA: THE STATE SECURITY SERVICE (ZOB II/STB)

Between 1945 and 1948 Czechoslovakia was led by a multiparty, democratic coalition government called the National Front. The first Czechoslovak secret police (ZOB II, or Zemský odbor bezpečnosti II) was a party intelligence network run by the communists covertly inside the National Front’s official intelligence service. It collected information on the communists’ political opponents and influenced elections in favor of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSČ).¹⁷ It was staffed with several hundred agents, many of whom came from intellectual and professional backgrounds. A separate party intelligence network was run by the Slovak Communist Party (KSS) in Slovakia.¹⁸ After the communists took power in February 1948 they began to train a new state security service (StB, or Státní bezpečnost).¹⁹ Between 1948 and 1949 the KSČ appealed to patriotism and class consciousness to encourage thousands of workers and other citizens to become interrogators, operative agents, and prison guards. Soviet advisers arrived in Prague in September 1949. Under their guidance StB officials began to arrest their superiors in early 1951 and replace them with younger agents, in effect carrying out a generational revolution in the force.²⁰ Plaček, with whose letter I began this book, was one of hundreds of high-ranking officials arrested in this period. Several prominent secret police officials were put on trial in December 1953, over a year after the trial of the former general secretary Rudolf Slánský in November 1952.

EAST GERMANY: THE MINISTRY FOR STATE SECURITY (K5/MFS)

The East German secret police was the only service of the three built in a country that had been defeated in the Second World War and in a territory directly governed by the Soviet Union. It is impossible to separate the first secret police network in eastern Germany, K5, from the Soviet security forces active in the Soviet Zone of Occupation (SBZ) at the same time. Soviet, not German, security forces were primarily responsible for repression and arrests in the SBZ.²¹ K5 carried out various tasks for Soviet military, security, and occupation officials, including the denazification campaigns and investigations of economic corruption and sabotage.²² The East German secret police, the Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, better known as the Stasi), was established in February 1950, several months after the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was founded. Both high-ranking and rank-and-file Stasi (MfS) officials, many of whom were former K5 officers, were trained, vetted, and promoted by the Soviet secret police.²³ The extensive influence of Soviet security forces on the training and internal culture of the MfS continued for years after the creation of the GDR.

THE COMINTERN GENERATION: THE FOUNDERS AND OFFICER CORPS

Many of these European communists, although they came from different national backgrounds, had shared experiences in the international communist movement. Most members of the first secret police officer corps, regardless of their country of origin, were born soon after the beginning of the twentieth century and joined communist parties in the 1920s and 1930s. They were often involved in the Comintern, the international organization of intellectuals, spies, and professional revolutionaries that linked Moscow with Europe, and both with the rest of the world. As Russia was mired in civil war, Comintern agents aimed to spread the socialist revolution on a global scale.

Some were trained as intelligence agents. Others staged workers’ strikes, took up weapons against fascist paramilitary groups, served in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, and survived as the ranks of communist parties were decimated by Hitler in Nazi Germany and Stalin during the Great Terror in the Soviet Union. While embedded in common political networks, this diverse generation was motivated by many things: communist ideas, national identity, class background, antifascist beliefs, and personal or professional ties to the Soviet Union. While most accounts of East European secret police forces depict agents as faceless bureaucrats or puppets of Moscow, I argue that the officer corps must also be viewed as part of a generation that came of age on a continent torn apart by war, revolution, genocide, and mass violence. Theirs was a generation with common experiences in war and a shared faith in radical politics and the socialist experiment in Russia.²⁴

In Poland, members of this generation were born in an era when the country was divided among the Russian, German, and Habsburg Empires. Their biographies were embedded in this complex national context. They experienced both the creation of a Polish state in 1918 and the division of the country yet again between the Nazis and the Soviets in 1939. Mikołaj Orechwa, who was in charge of the MBP personnel division, was born in the eastern borderlands of Poland in 1902 and joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (not of Poland) in 1920. Of Belarussian background, he served in 1935 as a delegate for the Communist Party of Western Belarus to the Congress of the Comintern. Józef Różański, the future head of the interrogation department of the MBP, was born in 1907 and joined the Polish Communist Party (KPP) in 1931. He began to work for the Soviet secret police after the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. Julia Brystiger, who was of Jewish background, was born in 1902 and joined the KPP in 1931. She fled to the Soviet Union during the Second World War and returned as a high-ranking member of the Polish communist government. Jakub Berman, in charge of the Politburo’s committee on security affairs, was also of Polish-Jewish background. He was born in 1901, attended a Russian-language elementary school, and received a law degree from Warsaw University. He joined the KPP in 1928, took up Soviet citizenship in 1940, and served as an instructor in the Comintern school in the Soviet Union during the Second World War.²⁵

In Czechoslovakia, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the turn of the century, the picture was different. Many Czechoslovak secret police officials had never been to Russia or the Soviet Union. They were drawn to the Soviet experiment by ideological texts and the Russian literature that reached Prague in the 1920s, including the works of Karl Marx, Maxim Gorky, and Soviet party newspapers (Czechoslovakia was one of the only countries in Europe where the communist party operated legally in the interwar period).²⁶ Most of the figures in this book were as fluent in German as in Czech and had witnessed the creation of the First Czechoslovak Republic in their youth. Štěpán Plaček, who helped create the service, was born in 1909 and joined the communist party in 1928. Karel Šváb, the head of the party intelligence service, was born in 1904 and joined the communist party in 1921. Osvald Závodský, one of the first heads of the StB, was born in 1910. He joined the communist party in 1936, during the Great Depression, and the International Brigades soon after. Josef Pavel, who attended a Comintern school in the early 1930s, also fought in the Spanish Civil War, a foundational experience for the political Left across Europe.

Eastern Germany, which had been part of the German Empire, presents another viewpoint. Several officials had long been active in Comintern intelligence networks. Wilhelm Zaisser, the first head of the Stasi, was born in 1893. He had witnessed the Bolshevik revolution while serving as an officer in the Imperial German Army in Russia during the First World War. He joined the German communist party (KPD) in 1919 and attended a party school in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, from which he returned to Weimar Germany to organize strikes and domestic upheavals. Ernst Wollweber, the head of the MfS after Zaisser, was born in 1898 and also joined the KPD in 1919. He was involved in illegally shipping arms to the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. Erich Mielke, the head of the Stasi from 1957 to 1989, was born in 1907 and joined the communist party in 1927. He attended the Lenin School in the USSR in the early 1930s before joining the International Brigades in Spain. Although the Comintern was dissolved in 1943, many officials continued to report to Moscow even as the war forced European communist movements to become partisan units, resistance groups, or exile communities. A different story must be told about the tens of thousands of men and women who joined the communist secret police rank and file in the context of displacement, chaos, and political uncertainty following the Second World War.

THE RANK AND FILE: TRAINED IN TERROR

Life in the communist secret police changed men. This book therefore contains two stories about the rank and file: who they were and who they became while in the service. As the Polish official Jakub Berman explained in an interview years later, “The security apparatus demoralized people in unbelievable ways. The possibilities for arbitrary rule and ability to act without practical control mechanisms ruin people and make them waste away. Many communists who went to work there came out distorted.”²⁷ Aleksander Solzhenitsyn captured the arbitrariness of this process by putting himself in the shoes of his interrogator: “I would like to imagine: if, by the time war had already broken out, I had been wearing an NKVD officer’s insignia on my blue tabs, what would I have become? What do shoulder boards do to a human being?”²⁸

This book broadens a question common in studies of early communist states. It asks not only how violence impacted society but also how it impacted those who carried it out, the perpetrators as well as the victims. Shoulder boards, uniforms, and power shaped how men conceived of themselves, as did professional training exercises, military discipline, and the experience of continually being watched, corrected, and reprimanded for incorrect behavior. Communist parties sought to teach citizens a new ideology as well as to change how they thought of themselves and the state.²⁹ Whereas scholars have traditionally framed the study of the early communist states in terms of their impact on society, I show that the officials serving in the state were also transformed in this period. The men recruited into the rank and file of secret police forces often joined from occupations such as bakers, plumbers, carpenters, or factory workers. They changed during their years in service through military discipline; pressure from party instructors, acquaintances, colleagues, and superiors; and by internalizing certain ways of speaking in public and private. I depict the state not as an impersonal apparatus of power but as a social world that encompassed interpersonal relations, status, economic standing, and language. Examining the process of shaping state officials requires lengthening the timeline of these revolutions to include not only the takeover of power but also the longer-term process of training and selecting officials that lasted into the 1950s.

For those joining the secret police rank and file, ideology was not only a question of reading or memorizing abstract texts. It was linked with service and the willingness to participate actively in campaigns of violence: to not only believe in the class struggle, but also to implement it. This determination was cemented in the vocabulary agents used to describe their world. The adjective “Bolshevik” in Czech signified the willingness to use brutal and merciless interrogation methods. It appeared alongside the word for “harshness” (bolševická tvrdost).³⁰ The term “class conscious” praised the willingness to use violence against class enemies or bourgeois prisoners. And individual choice and agency always mattered in the service. The Soviet phrase “to prove oneself” (pokazat’ sebya) was translated into all three languages: Polish: pokazać się, Czech: osvečit se, German: sich bewähren. It featured in the files of young officials to describe dedication to communism as proven through action. In all four languages the verb is reflexive, emphasizing the agent’s initiative in proving his loyalty to the force.

Because individual agency mattered, officials’ compliance with orders varied depending on the campaign and the person carrying it out. While some officials implemented orders in a severe, resolute way, others followed through only partly or left their jobs, renounced their party membership, committed suicide, or spoke out against what was happening rather than participate. Those who remained in the service were tied to the institution as much by complicity in the violence as their ideals. As the Hungarian communist Béla Szász observed of the interrogators in the AVH, the Hungarian secret police: “By the time the formerly convinced and enthusiastic AVH investigator fully worked up to reality, he had become an accomplice—and therefore a prisoner—of the inner circle to such an extent that it would have been extremely dangerous to try and sever his ties unilaterally. . . . Complicity forges stronger bonds than any faith or ideal.”³¹

The book’s focus on socialization, training, and service brings attention to role of the communist party rank and file in shaping secret police officials. This took many forms. The communist party rank and file constituted a considerable part of the first secret police and Soviet informer networks in all three countries.³² Party organizations, which operated in every branch of the secret police, sought to transform agents’ behavior by teaching them the language of the party and staging rituals such as criticism and self-criticism sessions to influence their actions. Party members chastised agents who committed supposed moral or political transgressions such as leniency toward class enemies, religious affiliations, insufficient knowledge of the communist canon, extramarital affairs, a failure to live a “communist lifestyle,” or maintaining unacceptable social connections. Over this short but crucial period the stakes of compliance were ramped up as the party began to determine access to living quarters, state positions, recreational facilities, and entry into institutes of higher education.

Party members also introduced the language of hatred and revenge to the secret police in speeches, meetings, and criticism/self-criticism sessions. As the historian Richard Bessel has pointed out, the Second World War unleashed a “politics of hatred” that “motivated the actions of many people who had terrible experiences in their recent past.”³³ Indeed, the file of one East German secret police official made clear the link between wartime hatreds and postwar service, specifying that he was “filled with hate about the cruel gassing of his father” and “knows what he owes the workers’ movement and is putting into action the struggle begun by his father.”³⁴ The politics of hatred did not end with postwar retribution trials and denazification campaigns. It was carried on, stoked by communist parties, into campaigns of class warfare, anti-intellectualism, and anti-Semitism in the 1950s. Only hatred of the enemy, explained the Polish interrogator Józef Różański, allowed him to overcome his inhibitions about adopting the brutal interrogation methods of the Soviet advisers: “I came to the conclusion that my inhibitions were probably the result of my intellectual background, lack of militancy, and lack of resoluteness. . . . The use of such methods, foreign methods, not ours, was the result of necessity and hatred of the enemy, which impacted our work, and not only in the interrogation department.”³⁵ The language of anger and hatred against certain social groups and classes permeated the show trials in Czechoslovakia, which sought to evoke the “anger of the people” (hněv lidu) against class and political enemies.³⁶

The ferocity and speed with which secret police and party officials dropped the declarations of common purpose and imprisoned, interrogated, or executed each other in the early 1950s has long been one of the most incomprehensible aspects of Stalinist regimes. And yet personal hatreds, social tensions, prejudices, and animosities were widespread in communist institutions. They were explicitly studied by the Soviets and exploited to push forward the terror in local communist parties in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Similar issues characterized relations between the countries of the Eastern Bloc. In spite of efforts to integrate the region into a common international security space, tensions and mistrust continued to trouble relations between the security services of the seemingly monolithic East.

INTERNATIONAL STALINISM AND THE CREATION OF THE EASTERN BLOC

The creation of secret police forces in each country paved the way for the integration of the Eastern Bloc into a common international security space. Starting in the mid-1940s, East European secret police agents began to forge connections between their services and Moscow. They provided information to Soviet intelligence agents, diplomats, advisers, and others, taking on roles as intermediaries of Soviet influence in the region. But these institutions cannot be studied only in terms of bilateral relations with Moscow. Close to a decade before the Warsaw Pact was founded in 1955, East European agents jointly policed borders and exchanged surveillance technologies, intelligence, and professional expertise with each other as well as with the Soviets. Party and security leaders in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, and Bulgaria studied how each other’s services were organized and pressured each other to adhere more closely to Soviet forms and practices, driving the process of Sovietization forward in other countries as well as in their own. They redrew borders between East and West and between the countries of Eastern Europe that lasted for decades to come.

These exchanges took place far earlier and more frequently than historians have realized. They often preceded the creation of communist states in the region. In the fall of 1946 the KSČ began to establish intelligence connections with the other East European secret police forces on the basis of informal party channels.³⁷ In September 1946 the Bulgarian leader Georgii Dimitrov suggested linking the Bulgarian counterintelligence service with those of Poland, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia.³⁸ Czechoslovak and Polish forces regularly coordinated cross-border operations, ran joint technical facilities, and exchanged knowledge of institutional practices. These exchanges were multi-lingual as well as multi-national. When Czechoslovak agents traveled abroad in 1948, they spoke to the Romanians in French, the Hungarians in Hungarian, and the Bulgarians in Russian. Only in the early 1950s did Russian become the lingua franca of the Eastern Bloc.

Covert connections between the secret police forces of the region reached their height during preparations for the show trials of prominent East European communist leaders in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In the fall of 1949, a moment that centers the second half of the book, agents from Czechoslovakia, Poland, and East Germany traveled to Budapest to observe preparations for the trial of the former Hungarian Politburo member László Rajk. In Budapest, not Moscow, they studied interrogation practices and mastered the staging of show trials. The East Germans, the latecomers to the Eastern Bloc, visited Prague in the middle of 1953 to observe preparations for their own political trials (which were never staged).³⁹ Of course, the Soviets were an important part of these transnational security exchanges. Prominent Soviet advisers were moved from country to country to teach similar policing and surveillance methods to local officials. The NKVD chief Ivan Serov was stationed in Poland as well as Soviet-occupied Germany. NKVD advisers General Likhachev and General Makarov organized the show trial of Rajk in Hungary in 1949 and of Slánský in Czechoslovakia in 1952.⁴⁰

But national borders, far from being erased in the name of communist unity, were heavily policed until the fall of communism in 1989. The Romanian and Hungarian intelligence forces were riven by hostilities and mutual suspicions from the earliest years of communist power. The Czechs noted in 1948 that the Romanians isolated themselves from other Eastern Bloc forces, a tendency that became more pronounced in later years.⁴¹ Czechoslovak agents who visited the Yugoslav, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Polish, and Romanian secret police in the 1940s were struck more by the differences than the similarities between the services. Certainly in the years following the death of Stalin such divergent paths became even more pronounced as local leaders were given a greater hand in shaping the institutional legacy of the secret police and the official memory of the Stalinist period.

THE SECRET POLICE ON TRIAL: PERPETRATOR STUDIES IN COMMUNIST EUROPE

On 11 November 1957 three formerly high-ranking MBP officers, Roman Romkowski, Józef Różański, and Anatol Fejgin, stood on trial in Warsaw.⁴² Romkowski had been deputy head of the MBP, Różański head of its interrogation department, and Fejgin head of the unit for uncovering enemies in the communist party. All were on trial for arresting fellow communists and “using, directing, or demanding that their subordinates employ physical coercion against prisoners including beatings, uninterrupted interrogations, and other forms of physical and psychological torture.” They were charged with carrying out these actions between November 1948 and the spring of 1954.⁴³

Particularly after Nikita Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” to the 20th Party Congress in February 1956, East European and Soviet communists sought to come to terms with their regimes’ violent foundational years. Long before the archival revolution of the 1990s, the secret police played a central role in shaping the historical memory of Stalinism in the Eastern Bloc. The decades-long process of remembering and forgetting the people and legacy of the secret police led to numerous attempts at self-examination as well as truth commissions, mass amnesties, and rehabilitations of political prisoners. The fates of hundreds of thousands of political prisoners depended on whether party commissions decided that they had been arrested unjustly, or, in the language of the time, “outside the bounds of socialist legality.” The trial of Romkowski, Różański, and Fejgin was one of several in which the communists attempted to explain Stalinism after the death of the Soviet leader. It was, after all, easy to heap blame on the secret police, a widely feared institution that was responsible for much of the violence of the era. At least in part this blame helped divert condemnation from the communist parties themselves.

This reform process was evident in Poland after Władysław Gomułka, the former general secretary, returned to power in October 1956. It was less evident in East Germany, where little effort was made to grapple with the guilt of local perpetrators after thousands of former political prisoners were released in 1956. It reached its greatest extent in Czechoslovakia in 1968, the country with the most violent legacy of internal party terror (1949–54) and significant communist reform movement. The authors of the KSČ’s Pillar commission, a party commission convened during the Prague Spring to examine the crimes of Stalinism, tried to understand the Stalinist period with reference to the findings of the Nuremberg trials of Nazi perpetrators. As they wrote, “The degree of each man’s responsibility [for the crimes of Stalinism] depended on his position and the opportunity he had to discover the truth. We must never forget the statement by the Nuremberg court that blind obedience to criminal commands is not an extenuating circumstance.”⁴⁴ The commission expanded the definition of Stalinist crimes to include expulsion from one’s job, dismissal from the university, the confiscation of one’s property, the loss of one’s home or apartment, and the prejudicial administrative measures against small businesses, the church, and farmers enacted in the early 1950s, as well as arrests and judicial repression. In part, the commission blamed the Soviet advisers for the violence. But it also recognized the role of local officials in pushing forward the violence. It acknowledged the pressure put on secret police officials to commit violence against class enemies, the youth and inexperience of rank-and-file agents, and the ways that socialist competitions and the quota system had incentivized agents to carry out more arrests.⁴⁵ By attributing the escalation of violence to institutional pressures rather than to communist ideology the commission paved the way for a functionalist school in the study of the secret police.⁴⁶

This and earlier commissions were followed by the arrests of local secret police officials. In the mid-1950s two interrogators, Bohumil Doubek and Vladimír Kohoutek, were arrested and sentenced to nine years in prison.⁴⁷ In 1962–63 Antonín Prchal and Karel Košt’ál, young men from working-class backgrounds who had risen in the force in the early 1950s, were arrested and put on trial. In 1968 seven former secret police officials were put on trial for brutal interrogation methods and murder, an event one jurist has called a “mini-Nuremberg trial.” It was covered in the party daily, Rudé právo, and set off public debate on local responsibility for the crimes of Stalinism and the necessity of curtailing the powers of the secret police.⁴⁸ As reform communists grappled with the past, the totalitarian school of thought, heavily influenced by the context of the Cold War, forwarded another view on responsibility for Stalinist violence. Such scholars were often reliant on such printed sources as party newspapers and the speeches of party leaders for information on what was happening in Eastern Europe. From Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict (1961) to Anne Applebaum’s Iron Curtain (2012), defenders of this model place communist ideology at the center of the picture, both as a motivator for party and secret police officials and as an engine of conformity with the Soviet model.⁴⁹ Echoing the intentionalist school in Nazi historiography, these views assume that ideological beliefs were the driving force of communist violence.⁵⁰

This book forges a middle ground between the views of the reform communists and the totalitarian theorists. It discusses the individuals, institutional pressures, and ideological motivations that shaped the force. It also points to the significance of social pressures, appeals from friends, acquaintances, family members, and colleagues, to join communist parties, conform with communist social norms, and carry out orders. It posits a compromise between the reform communists’ tendency to blame local perpetrators and the totalitarian theorists’ attribution of all meaningful decisions to the Soviets. I argue 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.⁵¹

In arguing for this mixed model, I draw on an abundance of recent micro studies that demonstrate how citizens inside and outside the state interpreted orders or turned them to their advantage.⁵² Recent studies of the secret police have uncovered the social profiles of lower-level officials,⁵³ the culture and language of the secret police,⁵⁴ the biographies or collective biographies of prominent agents,⁵⁵ and local roots of early communist informer networks.⁵⁶ As such studies show, the motivations and self-conceptions of secret police officials as well as the question of institutional pressures and discipline differed within each country as well as between countries.⁵⁷ The experience of serving in the secret police in a tumultuous border region like Białystok in Poland, which was riven by nationalist violence in the earliest years of communist rule, differed from that of serving in an enclave of radical working-class politics like Brno in Czechoslovakia, where KSČ bosses undertook communist initiatives with fanatical dedication. In contrast to the popular image of communist institutions as centralized monoliths, they now appear as a multiplicity of offices shaped by local people, demographics, societies, and economic realities. This observation is important to understanding how these states emerged from local societies and to holding individuals, not only systems, accountable for arrests and interrogations.

A NOTE ON SOURCES

This book brings together archival materials in Czech, Slovak, Russian, Polish, and German collected from security, communist party, and national archives including the Czech Archiv bezpečnostních složek (Archive of the Security Services) and Národní Archiv (National Archive), the Polish Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (Institute of National Remembrance) and Archiwum Akt Nowych (Central Archive of Modern Records), the German Stasi-Archiv (BStU) and Bundesarchiv (Federal Archive), and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

The archives, while offering extensive amounts of new material on these institutions and their officials from the inside, pose challenges to writing a history of the secret police. In Les Aveux des Archives Karel Bartošek described the conditions of terror, torture, interrogations, duress, and imprisonment in which many sources were written in the communist era, bringing into question the truth they represented.⁵⁸ Documents written during the communist era also echoed sharp changes in the party line since views accepted as self-evident truths in one period were routinely condemned in the next. The biographies of agents were frequently rewritten, sometimes to condemn them and other times to rehabilitate them. Officials’ reputations were blackened if they were subject to a show trial. Service in the Spanish Civil War, for example, went from a mark of social prestige in the postwar era to evidence of enemy behavior in the early 1950s. Personal histories were subordinated to institutional prerogatives as the supposed facts of one’s life changed in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.

I seek to overcome these challenges by consulting and comparing sources assembled over several decades. I integrate materials from the 1940s (reports, letters, personnel files), 1950s (interrogation protocols, confessions, handwritten biographies, letters from prison, trials), 1960s (rehabilitation commissions, personal letters, suicide notes), 1970s (memoirs), and 1980s (interviews conducted by the journalist Teresa Torańska and the historian Karel Kaplan with former members of the secret police then out of power).⁵⁹ I integrate sources from above with sources from below to ask whether the decrees and pronouncements issued by leaders in Warsaw, Prague, Berlin, and Moscow were implemented on the ground. Finally, I look at the process of how these documents were created. Interrogators, for example, were trained to change defendants’ words to fit prescribed ideological formulations, practices that twisted facts and deliberately wore down the line between fact and fiction. The party organizations, Party Control Commission officials, instructors, and counterintelligence agents who wrote surveillance reports on secret police agents were far from objective in their reports. Many were driven by institutional pressures, personal interests, prejudices, and rivalries.

The book’s focus on agents’ biographies reflects the communists’ obsession with the public and private lives of their own officials. Personnel files contain extensive data on who agents were: where and when they were born, their previous professions, their parents’ professions, their nationalities, wartime whereabouts, and so on, because the regime gathered, verified, archived, and stored these data. Officials were required to write autobiographies for their files that detailed when and under what circumstances they joined the communist party.⁶⁰ The every day and professional lives of secret police officials, especially those in high-ranking positions, were subject to constant surveillance. These reports produced a wealth of materials on the institution and its officials from the inside. Agents throughout the system were scrutinized constantly by party members, instructors, superiors, subordinates, and coworkers in institutional settings, including political education and professional training courses.

An invaluable, if unusual, set of sources are the dozens of memoirs written by Polish secret police officials in the 1970s and 1980s and held at the Institute for National Remembrance in Warsaw. These memoirs were a response to competitions initiated by the Historical Department of the Ministry of Internal Security (the successor to the MBP).⁶¹ Although communist in content, their form follows the Polish sociological tradition of collecting memoirs from marginal social groups and classes.⁶² Given their official purpose, such materials must be used with care. But they capture a unique perspective on the institution and the experiences of those in it. They reveal what secret police officials said and how they said it: their vocabulary, ways of speaking, and self-understandings. They address issues officials would not have reported to Warsaw, such as how they used their authority to settle personal scores or worked around the demands set by higher offices. Another notable source is the recently discovered diary of Ivan Serov, who headed the NKVD in Soviet-occupied Poland and East Germany. These writings, titled “Notes from a Suitcase: Secret Diaries of the First KGB Chairman,” were found in the wall of a dacha twenty-five years after Serov’s death.⁶³

Soviet reports on events in Eastern Europe are of distinct interest. They capture the reactions of Soviet diplomats, cultural attachés, and security agents to what was happening in the region and the information Moscow received from local informants. They reveal moments, such as the revolution in Czechoslovakia in February 1948 or the Vigilance Plenum in Poland in November 1949, when the Soviets had difficulty understanding what East Europeans were trying to do, were baffled by spontaneous or uncontrolled outcomes, or read enemy intentions into things barely noticed on a local level. From time to time they captured a lack of comprehension, even a culture clash, between European and Soviet concepts of politics, enemies, and communism.⁶⁴ As historians have long suspected, they demonstrate that Soviet intentions and the extent of Soviet intervention in each country differed considerably. Far from pursuing a unified policy toward all the countries of the region, let alone following a road map, the Soviets focused on certain places at certain times. They dedicated more men to eastern Germany than to Czechoslovakia, a difference that influenced the profile of each country’s elite. And they used a variety of tactics apart from military force to influence regional politics quietly and continually over time, such as arbitrating local conflicts to support those more amenable to Soviet practices, conducting covert surveillance on local party and security elites, and distributing resources and property to those willing to participate most actively in early communist states.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

The first part of Security Empire spans the postwar period and the era of national roads to socialism (1945–48). The second delves into the Stalinist period (1949–54). Occasionally the narrative moves back in time to contextualize agents’ histories and experiences in the communist movement in the 1920s, 1930s, and the Second World War. Chapter 1 begins in Poland, where the communists declared war on the London government-in-exile and its military, the Home Army (AK). It places the evolution of the MBP in the context of postwar violence and the multiple foreign occupations of Polish territory, which had left behind caches of arms and ammunition, alcohol, and conflicts over positions and resources. Chapter 2 moves to Czechoslovakia, where, between 1945 and 1948, communists in the Czech lands and Slovakia created intelligence networks to direct information to party leaders. It describes the communist takeover of power in February 1948, when, uniquely in the context of the Eastern Bloc, KSČ leaders and rank and file formed revolutionary councils (Action Committees) to expel noncommunists from state institutions and public life. Chapter 3 enters the Soviet Zone of Occupation in eastern Germany, where the first East German political police, K5, helped the Soviet occupiers carry out denazification investigations and background checks on members of the state administration. It explores the context of occupation, denazification, and terror in which East German police officials were trained under the Soviet security authorities.

The second half of the book follows the process of communist state building, as secret police forces increased their ranks, established blanket surveillance networks inside of factories, civic organizations, the church, and other economic and social targets, and carried out mass repression against perceived enemies of the state. Chapter 4, on Poland, shows how, from 1949, thousands of officials were brought into the secret police and trained as the regime waged a “war on criminality in the security forces” to establish discipline in lower-level MBP and militia offices. It examines the process of professionalizing MBP officials through training courses and party-run criticism and self-criticism sessions. Chapter 5, on Czechoslovakia, shows the way young secret police officials recruited from the working class (the instructors) began to collect data on StB officials from the end of 1948 to 1949 and their role, together with the Soviet advisers, in arresting, persecuting, and in some cases executing former KSČ and secret police leaders in the early 1950s. Chapter 6, on East Germany, examines the creation of the Stasi in February 1950 and the process of training officials in the 1952 Campaign to Build Socialism. It questions how established the Stasi was by detailing the role of Soviet military and security forces in repressing the workers’ uprising that followed the death of Stalin in 1953.

I

POSTWAR AS REVOLUTION: EAST EUROPE AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR

IN INTELLIGENCE REPORTS from 1945 East Europe emerges as a scene of chaos, disorder, and social breakdown. Accounts from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany read as if written by the same pen. As Soviet tanks, motorized columns, and artillery made their way toward Berlin, reports expressed concern with the gangs of looters that ruled the lands between the fronts, some of whom took advantage of the chaos of liberation to declare themselves members of the postwar state administration. In Łódź in Poland authorities were concerned that officials were akin to a plague that swept across the area robbing people, stealing property, shooting at random civilians, and arriving “to requisition property from Germans, trips that ended when they stole things or fell into a drunken stupor.”¹ In Prague the public was “frustrated with not knowing which of the armed groups roaming the cities and countryside were legitimate representatives of the Czechoslovak government.”² Berlin was a world turned upside down. As former Nazis were deposed, fled the country, or committed suicide, one woman described in her diary a scene of crowds looting a former Luftwaffe barrack. Officers sat and watched, depressed and apathetic: “More rattling and booming. Nobody cares—they’re gripped by plunder fever. . . . Mobs of people everywhere, running and snatching.”³

The first half of this book places the history of early communist secret police forces into the context of social breakdown, war, and violence from which they emerged. The impact of the Second World War and the postwar era that followed on the politics and societies of Europe has long been a focus of historians. Research has traditionally centered on the Allied agreements that shaped the geography of the region, including the negotiations at Tehran in 1943, when the Allies discussed the possibility of allowing the Soviet Union to annex Poland’s eastern provinces and Poland to claim new territories on its western borders—the “recovered territories”—from Germany; and the negotiations at Yalta and Potsdam in 1945, when the Allies divided Germany into zones of occupation that, unbeknownst to them, came to shape German politics, economics, society, and culture for decades to come.⁴ As negotiations at Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam made clear, the Soviets, who had lost an estimated 26.6 million citizens in the war (8,668,400 uniformed personnel, the rest civilians), arrived in Berlin as a decimated but extraordinarily influential world power.⁵

The other focus has been the millions of Red Army soldiers that marched through the region at the end of the war. Some Polish, Czech, Slovak, and German civilians greeted Soviet soldiers as liberators, while others feared the brutality, rape, and drunken violence they engaged in.⁶ Soviet soldiers and military officers remained in the region in the service of Allied Control Commissions, which were established in eastern Germany and the former fascist allies of Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary. Even in Poland, which had been on the side of the Allies, the Soviet military and security forces occupying the country in 1944 and 1945 assisted the new, Moscow-backed Polish government in carrying out land reform, distributing housing to loyal followers, and arresting members of the Polish underground.

But the legacy of the Second World War in East Europe was more than a question of Soviet force. As Jan Gross pointed out in his seminal article, “War as Revolution,” the war permanently transformed the societies, economies, and demographics of the region and paved the way for the overthrow of old elites and political orders.⁷ In fact, communist revolutions have historically been linked to war and its aftermath precisely because they mobilize millions of civilians into armed formations.⁸ Particularly in the East the Nazis had engaged in total war, extensive brutality, and genocidal violence, much directed against civilians. By 1945 millions of civilians had been killed and millions of others conscripted into military or partisan formations.

In Poland, one of the most decimated countries in the region, both Nazi and Soviet occupiers had systematically executed educated citizens like doctors, professors, military officers, and lawyers.⁹ By 1945, 37.5 percent of Polish citizens with higher education had either been killed or had fled into exile.¹⁰ As Marcin Zaremba has pointed out, the Polish communists’ policy of promoting new people in the state administration fit the necessity of the time as well as communist ideology.¹¹ Czechoslovakia had lost 380,000 citizens, or 3.7 percent of its prewar population. As many as 14 million German civilians, many from landowning classes, were expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia in wild and organized expulsions in 1945, leaving property, apartments, and land behind.¹² Germany had lost 5.6 million citizens in the war, 7 percent of its prewar population.¹³ The Soviet Zone of Occupation in Germany was on the receiving end of the expulsions of German civilians, absorbing millions of refugees from the East in 1945 alone.¹⁴

Symbols of the defeated Nazi regime, observed the Red Army journalist Vasily Grossman in Łódź, lay broken and crushed in 1945: “Luxurious portraits of leaders of the German National-Socialist Workers’ Party are lying around on the pavement. Children in torn felt boots are dancing on the faces of Goering and Hitler.”¹⁵ Europeans soon began to impose order on this chaos. Rudimentary forms of self-governance were a boon and a liability for postwar leaders. So-called antifas, or antifascist groups, came together to overthrow former Nazis and provide basic services to the community in occupied Germany. Groups armed themselves to fight the departing occupiers or engage in looting, nationalist violence, or revenge killings of collaborators. Partisan and peasant self-defense groups—the Peasant Battalions, or Bataliony Chłopskie, were a well-known example in Poland—gathered in the power vacuum the war left behind.¹⁶ Many early recruits to communist secret police forces entered the force from either military or grassroots formations such as partisan units, peasant battalions, or militias.¹⁷ German soldiers taken prisoner by the Red Army and held in NKVD-run POW camps, 2.4 million men in 1945 alone, formed the recruitment base for the earliest secret police networks in eastern Germany.

The large number of weapons the armies left behind also had a lasting impact. In Poland a secret police official wrote in his memoir, “At that time, every village boy growing up had great pride in some weapon he had found.”¹⁸ Young men in Poland were handed weapons when forced conscription was initiated there in 1944 and 1945. In Czechoslovakia groups of civilians stole arms from arms factories and former Nazi storehouses.¹⁹ Eastern Germany proved the exception since the Soviet occupiers confiscated weapons with ruthless efficiency. Given the conditions of war and military occupation, NKVD officers were authorized to shoot Germans found with a weapon “on the spot.” German officials, even those working for the Soviets, were banned from carrying weapons until 1946.

Tremendous loss, the immediate memory of the war, and widespread accessibility to weapons created a culture of fear and violence across Europe. As the Czech writer Milan Simečka wrote, “Literature, the cinema, and the atmosphere of the times was permeated with violence. Films of concentration camps, with the heaps of corpses in striped uniforms and piles of human hair and children’s toys, destroyed one’s capacity to consider violence in normal human terms.”²⁰ The Polish poet Czesław Miłosz affirmed that six years of violence had numbed Poles to the sight of death: “Once, had he stumbled upon a corpse on the street, he would have called the police. A crowd would have gathered. Much talk and comment would have ensued. Now he knows he must avoid the dark body lying in the gutter and refrain from asking unnecessary questions. The man who fired the gun must have had his reasons: he might have been executing an underground sentence.”²¹

The war and postwar era also cast a long shadow over the legal culture of the region. Extra-judicial violence, emergency legislation, and the laws of military occupation proved the norm. In Poland and eastern Germany legal codes and military tribunals introduced in conditions of war and occupation remained active until 1955. In Poland a law introduced to punish fascists and traitors on 31 August 1944 was employed by the postwar, communist-dominated government to sentence members of the Polish underground.²² Czechoslovakia was initially governed by emergency legislation, the “Beneš decrees,” which granted power to President Edvard Beneš to initiate postwar retribution trials and prosecute alleged wartime collaborators. The same legislation that underpinned the retribution proceedings provided the legal framework for the KSČ’s revolutionary councils, or Action Committees, during the takeover of power in February 1948. Although denazification investigations were officially handed to the eastern German authorities in 1947, the Soviets retained jurisdiction over politically important cases through the Stalinist period.²³ Soviet military tribunals remained active for years after the founding of the GDR, enforcing the internal party terror in the early 1950s and repressing the workers’ uprising that followed the death of Stalin in 1953. Such legal codes lowered standards of evidence and curtailed judicial process. In some cases they were based on the principle of collective justice, the punishment of categories or groups of people rather than individuals.

All across the continent Europeans pinned radical, new ideas on the future of Europe in 1945, a year popularly known as Zero Hour (Stunde Null). For the Czechoslovaks the year 1945 represented an opportunity for national revolution and radical political and social change, even if there was little consensus on the precise nature of the change. For the countries of East Europe, many of which had experienced multiple regime changes, shifts in borders, and foreign occupations since the turn of the century, each swept away by new leaders and new ideologies, such hopes were at times accompanied by a deep cynicism about the fragility of the political order. The Polish historian Marcin Zaremba has called this sentiment “nightmares of temporariness” (zmory tymczasowości), an assessment he applied especially to perceptions of the stability of Poland’s eastern and western borders.²⁴ In Czechoslovakia intelligence reports from 1946 betrayed a sense of political uncertainty by noting that newly recruited security officials worked with reserve in case of “another change in the political order.”²⁵ It was well known that the future of East Germany, a country with no historical roots, was subject to the oscillations of Allied negotiations and the turns of Cold War politics.

Postwar institutions, including the secret police, were influenced by this deep skepticism of political permanence, a sentiment that led state officials, many newly appointed, to engage in looting, corruption, theft, personal vendettas, and alcohol abuse. In Poland officials often took the property of class enemies for themselves and targeted German civilians against whom they had personal vendettas for particularly brutal treatment. In Czechoslovakia the primary enforcers of the 1948 revolution were Action Committees, revolutionary councils of communists who were granted authority to expel colleagues, rivals, and coworkers from institutions and public life. And in East Germany personal hatreds of former Nazis and the Nazi regime were carefully noted in the personnel files of new officials and the willingness to act on these hatreds viewed as service to the new state. Similar to Gross’s case study of the Soviet occupation of Poland’s eastern borderlands in 1939, Revolution from Abroad, the picture of early communist power in 1945 does not fit the traditional totalitarian narrative of a strong state co-opting a powerless society.²⁶ The communists overturned local hierarchies, overthrew local elites, and redistributed property in part by devolving authority to citizens to act on personal disagreements or vendettas. Many such conflicts, whether over positions, power, or nationality, were not carried out by an external state bureaucracy but rather were fought over in local communities and social milieus where everyone knew each other. In this and other ways the war and immediate postwar era helped set the stage for communist takeovers in the region.

1

The Rule of Chaos

The Polish Secret Police and the Aftermath of the Second World War

We are beginning to work by decree alone, not understanding that although we can issue decrees, the work itself is decided in the masses.

—Roman Zambrowski, prominent communist politician and head of political education in the First Polish Military, 1944

IN JANUARY 1947 Władysław Pawiak, the head of a district secret police office in the eastern borderlands of Poland, wrote a letter to his superior office in Rzeszów. He was responding to a demand from the central office that he enlist informers from enemy groups to give information to the secret police. But, as he explained in the letter, he believed this method was incorrect. Had he not received orders to do so from three officers who arrived at his department at the end of 1946, he would never have adopted such practices. These officers, he wrote, “assured us that the most important task is to recruit agents and informers. And we did just that.”¹ But he could not make sense of these methods. Why would you arrest an enemy only to release him to participate in illegal political meetings? “If the decision had been left to me,” he explained, “I would have arrested the members of the Peasants’ Party and had them renounce their party membership and the politics of [Stanisław] Mikołajczyk in a public rally.” Perhaps thinking better of defying his superior office and picking up on Warsaw’s recent vocabulary of organizing secret police work according to a centralized plan, Pawiak insisted that his plan had been to publicly humiliate 90 percent of the members of the Polish Peasants’ Party (PSL) he arrested while recruiting 10 percent of them to work as informers.

As Pawiak’s letter suggests, by early 1947 the Ministry of Public Security in Warsaw had begun to introduce new policing methods to lower-level secret police (UB) offices. From an institution-wide perspective, it was the first step in transforming the secret police from an institution that between 1945 and 1947 had been engaged in military-style operations and brutal displays of arbitrary power—the public rallies Pawiak mentioned—into a bureaucratic service focused on covert agent work and surveillance operations. The reorganization of the secret police from 1947 was part of a larger trend to demilitarize the institutions of violence the communist-dominated Polish government, the PKWN, had created to take power in Poland at the end of the Second World War. These armed forces included around 250,000 men serving in the Ministry of Public Security (MBP), Citizens’ Militia (MO), Reserve Citizens’ Militia (ORMO), and Internal Security Corps (KBW).²

In Poland it is not possible to draw a clear line between the Second World War and the peace that followed. A profound sense of uncertainty hung over the era. As the physician Zygmunt Klukowski noted in his diary on 1 January 1946, “Another difficult year has passed. We are entering a new one—the eighth calendar year of the war. Everyone asks what it will bring.”³ For the Polish communists the period between 1945 and 1947 was perceived as a civil war for power against the government-in-exile in London and its military, the Home Army (AK).⁴ Most Polish historians contend, however, that this era was one not of civil war but of Soviet military occupation.⁵ The reality was more complex than either interpretation allows. The conflict for power, in which the PKWN was supported extensively by the Soviets, over time developed many characteristics of a civil war: intimate violence, revenge killings, and unclear fronts and combat identities.⁶ The political conflicts between the PKWN and the remnants of the Home Army also took place alongside others motivated by national identity, class warfare, anti-Semitism, looting, and internecine fighting over resources and positions. Armed groups commonly resorted to violence to resolve personal conflicts, drunken quarrels, or fights over housing. As one militia official who returned to Poland in 1945 after spending the war in forced labor in the Third Reich described the fluid nature of these conflicts, “Polish underground members fought with Ukrainian nationalists, Germans with Polish underground members, Germans with peasant vigilante groups, and—with exception of the peasant vigilante groups—everyone hated the communists.” He concluded, “It was necessary to be careful. With a weapon, it was safer.”⁷

These conflicts reflected a breakdown of order that meant, as Theda Skocpol has written of the Russian Revolution, that outside of Warsaw “the real dilemma . . . was not who should govern. It was whether anyone could govern, whether national order could be reestablished at all.”⁸ In such conditions secret police officials employed military-style violence. They engaged in brutal displays of power and revenge killings against members of the underground. It was an era that witnessed the destruction of noncommunist political parties, particularly the Peasants’ Party headed by Stanisław Mikołajczyk, through harassment, intimidation, arrests, and surveillance. But, as Pawiak’s letter suggests, even among those fighting for the communists it was not evident who should be in charge of day-to-day decision-making: political leaders surrounded by Soviet military officials in heavily fortified buildings in Warsaw or lower-level officials who held the regime together at the unstable, violent fringes of the new political order. In practice, officials often acted on their own authority rather than waiting for directives from Warsaw. The MBP was an institution of Soviet and Polish communist design, but also one of anarchy and conflict in which boundaries between friends and enemies were unclear and violence became a way of life.

THE MBP AND THE CIVIL CONFLICT IN POLAND, 1945–47

The Ministry of Public Security (MBP) was created in January 1945 as part of the communist-dominated provisional government of Poland, the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN). The PKWN was conceived of as a temporary government, as the Politburo member Hilary Minc clarified at a Central Committee meeting in November 1944: “The PKWN is the product of a transition. It was thrown together from the material we had, whatever was at hand, with the understanding that it would change.”⁹ Although in theory the PKWN, which proclaimed itself the sole government of Poland on 20 July 1944, included members of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), Peasants’ Party (PSL), and Democratic Party (SD), it was dominated by members of the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR).¹⁰ The PPR, with Władysław Gomułka as general secretary, had been created in 1943 as the successor to the Polish communist party (KPP), which had been decimated, even outright dissolved, during the Great Terror in the Soviet Union.

Poster announcing the creation of the Polish Committee for National Liberation. Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (IPN) Lu 206/104.

From a comparative perspective the MBP was the only secret police force of the three created from the beginning as a state institution, as opposed to a party intelligence network or branch of the civil police. As early as 1945 it included departments for censorship, prisons, surveillance, counterintelligence, personnel, the economy, and interrogations. Department V, dedicated to social and political organizations, conducted surveillance on noncommunist political parties, religious groups, trade unions, cultural institutes, and national minorities. The largest recruitment drive to its ranks took place in 1945, when the institution expanded from 1,640 to 26,801 officials.¹¹ Detailing the workings of every department, given the size and ever-changing structure of the MBP, is impossible.¹² Here, I aim to understand the people who joined it, its evolution in conditions of civil conflict, and its place in the political and social landscape of postwar Poland.¹³

In recent years numerous micro studies have been written that detail the influence of local geography and personnel on the methods and structures of lower-level secret police offices. These studies show that secret police offices were deeply influenced by the fractured geography of Poland after the war. Life looked different from the perspective of the eastern borderlands, which were torn apart by national conflict between the Poles and Ukrainians, and the western borderlands, which were shattered by the expulsion of the Germans, who constituted a large part of the local population. Millions of people were expelled from Poland’s borderlands in East and West between 1945 and 1948 and approximately 2.7 million people were settled in the western territories by the end of 1948.¹⁴ At the same time, around 600,000 Poles returned from forced labor in Germany. Many found that their homes were no longer located in Poland but in the Soviet Union.¹⁵ Life also looked different in each village, some of which were stable and others of which were divided by conflicts over national identity or property. Given the localized nature of these conflicts, which often took place far from the urban centers and had little to do with the larger political battles, one historian has referred to the era as one of “peasant wars.”¹⁶ The personnel and organization of the MBP were shaped by these social conflicts, border changes, and the political vacuum outside of Warsaw after the Second World War.

FROM SOLDIERS AND PARTISANS TO SECURITY OFFICIALS

It is impossible to separate the MBP from the other armed forces, including Soviet ones, that entered Poland in 1944 and 1945. Secret police officials were often recruited from them, trained with them, fought alongside them, and lived in barracks with them. At the end of the war the PKWN commanded several armed forces. One was the First Polish Military (the First Infantry Division named for Tadeusz Kościuszko), which had been created in Moscow with the help of the Soviets in May 1943 and fought alongside the Red Army in the last months of the war. Another was the Citizens’ Militia (MO), an armed force recruited from communist partisan groups that had been formed in Nazi-occupied Poland (particularly the Gwardia Ludowa, or People’s Guard, created in 1942 and, from 1943, under the leadership of Gomułka).¹⁷ In early 1945 they created the Internal Security Corps (KBW) and Volunteer Reserve Citizens’ Militia (ORMO). A woman working in a UB office after the war described the men who entered the force from military and partisan units as being young and “hardened in battle” (zahartowani w bojach), suggesting how military training and the brutality of war influenced the institutional culture and methods of violence of the MBP.¹⁸ Some of the first targets of security operations also provided continuity with wartime conflicts, such as the branches of the service dedicated to investigating Nazi agents, Volksdeutsche, and collaborators.¹⁹

Although all of these armed forces contributed recruits to the MBP, the First Polish Military was central in establishing its early institutional framework.²⁰ The Polish communists were able to build an extensive secret police force so quickly because many of the MBP’s departments were created out of analogous ones in the First Polish Military, which had branches for censorship, guarding prisons, political propaganda, the economy, and fighting the underground, all tasks handed gradually to the MBP.²¹ The intelligence service of the First Polish Military was established in August 1945. It was headed by Wacław Komar, a Spanish Civil War veteran who also headed the department of political intelligence in the MBP between 1947 and 1950.²² The overlap between the military and MBP influenced training as well as personnel. A woman who worked as a censor in the Polish military explained in her memoir that, at the same time that she collected information on wartime enemies such as Nazis and fascist groups, she gathered material on members of the Polish underground and noncommunist political parties.²³ One official who was training as a operative agent explained that he received lessons from a Soviet adviser on how to recruit informers by practicing on Germans who were being held in a labor camp.²⁴ Several prominent communists who later held high-ranking positions in the secret police, including Stanisław Radkiewicz, Józef Światło, and Józef Różanski, began their postwar careers in the political education department of the First Polish Military.

The military became an important base for recruiting Poles into postwar communist institutions, including the MBP. At the end of the war the Soviets and Polish communists declared a policy of forced conscription to the military for all Polish males between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five. Red Army soldiers, MBP agents, and NKVD officials forced Poles from their homes. Failure to sign up was considered desertion and punishable by death. Zygmunt Klukowski, who lived in the region of Zamość in southeastern Poland, captured what forced recruitment looked like in his diary: “October 10, 1944: Late in the evening on Sunday, Soviet troops encircled the village of Maszów. Going from house to house, they arrested approximately three hundred men, all of draft age, and transported them to military barracks in Zamość. It seems that this is the new way of forcing enlistment in the so-called Polish military under Russian command. Until now, voluntary recruitment has been a fiasco”; and on 1 December 1944: “The NKVD and Berling soldiers are arresting young men of draft age.”²⁵ While former officers in the Polish underground were targeted for arrest—a special NKVD division formed in late 1944 arrested 17,000 AK members and deported 4,000 to Soviet camps (NKVD divisions were recalled from Poland only in 1947)—rank-and-file underground soldiers could choose to join the First Polish Military.²⁶ In August 1945, 443,330 soldiers were serving in the First Polish Military.²⁷

Universal military conscription was a double-edged sword since it relied on compulsion rather than voluntary recruitment. Since the punishment for avoiding conscription or deserting was death, those who did so were forced to take up arms against the regime. As a report from October 1944 read, “We are receiving information on cases of desertion from the Berling Army. Soldiers flee with their arms and uniforms, sometimes in organized units.”²⁸ There were 505 desertions in one month in 1946 (460 soldiers, 45 officers, 34 with weapons) and 453 the following month (420 soldiers, 33 officers, 39 with weapons).²⁹ Forced conscription therefore created resistance fighters from among those who had not necessarily fought in the wartime underground.

Underground fighters recognized the significance of desertion and what it revealed about how weak communist authority was in the lower ranks of its own military and security forces. Reports mentioned cases in which officials were encouraged to desert military and security units. “Even the [Ukrainian nationalists], well known for their cruelty,” noted one report, “have offered to release soldiers if they agree to join the [band].”³⁰ Underground bands distributed antiregime propaganda and fliers to military barracks. When they captured soldiers, they tried to convince them to join the band by explaining its mission and drinking with them.³¹ The report remarked that a major problem for the PKWN was when soldiers and security officials ceased to fear the enemy because they recognized how narrow the distance separating the sides was. From the perspective of the rank and file the boundaries between communist and anticommunist forces were far from clear or based on firm convictions about the future of postwar Poland. The problems of desertion and instilling political conviction at the fringes of the movement bring into question the picture of a takeover of power by a strong, unified Polish state.

For the soldiers who remained in the military, the Soviets and Polish communists used the policy of forced conscription to regulate the activities of young Poles, the demographic suspected of engaging in underground activity, to collect information on the local population, and to force locals to join institutions controlled and monitored by the PKWN. Recruits were exposed to political education, institutional discipline, and surveillance carried out by political education officers and military counterintelligence agents.³² In a report to the Soviet Central Committee in 1946 the director of the Central PPR Party School reported that the process of vydvizhenie, that is, the rapid promotion of workers and peasants in state and party positions, was taking place in the Polish military and secret police force as early as 1945 (the same word was used to describe rapid social mobility in Soviet party and state institutions in the late 1930s).³³ He observed a similar process in the ranks of the PPR during the pre-referendum campaign in 1946.³⁴

For rank-and-file soldiers the decision to join the MBP from a different armed formation was experienced more as a continuity than a break, as officials often stepped back into their wartime uniforms, whether tattered partisan ones or Polish military ones.³⁵ Soldiers and partisans entered recruitment offices, handed in the Soviet or German weapon they had scavenged during the war, and were reissued the same weapons on the way out.³⁶ According to one soldier from the Polish Military, he was demobilized in February 1947 and accepted into a district-level security office a month later: “My break from demobilization did not last long. I put on a uniform again and went back to work.”³⁷ Life in the secret police differed little from life in the military. The first Polish secret police units were housed in military-style barracks, sometimes alongside militia or Red Army troops, and organized in military formations like units, companies, and infantry. Officials were promoted according to military ranks and received military awards upon completing a successful operation. The MBP’s military-style organization stands in contrast to the first secret police networks in Czechoslovakia, which were based on party networks, and in eastern Germany, where the secret police was an elite branch of the criminal police and advanced according to civilian ranks (military ranks were introduced only in 1952).

The role of the Polish military in recruiting, that is, forcing, Poles into communist institutions after the Second World War is in some ways reminiscent of the role of the Red Army during the Russian civil war.³⁸ In a sense the Polish communists in 1945 faced a situation similar to that faced by the Bolsheviks in Russia in the early 1920s: the challenge of winning over or at least ensuring the cooperation of a widely dispersed population, the majority of which were of peasant origin, in a country with a poorly known communist movement that had traditionally been based in urban areas. During the Russian civil war military service had been a way to educate peasant soldiers and propagate the ideas and military-style discipline of the new regime. But there was something distinctly Polish about the centrality of the military to the communist takeover of power as well. As Paczkowski has written, Poles’ traditional respect for the military meant that the Berling Army was viewed as being more legitimate than other communist institutions, such as the MBP or PPR, both considered Soviet in origin.³⁹ In areas too violent to send party members to, Polish soldiers distributed PPR propaganda and ran party meetings, as a report from February 1946 related: “The political rallies organized by the military, aside from a few incidents, were not interrupted. Propaganda work carried out by the military has been met relatively positively in the village and has great prospects.”⁴⁰ This was less a question of grafting the Soviet model onto Poland than of using techniques, methods, and approaches to state building that applied to similar circumstances and which had been theorized not by Stalin but by Leon Trotsky.

The military shaped the legal order of postwar Poland as well. From 23 October 1944 the PKWN kept the 1932 Penal Code of the Polish Army in place but added new repressive measures such as the death penalty.⁴¹ In practice, secret police officials, whose authority was determined by broad, permissive postwar legal structures, could arrest citizens even if they had little or no evidence against them. An official described in his memoir that he arrested a man even though he had no evidence the man had done anything wrong: “I was not afraid to take responsibility for my actions because you could detain people for 48 hours without worrying about it.”⁴² Although martial law was lifted on 16 November 1945, its spirit was maintained in the legislation that followed.⁴³ Under the so-called small penal code, in force until the end of the 1960s, “dangerous crimes harming the reconstruction of the state” remained under the purview of military courts.⁴⁴ Between 1947 and 1948 military courts, which had jurisdiction over civilians as well as combatants, punished some twenty-two thousand citizens.⁴⁵ The NKVD forces that entered Poland with the Red Army also targeted and arrested tens of thousands of members of the AK, or Polish underground, one of many ways in which the Soviets aided the communist-backed government in the takeover of power.⁴⁶

THE SOVIETS IN POLAND

The Polish lands were divided between the USSR and Nazi Germany after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939. As the Nazis invaded from the West, the Soviets invaded from the East. Between 1939 and 1941 the Soviet Union annexed close to two hundred thousand square kilometers of Poland’s eastern borderlands, including western Ukraine and Belarus, and deported around 1.25 million Polish citizens to the USSR.⁴⁷ On 5 March 1940 the Soviet Union issued an order to execute the Polish officers captured as prisoners of war. An estimated 21,857 Polish officers were put to death in this period, of which 4,421 were buried in a mass grave outside the town of Katyń, an event that became known as the Katyń massacre.⁴⁸ During this first Soviet occupation, five special NKVD operational groups staffed with 50 to 70 agents on the Ukrainian front and four groups of 40 to 55 agents on Belorussian front arrested thousands of members of the Polish underground.⁴⁹ These incidents were on the minds of many when the Red Army crossed the border into Poland yet again in early 1944 and annexed Poland’s eastern borderlands to the Soviet Union.

Notice proclaiming the end of the amnesty for underground fighters in Poland, April 1947. IPN Lu 206/104.

The Soviet mass terror in the Baltic States, Poland, and eastern Germany in the early postwar period was directed by General Ivan Serov, who also served as the chief NKVD adviser to the MBP from 7 March 1945.⁵⁰ Serov was born in 1905 into a family of well-to-do peasants. He joined the communist youth organization in 1923, soon after the end of the Russian civil war, and became a full member of the communist party in 1926.⁵¹ He served in the Red Army between 1928 and 1934. According to his biographer, Nikita Petrov, such a trajectory was typical at the time for young men who were reasonably competent and able to read since the newly created Soviet state needed desperately to staff its ranks. Serov joined the NKVD in January 1939, after the removal and execution of the former NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov and many of his subordinates. Serov took an active role in unmasking enemy activities of the former security elite. According to Petrov, “Serov did not stand to the side. He barreled full steam ahead into the search for enemies.”⁵² He was one of 14,506 people brought into the service from the communist party and youth organization to fill the vacancies left behind by the Great Terror.

Although the MBP had many functions in postwar Poland, from censoring mail to governing fractious territories to repressing social enemies of the state, Serov asserted in his memoir that the institution had been created primarily to repress the underground resistance: “The resistance of the AK was considerable. It was necessary to combat it with the NKVD, SMERSH, and by creating the security institutions of the Polish Committee of National Liberation.”⁵³ Serov oversaw the arrest of sixteen prominent leaders of the Polish underground and their trial in Moscow in June 1945.⁵⁴ In 1944 and 1945 the Soviets controlled the most significant arrests and investigations of members of the Polish underground. A report from July 1945 described an operation in which a Polish agent infiltrated a group of AK fighters. After the Soviets had arrested the fighters, the case was handed to the MBP for the “last stages of the investigation.”⁵⁵ In May 1946 control of the Soviet security forces in Poland and eastern Germany was handed to the MGB under Viktor Abakumov.⁵⁶ From this point on the MGB relayed information directly to Stalin on the repression of the Polish underground, PSL leader Stanisław Mikołajczyk, the preparations for the referendum in June 1946, and the Polish communist party collected through informer networks.⁵⁷

When investigating cases, Soviet and Polish security agents worked side by side. A report from Serov to Lavrentiy Beria in October 1944 explained that, with respect to arrests on Polish territory, 944 had been made by the NKVD and 915 by Polish security forces.⁵⁸ The relationship between the services was so close that, for outsiders, MBP officers seemed indistinguishable from their Soviet counterparts. Andrzej Paczkowski captured the tangled confusion of life in the early MBP, which shared uniforms, language, and cultural symbols with the Soviets. MBP officials trained with Soviet officers and commonly spoke fluent Russian: “Everything together—the Soviet services, the emerging Polish ones, the military, and the PPR party cells, constituted a conglomerate difficult for outside observers to disentangle. . . . In the first months of 1945 these forces were stationed in neighboring or even the same building. Those who were arrested did not always know whether the Pole who arrested him was a translator, PKWN functionary, or to which service he belonged. In general, everyone walked around in similar military uniforms, some Soviet, others Polish, and spoke in Russian.”⁵⁹

It is unclear exactly how many Soviet advisers were stationed in the MBP. Estimates suggest one thousand advisers, at least one in each regional and district office.⁶⁰ By 1948, 153 Soviet advisers worked in the MBP.⁶¹ The chief advisers who succeeded Serov were Nikolai Selivanovski, stationed in Poland between April 1945 and April 1946, and S. P. Davidov, who served between April 1946 and March 1950. Selivanovski had fought in the Red Army between 1920 and 1922 and entered a secret police training program (then the GPU) in September 1922. He, like Serov, was promoted rapidly in the years spanning the Great Terror and the Second World War.⁶² Davidov, who was from a peasant background, worked on a collective farm until he was recruited into the NKVD in 1939, rising rapidly in the ranks after the Great Terror. He served in the NKVD throughout the Second World War.⁶³ The advisers, important as they were, appeared only sporadically in the memoirs of MBP officials. They were described by the terms doradca, the Polish word for adviser, or sawietnik, a Russian-inspired descriptor (only the East Germans referred to the Soviet advisers as “the friends”). According to one MBP official, “In the spring of 1945 we were assigned an adviser from the Soviet security apparatus. Every district MBP office had a Soviet adviser for the first few years. Regional offices had advisers up to 1953.”⁶⁴

The long history of violence between Poland and Russia, which predated the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and even the creation of the Soviet Union, had repercussions for interrelations between the Soviets and Poles in the early communist state. It undermined the legitimacy of PPR leaders, who were closely associated with the USSR and its occupation forces. PPR members hardly trusted the NKVD, which had, within living memory, decimated the former Polish communist party (KPP) through executions, arrests, and deportations to the Gulag.⁶⁵ Hundreds of KPP activists were arrested during the Great Terror of 1936–38, including every member of the Politburo (the party was finally dissolved in 1938).⁶⁶ Józef Światło, who later joined the MBP as part of an elite counterintelligence group, initially hid his communist background from the NKVD because the institution had so recently executed Polish communists.⁶⁷ Since the most prominent leaders of the Polish Communist Party had been arrested or executed during the Great Terror, postwar leaders such as Bołesław Bierut, the head of the PKWN, were hardly known in Poland.

Many NKVD officials had been trained in the years of the Great Terror, when the Polish minority in the USSR was systematically targeted as an enemy group. Around 40 percent of those arrested in the campaigns carried out by the NKVD against national minorities between August 1937 and November 1938 had been Poles.⁶⁸ Between fifty-four thousand and sixty-seven thousand Poles were shot in these campaigns. The Soviet advisers discussed above had been inculcated for years with the notion that Poles represented a threat to the Soviet state. It was conceivable that those who joined the PPR in or after 1945 would have known less about the terror against the Polish communist party since it was never spoken of in public. Younger members of the MBP viewed the Soviet advisers with respect and even awe. As Adela Jaworowska wrote in her memoir, “The advisers . . . had great authority among employees. They provided help, advice, and consultation on personnel issues.”⁶⁹

There was therefore little trust between Poles and Soviets, even those ostensibly on the same side of the barricade. The deputy director of the Central PPR School in Poland wrote to the Soviet Central Committee in January 1946 that it was difficult to spread communism because of Poles’ “deeply rooted mistrust of the Russians.”⁷⁰ Serov explained in a note to Beria that he was suspicious of Polish MBP agents because he believed that the institution had been infiltrated by Polish underground fighters seeking to “wreck general operations” (vredyat obschemu delu).⁷¹ Instances of side-switching between communist institutions and the underground were indeed not uncommon. Klukowski related one such incident in his diary: “A prominent post in the Polish security service is held by a man named Tchorzowski. At one time, he was active in the Zamość underground movement. He was held in the Zamość prison for a few weeks. He knows many underground operatives and is very dangerous.”⁷²

As the historian Andrzej Friszke has pointed out, it was not infrequent for Polish affiliations to change over time as the nature of the postwar political order became more evident: “Sometimes a person resisted in one era and collaborated in another. Or joined the opposition and paid dearly for that decision.”⁷³ Polish secret police officials sometimes criticized individual PPR policies such as collectivization or the actions of the Red Army in Poland.⁷⁴ In November 1948 one UB official was reprimanded for saying that the Katyń massacre had happened at the hands of the Soviets.⁷⁵ Another was punished for complaining that Russians were coming to take government positions away from Poles.⁷⁶ The considerable number of Jews in the highest ranks of the PPR and MBP likewise became a source of discord. The former head of the Department for Fighting Banditism in Gdańsk was arrested in 1946 for creating an underground group. He told the interrogator that he changed sides after realizing that “we are ruled by the Soviets and the Jews.”⁷⁷ In spite of these difficulties, which were doubtless a reason the Soviets saturated Polish institutions with spies and informers, both sides managed to hold these institutions together. An important part of this success was the strength of the MBP officer corps, many of whom had backgrounds that questioned the assumption that there were clear distinctions between “Polish” and “Soviet” national identities.

A TANGLE OF NATIONALITIES: THE MBP OFFICER CORPS

High-ranking MBP officials, those who headed departments and regional offices or held prominent positions in the Warsaw office, were selected with careful attention to nationality, social background, education, training in an armed force or military service, and personal and professional connections with the Soviet Union. Several spoke multiple languages, often Ukrainian, Belarussian, and Russian as well as Polish. Of the top 450 officials in the MBP, 10 percent were Soviet officers, 49 percent Polish, 37 percent Jewish, 1 percent Ukrainian, and less than 1 percent Belarussian.⁷⁸ These national backgrounds reflected the diversity of the communist movement in Poland, which had historically included many Jews, Belarussians, and Ukrainians (Western Belarus and Western Ukraine had semiautonomous communist parties in 1923).⁷⁹ The PPR’s appeal to ethnic minority groups proved to be both a strength and weakness. While the party had gained many followers from ethnic minorities, particularly in the interwar period, the fact that ethnic Poles constituted a minority of the KPP in the 1930s left Poles with the impression that the movement was foreign.⁸⁰

Many branches of the Polish secret police, including the personnel department, counterintelligence, finances, schooling, armaments, the protection of government employees, and supplies, were run by Soviet citizens.⁸¹ Soviet citizenship was frequently granted to members of the Polish communist party who spent the Second World War in exile in Moscow, many of whom were Jews escaping from persecution in Nazioccupied Poland. The question of Soviet citizenship was also linked to the country’s long and complex history with Russia. Since the partitions of 1772, 1793, and 1795, Russia had considerable political and cultural influence over Poland. Within the lifetime of the people discussed in this book, most born in the early 1900s, the eastern territories of Poland had been part of tsarist Russia. An independent Polish state was not created until 1918. Many of those living in Poland’s eastern borderlands became Soviet citizens after the territories were ceded to the USSR in 1945.

Mikołaj Orechwa, who headed the MBP personnel department, is a study in the blurred national identities evident in Poland’s eastern borderlands. Orechwa spoke fluent Polish and Belarussian.⁸² His ID card for the PKWN lists two names, one in Polish—Mikołaj Szymona Orechwa—the other in Russian—Nikolai Semyonovich Orechwa. Orechwa had been born to a peasant family in Western Belarus, a territory ceded by the Bolsheviks in the Treaty of Brest Litovsk. It formed part of Poland until it was annexed by the USSR, first in 1939 and again in 1945. The area was rural, and 81 percent of the population were, like Orechwa and his family, of peasant origin. At the age of thirteen he left Poland for Russia, joined the communist youth organization in 1919, and entered the Bolshevik party in the spring of 1920. Soon after, he joined the Red Army and fought in the Russian civil war.⁸³ In 1935 he served as Comintern delegate for the Communist Party of Western Belarus.

He had not been born into Soviet nationality but instead had chosen it, stating emphatically in his personnel file that he had fought in the 1920 Polish–Bolshevik war on the side of the Bolsheviks.⁸⁴ He listed his citizenship as Soviet and his nationality as Belarussian. The area he was from was populated largely by national minorities: around one-third of local citizens were Poles and the rest were Ukrainians, Jews, Belorussians, and Orthodox peasantry.⁸⁵ After being incorporated into the Polish state, these territories had been forced to adopt Polish as the main language of state administration. When the Soviets annexed the territory in 1939, the propaganda they spread among the local population aimed to stoke class and ethnic tensions against the purported Polish landlords.⁸⁶ To Orechwa, national and class identity were motivations for bringing Soviet communism to Poland: “I am a citizen of the USSR. I have no other citizenship,” he specified in his file.⁸⁷

Józef Różański, who headed the MBP interrogation department, was a member of another group with prominent representation in the high ranks of the ministry, namely, officials of Polish-Jewish background, who comprised 37 percent of the MBP.⁸⁸ Różański was born in Warsaw in 1907 when it still belonged to the Russian Empire. He graduated with a degree in law from the University of Warsaw in 1929 and in 1931 joined the KPP.⁸⁹ Between 1936 and 1937 the KPP assigned Różański to recruit new members to the party from Jewish movements and trade unions.⁹⁰ As the historian Jaff Schatz had pointed out, there were many reasons Jews joined the KPP, including the Polish government’s discriminatory policies against Jews in the interwar period, when they were banned from employment in the transportation sector, the school system, public administration, and the civil service. Another factor was the anti-Jewish violence that broke out in Poland in the 1930s in response to the rise of fascism in other countries of Europe.⁹¹ Of course the persecution of Jews during the war pushed many closer to Moscow. After the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact Różański left Poland for the Soviet Union, one of an estimated two hundred to three hundred thousand Polish Jewish communists who spent the war in the USSR, many of whom eventually took on Soviet citizenship.⁹² It was there that Różański began to work for the Soviet intelligence service. Although his notoriety in the MBP was based on his later position as the head of the interrogation department—after 1953 the Stalinist terror in Poland was referred to as Różańszyszna in his name—he began to work for the NKVD as an intelligence agent. He was assigned in 1939 to register people who chose to leave areas of Poland occupied by the Soviets for those occupied by the Germans. Such lists provided the basis for NKVD deportations of Polish citizens to the USSR after the war.⁹³

Identification card of the MBP officer Mikołaj Orechwa, in Polish and Russian. IPN BU 0193/6999/1.

Although his personnel file is unclear on the dates, it is likely he also worked as a political commissar and translator for the NKVD in Starobelsk in Eastern Ukraine, a prisoner-of-war camp to hold Polish officers taken prisoner by the Soviets when they invaded in 1939. Created by Beria on 19 September 1939, the camp existed between 1939 and May 1940 and held, together with a camp at Kozelsk, 8,376 Polish officers.⁹⁴ Its occupants were executed by the NKVD and buried in a mass grave.⁹⁵ During the war Różański continued to work for the NKVD before joining the First Polish Military as a political education officer in 1944. In his personnel file he listed his nationality as Polish and citizenship as Polish except during the years of the war: between 1939 and 1944 he claimed to be a Soviet citizen.⁹⁶ His biographer has argued it was most likely the loss of practically his entire family and all his acquaintances in the Holocaust that pushed Różański into the service of the NKVD at a time when the official task of the force and of the early MBP was to fight against fascism.⁹⁷

Julia Brystiger, one of the only women to hold a high-ranking position in a secret police force in the three countries, was also of Jewish background. Brystiger was born in 1902 and received a doctoral degree in Polish literature at the University of Lwów.⁹⁸ She joined the communist party of Western Ukraine in 1931. In 1932 she was arrested for alleged anti-Polish activities and sentenced to two weeks in prison, and in 1937 she was sentenced to prison again, this time for two years. After the outbreak of the Second World War she was evacuated to the Soviet Union, from which she returned as a member of the KRN, the predecessor to the PKWN. Although her work in the security force began in the interrogation department in December 1944, she is most widely known for serving as the head of Department V between October 1945 and January 1950, the branch of the MBP that oversaw the policing of religion, culture, and mass organizations.⁹⁹

Faustyn Grzybowski was an official of mixed Soviet–Polish background who between 1944 and 1948 headed regional offices in Białystok, Lublin, and Wrocław, some of the most violent areas of postwar Poland. A Polish national, he was born and spent his professional life in Russia, first in the Russian Empire and then in the USSR. His professional rise was linked to the transformation of the country during the Stalinist revolution from above (1928–32) and the Great Terror. He headed a collective farm before joining the Red Army in 1938 and, while in the Red Army, had trained with the NKVD.¹⁰⁰ In the MBP his military training served him well. While stationed in Białystok, Lublin, and Wrocław, he carried out military-style pacification campaigns involving the MBP, the Internal Security Corps, the Polish Military, and the civil police.¹⁰¹ Grzybowski spoke fluent Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian. On a 1951 questionnaire asking whether he had ever been abroad, he responded, “I am abroad in Poland,” suggesting that, even though he was a Polish national, he regarded Poland as a foreign country.¹⁰² His loyalties lay with the USSR. He changed his citizenship from Soviet to Polish only when he joined the MBP.¹⁰³ While he was in Poland, his wife and children, who were Soviet citizens, remained in the USSR. In August 1941, soon after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, he was conscripted into the Red Army and in 1944 was one of two hundred officials sent to the Kuibyshev NKVD training school.¹⁰⁴ Kuibyshev agents were an elite unit that worked at the rear of the Red Army to set up secret police offices in Poland.¹⁰⁵

It would be misleading to characterize all leading MBP officials as being foreign, however complex this concept was at the time. An exception was Mieczysław Moczar, who joined the MBP through the communist partisan movement. Moczar was born in Łódź in 1913 and joined the PPR during the Nazi occupation of Poland in 1942.¹⁰⁶ Between 1942 and 1945 he headed communist partisan (GL and AL) units, first in his native Łódź and then in Lublin and Kielce. From 1945 to 1948 he headed the regional UB office in Łódź. The shift from partisan to security official was typical at the time, as was the way the fight against the Nazis blended into the postwar battles against the Polish underground. In the words of one of his personnel assessments, “General Moczar achieved much success in liberating the homeland as a member of the GL and AL. After liberation, he led a number of campaigns in the war against the reactionary underground from his position as head of several regional UB offices.”¹⁰⁷

National background, class identity, wartime displacement, and exile were all reasons to join the MBP officer corps and profess loyalty to either the communist cause in Poland or its powerful backer, the Soviet Union. Grzybowski and Orechwa, like the secret police rank and file, came from peasant backgrounds. Personal ties with the Soviet Union were also a reason for maintaining loyalty to the USSR. For Różański and Brystiger, both of Jewish background, the Soviet system had allowed them to escape Nazi-occupied Poland and rise in military and security institutions during and after the Second World War, positions that Jews and other national minorities had been barred from holding in interwar Poland.¹⁰⁸ A different picture emerges of members of the rank and file in the same era.

THE RANK AND FILE: “WHEREVER WE COULD GET THEM”

In 1944 Stanisław Radkiewicz wrote to Bołesław Bierut that many members of the security force were undisciplined and prone to corruption because “we didn’t wait, we just took people wherever we could get them.”¹⁰⁹ Radkiewicz, who headed the MBP between 1945 and 1956, had joined the KPP in the interwar period and been trained in the Comintern school in Moscow. During and after the war he served as a political education officer in the First Polish Military.¹¹⁰ He and other PKWN leaders faced a common task in 1945: to expand the ranks of the force as quickly as possible. From 1,640 officials working in the MBP at the end of 1944, the force rose to 26,801 by the end of 1945. Most expansion took place in the lowest levels of the force.¹¹¹ In 1945 locals, particularly those in the lowest-level offices, entered the force not only from the Polish military and partisan units but also from peasant vigilante groups, bands of looters, and other groups. As a Polish party instructor reported to the Soviet Central Committee in 1947, it was important to bring people from marginal classes into state positions and the PPR: “Of course, in Poland, the social revolution (the liquidation of banks, trusts, capitalists, the bourgeoisie) came from above. But to establish the system, it is necessary to call millions of new people into political life, first of all—the workers.”¹¹²

The MBP officially had high barriers to entrance, including a handwritten biography, a doctor’s note of health, a background check, recommendations from a former workplace, references from social and political institutions attesting to the applicant’s moral and political character, and multiple levels of bureaucratic approval. But these standards were overlooked in the force’s earliest years.¹¹³ One security official said he officially joined the MBP two months after he began to serve in it.¹¹⁴ Soviet commanders in Poland often appointed the first armed groups that approached them to positions in the new state administration, including UB offices. In a report to Moscow Polish party officials explained that they had appointed to the local administration members of peasant battalions who seemed authoritative in their village and would likely increase peasant support for the communists.¹¹⁵ In some places the Soviets appointed criminal bands that had been roaming the area.¹¹⁶ Peasants and workers were incentivized to join the force with promises of decent pay, advancement, and land.¹¹⁷

Secret police officials in lower-level offices were frequently in their twenties and born into the peasant or working classes.¹¹⁸ In part, new people were required to fill state positions because the middle and landowning classes had been destroyed during and after the war. In 1944 and 1945 alone the state expropriated land from over ten thousand landowners.¹¹⁹ The social composition of the PPR was similar to that of the underground resistance movement, with men on both sides recruited from among local peasants.¹²⁰ Many rank-and-file UB officials had been given little or no opportunity to attend school during the war. Many were illiterate or only half literate. “This is the second notification I am sending you,” wrote an official in an interrogation department to the head office in Lublin in October 1944. “The employee Franciszek Grześkow is not qualified to work as an interrogator since he is only half literate.”¹²¹ The response arrived a day later. Grześkow was moved from the interrogation department to the Department for Fighting Banditism, where service apparently required little reading or writing.¹²²

In addition to recruiting from among marginal classes, the first MBP brought women into the ranks of the force. It is difficult to determine how many women served in the force since the personnel department did not collect statistics on gender at the time. In one of the only memoirs written by a woman in the service, Adela Jaworowska related that when she presented herself to Mikołaj Orechwa, the head of the personnel department, for assignment, “He had absolutely no idea what to do with such a soldier—I was nineteen and a woman.”¹²³ She was assigned to work as a secretary, a typical position assigned to women at the time. According to her, women in the office often worked as “auxiliary forces”: secretaries, telephone operators, censors, and cooks.¹²⁴ They took up positions like censors and secretaries that required reading and writing because it was common for male officials, particularly those working at the lowest levels of the forces, to be illiterate or half literate, that is, they could read but not write.

Guard Unit in District Level Office. IPN BU 2241/448.

Documents from the first secret police training school, the Central MBP School in Łódź that was open in March 1945–August 1947, attest to the low level of recruits’ education.¹²⁵ The school’s two-month training course focused on teaching UB officials the Polish language, Polish geography and history, arithmetic, and the use of weapons. According to the first head of the school, Mieczysław Broniatowski, so many agents had difficulty writing in correct Polish that it was necessary to organize additional Polish language courses.¹²⁶ Indeed, the earliest secret police documents, including the letter by Władysław Pawiak mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, are cluttered with errors of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. To build a secret police bureaucracy, it was necessary to at least teach officials how to read and write.

Language difficulties were not only a question of formal education. Some officials did not speak Polish as their native language. In border areas national minorities such as Belarussians sometimes headed offices.¹²⁷ Although minorities were prominent in the highest ranks of the force, the nationalities and backgrounds of lower-level secret police officials seem to have coincided roughly with those of local populations.¹²⁸ The exception was the recovered territories, where millions of citizens had either identified with or claimed German nationality during the war.¹²⁹ Secret police offices were not allowed to employ citizens of German nationality in their offices. It was difficult to recruit locals into offices in areas where Germans had constituted a majority of the population. This challenge was met in a variety of ways. In Gdańsk people were brought in from central Poland to staff the office.¹³⁰ UB officials were sent to the recovered territories as punishment for criminal behavior or corruption, which meant that the officials stationed there tended to be an unruly group. This tendency exacerbated the violence and disorder already evident in the region, which was referred to as the Wild West because of the looting and arbitrary violence that came on the heels of the expulsion of the Germans.¹³¹ The UB officers sent there only made the problem worse. One official, twenty years old at the time, was sent to the recovered territories as a penalty for stealing from state funds. Another, who was twenty-five, was sent there for theft, conducting arbitrary house searches, and randomly releasing people from prison. Another was fired for using prisoners for forced labor, drinking, insulting a government representative, and beating up the chairman of a district party office.

In their memoirs many officials explained that they joined the service because they had nowhere to go after the war and few opportunities for employment. As Krystyna Kersten has pointed out, “The Pole of 1945 was a wanderer.”¹³² Displacement and uncertainty were part of everyday life for the 1.5 million Poles returning in 1945 from forced labor in Germany, concentration camps, wartime exile, and camps in the Soviet Union. One militia official did not want to return to his native village because it had been destroyed in the war.¹³³ Another related that he had nowhere to go after being demobilized in February 1947: “I had no plan after leaving the barracks. After leaving the barracks, I was going into the unknown.”¹³⁴ Since he had been born in a part of Poland that was annexed to the Soviet Union after the war, it was unclear which country his home was located in. A militia official wrote that he had joined a partisan unit to escape forced labor roundups during the war. He chose a communist partisan group not for its ideology but because it was the first partisan group he ran across: “I didn’t really know the political program of the partisan groups. I just figured all of them were fighting the occupier to liberate the country. That was enough for me to join them and become part of it. It was a lucky coincidence I ended up in a [communist partisan group] and not a different one.”¹³⁵ For another militia official, carrying a gun afforded him a visible form of power in a country flattened of traditional social and economic distinctions. When he visited his parents in the village it made him feel important to carry a weapon: “At that time there was a belief that a man carrying a weapon had an important role in the emerging order. When I had to go into the city or home to the village to visit my parents, I went to the guardhouse, took my rifle, and donned the uniform with the white and red armband. Only then could everyone see that I was not some anonymous operative guy.”¹³⁶

In many cases personal acquaintances formed the basis for recruitment to communist partisan groups and postwar institutions. A former communist partisan explained that a family from his community had recommended him for the unit. Before joining, he bantered with the head of the unit about the school friends they had in common. Another man in the unit had “relatives in my native village and knew that my family was poor.”¹³⁷ Trust did not come with a party card, especially in conditions of civil conflict, but instead was conveyed through personal knowledge, that is, who in local communities knew each other and who could rely on whom. According to one security official, “employees brought people from their close surroundings into work such as acquaintances and colleagues. Sometimes entire families joined the secret police.¹³⁸ A member of the communist militia wrote in his memoir that he recruited people to his unit on the basis of personal knowledge and trust.¹³⁹ An official from the elite Kuibyshev group described that when he was sent to set up a district office in one area, locals were suspicious of him until he found one with whom he had fought in the Spanish Civil War and a second with whom he had common friends.¹⁴⁰ While encouraging officials to recruit friends and relatives into the communist party and postwar institutions, the central authorities also looked on such connections with apprehension, noting that members of the militia were tied together through “unnatural kinship relations.”¹⁴¹

INSIDE THE SECRET POLICE: THE ESCALATION OF CIVIL CONFLICT IN POLAND

In November 1945 General Secretary Władysław Gomułka declared that the regime’s most serious problem was its own security forces. As complaints about the violent behavior and arbitrariness of the Polish security forces, which included the secret police and militia, poured in from all parts of the country, it was evident that, although these forces were playing a fundamental role in the party’s takeover of power, the arbitrary powers they had been granted made it difficult to establish order in the country, provide the stability necessary for postwar rebuilding and economic development, and assert the PPR’s authority in Poland. Inside the MBP, violence, fights, and threats helped determine who had authority, how resources were distributed, and whether central orders were carried out. Gomułka pledged that in the coming years he would “liquidate the arbitrariness and corruption among lower-level [security] functionaries with professional instruction, political education, and party direction.”¹⁴²

Although the civil conflict was far from uniform across the territory of Poland, it is possible to identify patterns in how it shaped the first secret police force and its affiliated militia. In some places secret police officials asserted power through brutal public displays of power. In others they looted and stole from each other and local populations. In still others they fell into a less sensational but continual pattern of moral erosion and apathy that lapped at the outer edges of the regime until 1948 and manifested itself in alcoholism, cynicism, corruption, desertion, and neglect of office. An anticorruption campaign aimed at rooting out arbitrary behavior in the force, including the tendency to leave work randomly or drink on the job, ensnared many lower-level offices starting in 1947. Gomułka’s pledge in 1945 was informing a September campaign to combat corruption in the state administration, including the military and security forces.¹⁴³ It centered on discussions in the Politburo on how to assert party control over the unruly, hastily recruited security forces. Ideas included inducing compliance by distributing material privileges, establishing political education courses to explain to agents what they were fighting for, and undertaking disciplinary measures against those who broke the rules.¹⁴⁴ Ultimately, all three solutions were employed.

The reports the party received on security agents’ arbitrariness and corruption raise the question of how much control PPR leaders had over the MBP and its militia in this period. While historians have assumed that the Politburo member Jakub Berman was in charge of MBP affairs, recent studies have questioned the extent of his influence over the force, above all in the period between 1945 and 1947.¹⁴⁵ As his biographer Anna Sobór-Świderska has pointed out, Berman was one of several Politburo members, alongside Bołesław Bierut, Hilary Minc, Władysław Gomułka, Aleksander Zawadzki, Marian Spychalski, and Roman Zambrowski, responsible for security affairs at the time. Rather than deciding day-to-day affairs, the Politburo set the general direction of operations and determined which types of repression the force was permitted to use. It did not directly decide on individual arrests or interrogations, issues resolved in a manner specific to each office.¹⁴⁶ Indeed, it seems that the Politburo could not even secure the safety of its own officials. After the Polish underground was disbanded in January 1945 and lost its leaders at the hands of the NKVD, some fighters continued the struggle against the communists. They often resorted to guerrilla tactics aimed at lower-level party and state offices, particularly those serving in villages or the district administration. Small, mobile groups of fighters engaged in hit-and-run attacks to create fear and diminish the morale of party members.¹⁴⁷ The following report from a lower level communist party office was not atypical: “They killed our comrades who had on their shoulders [the lapels] given to members of the party organization. . . . Comrades do not sleep in their own houses. Party members are not holding meetings. The party has transitioned back to conspiratorial work.”¹⁴⁸

Since it was possible for communist officials to leave the MBP or PPR in these years, those who chose to remain became increasingly inured to the violence. Secret police branches were often located in dangerous, isolated areas. When the threat level of each region and district in Poland was assessed in 1946, the areas considered the most dangerous were assigned the greatest number of security officials (UB, MO, military, and ORMO).¹⁴⁹ Many officials could not handle the isolation or violent conditions and opted to leave the force. An agent in a district office related a conversation he had with a man who served with him in the Department for Fighting Banditism:

“Hey, man, have you had enough of this?”

“What?”

“These bands.”

“But we haven’t even started yet.”

. . .

“I can’t handle it. I’m all nerves. I am not cut out for this work.”¹⁵⁰

The man was given permission to go on leave and never returned. After the next battle several more officials left the unit. In the words of the author, “Many had breakdowns and just left.” Men and women deserted, took sick leave, or requested to be transferred to other institutions.¹⁵¹ Another secret police official wrote about two young boys who had been recruited to the MBP to work as administrators but could not handle the violence and were released on their own request (nie wytrzymało nerwowo).¹⁵² An official from the Kuibyshev group described the men who left as “less tough” and “psychologically weak” as compared with those who stayed.¹⁵³ Some men who joined committed suicide, as the head of one district secret police office did after he was criticized at a meeting.¹⁵⁴ A culture of violence developed inside the MBP as well as in its relationships with the outside as officials engaged in armed turf battles for control of geographic territories and barked orders at or threatened other communists.¹⁵⁵ In July 1945 the Warsaw office chastised members of the security force for using military service commands in their correspondence with courts, district government administrations, and other state offices.¹⁵⁶

Desertions, turnover, transfers, and the central personnel department’s tendency to poach the best officials for advancement to higher offices led to chaos in lower-level offices. As one official explained, “District secret police and militia leaders changed too frequently. These changes loosened discipline in the apparatus. More than once, they led to anarchy.”¹⁵⁷ The perspective of an office in Poland’s violent eastern borderlands gives a sense of what high turnover meant in practice. Ten men headed the district secret police office of Brzozów in less than five years. Many officials’ tenure lasted only a few months or even weeks. Men were removed either because they were too qualified and therefore were needed elsewhere or because they were chronic alcoholics, corrupt, or were shot in the woods by bands.¹⁵⁸

This state of affairs, and the fact that so many Polish secret police agents were young, uneducated, and new to the force, meant that offices frequently did not have the capacity to carry out the long-term surveillance operations introduced to them by their Soviet advisers. This was particularly the case after Soviet troops were demobilized from the territory where they were stationed. As one official noted in October 1945, “The absence of troops has led to a rise in banditism that is threatening district secret police offices. They are not in a position to carry out operative work and must take up a defensive position.”¹⁵⁹ In May 1945 Radkiewicz estimated that only one hundred of eleven thousand secret police officials in regional and district branches worked as operative agents.¹⁶⁰ It was easier to fight the underground in armed conflict than to infiltrate its ranks because Polish underground units had often fought together for years under the Nazi occupation, and in some cases were led by trained military and counterintelligence officers. The main unit that fought the Polish underground in the early postwar era was the Department for Fighting Banditism. Its reports describe its task as chasing down bands (pościg za bandą). As one official described his unit’s work until 1946, “Our work was similar to a firemen’s brigade. We waited to be called about an attack and would rush off—with varying degrees of success—to chase down the band.”¹⁶¹ In their reports the communists described members of the Polish under ground as bands, a term that conflated deserters from the Polish military or security force, robbers, and members of the underground resistance.¹⁶²

In spite of their claims to only be chasing down bands, many MBP offices became notorious for their use of torture against prisoners. It is difficult to determine the frequency of beatings and torture, given that such methods were rarely reported to the central authorities and were conspicuously absent from agents’ memoirs. A set of instructions circulated to members of the Polish underground secretly in July 1946 advised underground soldiers on the methods of torture used in MBP offices: “In theory—so according to the written codes and provisions of the prison—the UB is prohibited from beating prisoners. Of course, this does not in the least affect its behavior. But interrogators are severely punished if they allow prisoners to get messages out of the prison. . . . If a scream is heard from the street it can raise the alarm that someone is being beaten. . . . Beatings usually take place in two cases—when a higher authority demands a confession or when the interrogator wants to satisfy his instinct for cruelty.”¹⁶³ The way the under ground described torture fits into a general picture of arbitrariness in the force; it was up to interrogators to decide how much violence to employ rather than the result of a systematic policy (which is what it became in 1949). This arbitrariness put the fates of prisoners in the hands of the interrogator. But it also suggests that there were strategies that prisoners could employ to withstand these methods, such as alerting those outside the prison to what was happening. Such hard-won lessons were passed from hand to hand in the underground.

Although not all members of the service acted without consulting the central authorities, enough did to ensure that many arrests were arbitrary. A militia official claimed that officials’ decisions to detain or interrogate a person were taken on “their own authority” (na własną odpowiedzialność).¹⁶⁴ Officials arrested people on the basis of personal, class, or social biases. Germans and members of higher classes were frequent targets. One secret policeman confirmed this arbitrariness in an account of his arrest of a man during a house search:

I saw a man in the apartment. It made me suspicious that he was so well dressed for the time. I asked him for his documents. He told me he was from Warsaw but refused to tell me why he was here. I decided to arrest him and brought him to the station. . . . [My colleague from the UB] was not happy about this, because we had no material on the man and [this colleague] would rather have let him go. [My other colleague] was of the same opinion, because we had no information on him. . . . I had nothing to accuse him of because I didn’t know who he was, neither personally nor from any documentation, and he wouldn’t confess to anything. Nevertheless, I decided to detain him further.¹⁶⁵

The official had arrested the man because he was suspiciously well dressed. Given the conditions in which the secret police worked, officials seemed more likely to arrest than release someone, but arbitrariness could work both ways. During the referendum campaign in 1946 the central authorities chastised an office for releasing a member of the Peasants’ Party, the communists’ main political rival, from prison on its own authority.¹⁶⁶ Whether the decision was to arrest or release a suspect, it was often based on social prejudices or the whim of the official.

Such arbitrariness could lead to cases of egregious violence. In some, likely exceptional cases Warsaw intervened to punish those involved. Such cases were publicized to the rest of the force. In a Central Committee meeting in May 1945 Radkiewicz discussed an incident in which secret police officials arrested a social democrat and beat him the entire night with a clothes hanger before releasing him. On its own authority the office had pronounced twelve death sentences and seventy-three convictions. Radkiewicz demanded that the head of the UB office in Lubaczów be arrested when eight bodies were found buried in the prison yard. The head of the office had personally killed two of the victims. Radkiewicz recommended that he be executed.¹⁶⁷ An interrogator from an office in Szczecin, Henryk Witosławski, was brought before a tribunal for beating prisoners during interrogations, scaring them with dogs, and raping a female prisoner twice. He was sentenced to ten years in prison.¹⁶⁸ The Ministry of Public Security issued circulars publicizing such cases as lessons for the rest of the force.¹⁶⁹ In July 1945 an official was accused of submitting false reports, leaving work randomly, drinking on the job, living in the apartment of a person he was supposed to arrest, and sleeping at work. He was arrested and held for fifteen days, then was kicked out of the force. In October 1945 another was accused of drinking on the job, neglecting work, unlawfully requisitioning the cart of a local peasant, falsifying paperwork, and stealing material from office storage cabinets. He received two weeks in jail and was fired from the service. In October 1945 an official started a drunken brawl with other members of the secret police, aimed his weapon at another UB official and almost killed him. He was sentenced to two weeks in jail and released from the force.¹⁷⁰ In December 1945 Stefan Sobczak, the deputy director of counterintelligence, complained about local officials’ “abuse of power, bribe taking, and corruption” and the difficulties both of finding out about and of addressing abuses: “If in the Warsaw office we have five hundred cases, and in Katowice significantly fewer, that does not mean that there is less corruption there. It just means that we are fighting it less.”¹⁷¹

Arbitrariness extended to cases of revenge killings. The kidnapping or murder of a secret police or militia official was in some cases followed by a declaration of violence by other members of the office, leading to the escalation of the conflict by both sides. After being called to investigate the killings of officials from a local district, one secret policeman recalled in his memoir that seeing the bodies of the dead was the point at which he “knew that this was the beginning of a war of life and death.”¹⁷² After two members of the Polish underground were murdered, underground groups executed members of the PPR to avenge them.¹⁷³ As Klukowski noted in his diary, some cases were publicized as lessons by others who might sympathize with the communist party or its security forces: for example, 22 February 1945: “A few days ago, Komajda, a well-known Communist sympathizer, disappeared from Michalow. His body has been found in the river Wieprz, with wounds to the head”; 2 March 1945: “At the Krasnobrod railway station our boys recognized a lieutenant of the security service from Bilgoraj who was dressed in civilian clothing. He was disarmed and taken to the forest, where, after interrogation, he was executed.”¹⁷⁴ Violence could extend to the families of secret policemen as well, including mothers, sisters, and spouses, who might be killed or receive threatening letters.¹⁷⁵

Civilians, many of whom had no interest in fighting on either side, were constantly caught in the middle. The UB threatened to arrest villagers who did not report underground bands in the area. Underground members threatened to burn down the houses of the villagers who informed on them or killed villagers for contact with secret police offices.¹⁷⁶ One group handed out notes sentencing people for these activities: “For communist party agitation fifty lashes,” with the name of a local peasant. “For contact with the UB, Stanisław Kołak has been shot.”¹⁷⁷ Another report related a similar problem: “A band has been terrorizing the local population, which does not report anything because if they report something they will be murdered.”¹⁷⁸

German civilians were a major target of such arbitrary violence. Violence against German nationals was likely so widespread because of the influence of the postwar retribution trials, the spontaneous and state-led expulsion of the Germans from the country, and the fact that many Poles serving in security institutions had been forced to work as laborers in the Third Reich.¹⁷⁹ Former forced laborers had been humiliated and treated like second-class citizens for years in Germany. In the postwar context, security forces were granted extensive authority to arrest German civilians and place them in work camps.¹⁸⁰ On 4 November 1944 the PKWN ordered that all Volksdeutsche, that is, those who had claimed German citizenship during the war, above the age of thirteen were to be placed in camps and used for forced labor in the territories of the former General Government.¹⁸¹ In the spring of 1945 the Soviets deported more than forty thousand Volksdeutsche from Poland to forced labor camps in the Soviet Union.¹⁸² It seems that security and militia forces carried these policies further on their own initiative. The MBP office in Warsaw chided secret police and militia units for arbitrarily using Germans for forced labor.¹⁸³ In October 1946 three militiamen were arrested for beating German prisoners, several of whom had died from organ failure. The militiamen buried the dead in the courtyard next to their office, lied to their superiors about what they had done, and claimed the dead had run away from the prison. In front of a military tribunal they claimed they had murdered these Germans because everybody had suffered under the Germans.¹⁸⁴ They were sentenced to death.

Conditions of civil conflict meant that secret police officials could not always tell the difference between enemies and noncombatants, who spoke the same language and were often of the same class background. In many cases they simply began to suspect everyone of enemy behavior. The administration in Poznań began to rearm the population in self-defense against secret police agents who carried out violence against civilians, confiscated property, robbed people, and disrupted the public peace. One had shot a railway worker in broad daylight for no reason. The report continued, “The [secret police] approaches every citizen as a criminal and treats him this way.”¹⁸⁵ UB officials dealt with virtually all problems with violence. One UB official grabbed a man’s weapon during a quarrel and shot him.¹⁸⁶ Another was arrested for shooting at civilians while in a drunken state, which had caused a panic.¹⁸⁷ A guard related that, since robberies were reported in the city, “whenever our employees had to go through the area at night, we always carried a hidden weapon, ready at any moment to shoot.”¹⁸⁸

It took years for the government to collect the weapons that had been distributed to citizens during and after the war. As Klukowski wrote in August 1944, “Today we know that only a small number of arms and ammunition were deposited with the Soviets. This is insignificant compared to the huge stockpile of arms taken from the Germans.”¹⁸⁹ In a two-month period in 1950 the government confiscated thousands of weapons from the civilian population, including rifles, machine guns, pistols, and grenades.¹⁹⁰ For state officials, the availability of weapons made the recourse to violence immediate and unthinking. As one UB guard explained, the arrival of the UB in a restaurant or bar could cause a panic: “As soon as [we] arrived at a location, it was enough that someone yell ‘UB.’ The name of the institution had such a paralyzing effect on the surroundings that the troublemakers left through whatever door or window they could to avoid getting caught.”¹⁹¹ One official pulled his gun because a girl he danced with at a social gathering went home with someone else. Another mentioned an incident when a member of his unit refused to get out of bed. He recommended “shooting under the door [of the sleeping man] until he wakes up.”¹⁹² His colleague called him to report the success of this approach, to which he replied, “Yes, I heard the gunshots. Thank you.”

Officials sometimes combined a tendency to carry weapons with the habit of consuming alcohol.¹⁹³ During the war soldiers and partisans had been immersed in a culture of alcohol consumption.¹⁹⁴ Under the Nazi occupation, when food and many goods were subject to shortages, vodka was one of the only items dependably on store shelves.¹⁹⁵ The widespread consumption of alcohol, particularly moonshine sold on the black market, continued after the war among partisans, militia units, and secret police officials.¹⁹⁶ A party inspection document suggested paying attention to one office because its officials “were often not sober.”¹⁹⁷ After a local prison was attacked, another noted that “it only came to heavy shooting from a machine gun in different parts of the city and the explosion of grenades. But it is necessary to relate to this attack with reserve since there is a rumor that the shooting was caused by the drunken escapades of secret police employees.”¹⁹⁸ It speaks much of the atmosphere of the era that the report described “only” heavy shooting from a machine gun and the explosion of grenades. When drunk, secret police officials were dangerous and unpredictable. They did not distinguish between enemies, civilians, party members, and each other. One shot at a local Party secretary after drinking and killed him on the spot. He shot and killed a citizen who yelled at him to stop shooting. He shot at several UB officials who ran over to stop him.¹⁹⁹ In another case, two left work to drink vodka at a local restaurant, and after a fight one shot and killed the other.²⁰⁰

Secret police and militia officials stole and looted property on a regular basis. As a report from Poznań noted, they took cattle, clothing, apartments, money, and furniture from civilians: “There have been unjustified arrests. Arrested citizens have had property taken away.”²⁰¹ As Gregor Thum has observed, it was socially acceptable to loot property in postwar Poland. Whereas the English word “looting” denotes a criminal act, the Polish word szaber implies a “legal grey zone” that specified the appropriation of “objects abandoned by their owners or divested of guardianship (usually in wartime).”²⁰² State officials described looting in various ways. According to one, the property he confiscated was “compensation for our work.”²⁰³ In the last months of the war the state did not have a currency with which to pay officials.²⁰⁴ Officers stole foodstuffs from their troops, who stole it from the population.²⁰⁵ But while some considered it a form of compensation, others admitted that it tended to get out of hand: “Militiamen often stole and acquired property under the pretext of apartment searches.”²⁰⁶ A letter written by a landowner in Katowice captured the personal and class resentments that stood behind some of these requisitions. He complained that a local UB official who had previously worked on his farm had seized the farm and declared it his own property.²⁰⁷

In July 1949 the commander of the Kraków Citizens’ Militia, Konrad Gruba, along with hundreds of other lower-level UB and militia officials, was put on trial on charges of corruption and looting. His defense before the court revealed a great deal about the attitudes toward theft held by state employees at the time. He admitted that in the spring of 1945 the head mechanic of his unit traveled to the recovered territories to acquire car parts for use at headquarters. In his defense, he said, “All of the regional [militia] leaders were doing this.” He explained how he had obtained luxury objects from abandoned German homes, including paintings—“they were by Polish artists, Germans didn’t have paintings by Polish artists and furniture—everyone else I know has furniture taken from the Germans, why am I the only one on trial?”²⁰⁸ The grand piano his men had acquired from the recovered territories had been taken without his knowledge, he claimed. In a bizarre coincidence the theft had been carried out when he sent his men to a political education course on the dangers of looting held in the recovered territories. With respect to the second grand piano his men had stolen he was not to blame. The woman who became his wife took it, but he married her a year and a half after it had been taken. Although the regime turned a blind eye to incidents like these after the war or simply did not have the capacity to deal with them, such behavior was later branded corruption and, as Gruba’s case shows, the perpetrators tried before military courts.

As Gruba’s defense illustrates, people oriented their behavior not only to central directives issued from Warsaw but also to what those around them were doing, claiming “everyone was doing it!” His hierarchy of justifications started with the gas for the unit: a practical item stolen in service of the state. In the recovered territories looting in the service of the state was referred to as official or patriotic looting.²⁰⁹ Next was German property: a defense that drew on legal norms authorizing security and militia officials to confiscate enemy, particularly German, property without compensation, although they were not, notably, supposed to keep it for themselves. Popular speech and state documents developed a term to describe so-called post-German property: poniemiecki. Finally, Gruba denied responsibility for the two grand pianos his men had taken, luxury items confiscated for his own needs, saying that his wife did it. His defense of “Why am I the only one on trial?” was based on his observation that state officials and others routinely looted and stole property at the time. The class revolution, in this case impossible to distinguish from ethnic cleansing, and the redistribution of property, apartments, and luxury goods to members of the lower class was carried out on a spectrum from spontaneous to state-decreed.

While Gruba took property for himself, the Soviet military authorities confiscated housing and apartments for members of the new communist administration. Officially, apartments were to be distributed by local housing authorities, but this practice did not always correspond to reality. According to a complaint written by the housing authorities in Poznań, Soviet military personnel had confiscated apartments for the Red Army and Polish military officials. They were allowed to do this in the areas considered part of the military front. After leaving the apartments, however, they did not give them back. They demobilized members of the Polish military to take up residence there, thereby bypassing the hopelessly confusing rules that regulated the distribution of postwar housing.²¹⁰ It is unclear how common this practice was. Certainly, given the extensive destruction of property and housing stock during the war, apartments proved to be a valuable incentive to enter the service of the new state. PPR members were likewise preoccupied by the question of housing. In a meeting of a PPR cell in August 1945, the “question of apartments for employees” was of paramount importance. The group assigned someone from each department to secure housing for its members.²¹¹

Although disciplinary issues continued to plague the service, the MBP had, over time, built its resources, personnel, professional identity, and capacity. And the chaos UB officials had perceived in lower-level offices had a more comprehensible pattern when viewed from Warsaw: those deemed qualified were often pulled from lower-level offices to be sent to training programs and higher positions. Given the violent conditions during the first years of communist rule, it was necessary for the PPR to legitimize its rule in ways other than through armed force. These included building a party rank and file and influencing politics through covert surveillance operations in the referendum of June 1946.

SURVEILLANCE, INFORMERS, AND THE JUNE 1946 REFERENDUM

The June 1946 referendum in Poland can be traced back to the Allied agreements at Yalta and Potsdam. The Western powers recognized the PKWN on the condition that the government hold free elections to the parliament.²¹² By 1946 the communists, uncertain of whether they had sufficient popular support, decided to postpone the elections and hold a referendum instead. The referendum consisted of three questions that could be answered with either a yes or a no: (1) whether the dissolution of the Senate was approved; (2) whether the nationalization of industry and the redistribution of land were supported; and (3) whether the annexation of the western borderlands was accepted. The PPR campaigned extensively for people to vote “three times yes,” a response they believed would demonstrate popular support for their key policies. It was evident from the outset that the campaign preceding the referendum was to be won at all costs, whether through manipulation of the vote, intimidation of those who voted against the party line, or violence.²¹³ Secret police officials dressed in civilian clothes took ballots from people’s hands and openly changed citizens’ votes. When promoting the referendum in villages, party agitators carried weapons, a practice that hardly put a friendly face on the new regime. According to one party member, “Armed with a pistol, I had the task of explaining the referendum and its significance for the future of Poland.”²¹⁴

From the perspective of state building, the campaign involved more than ascertaining popular support for the PPR’s policies. It was a chance for the party to gather information on its rank and file and assess the loyalty of new party members. During the preparations for the referendum MBP officials carefully noted who protested the falsification of the referendum, who voted against the party line, and who believed that noncommunist political parties should be allowed to campaign. Secret police officials observed PPR members’ ties with noncommunists. They issued assessments of party members’ loyalty based on informer networks they ran inside the PPR.²¹⁵ The Soviets sent their own agents to ensure that the results of the referendum supported the communist government. MGB Department D, which specialized in the falsification of ballots and signatures, created 5,994 ballots and forged an estimated 40,000 signatures to support the results favored by the PPR.²¹⁶ The historian Nikita Petrov estimated that such results likely changed the outcome of the referendum by 50–80 percent depending on the region.

Tens of thousands of party activists and new members were advanced in the ranks of the PPR during the elections. For PPR members who had joined in 1945 and early 1946, the May referendum was their first experience with political campaigning. As a nineteen-year-old party member related in his memoir, during the referendum campaign he accompanied a more experienced party member to meetings. The campaign put him in situations in which he had to perform in front of an audience. He watched his companion lecture a crowd before giving his own speech. “I read the pre-prepared text a few times a day until I knew its contents by heart, even though I didn’t know much outside of its content.”²¹⁷ As these sources make clear, the elections allowed the central authorities to identify, train, and advance new recruits in the party-state.²¹⁸ Starting in 1946 more stringent bureaucratic requirements were placed on party members. It became necessary for new party members to prove activism in political campaigns and a willingness to cut off social and personal ties with members of noncommunist political parties. While before 1946 it had not been unusual for communists to drink in a pub with social democrats, starting with the referendum such social ties were treated with suspicion or contempt. UB officials played an important role in enforcing these new standards of conduct. They took note of what party members said and did during the referendum: who met with members of the Peasants’ Party and who acted in a bourgeois manner. The requirements of PPR membership were transformed from a partial commitment, that is, one identity among many, to a demand for complete dedication to the party.

MBP surveillance documents show that the reactions of PPR members to the falsification of the referendum results were far from uniform. In fact, they illustrate deep divisions between the party and its secret police forces with respect to class background, social ties, and beliefs about how to establish communist power. In one report a secret police agent noted that a communist party member was “educated in a [bourgeoisie] atmosphere,” which meant he was “still tied, at least morally, to the higher classes.”²¹⁹ Another mentioned PPR members’ social connections with members of other political parties, observing that “the district party secretary of Jarocin spent time with ‘scum’ from the Peasants’ Party” and that “in Rawicz the communist head of the district ‘cooperates with the Peasants’ Party.’” UB officials noted the names of party members who voted against the party line or destroyed ballots that voted the “correct way.” One report said that in Jarocin many communists voted no once or twice.²²⁰ Correcting the ballots, to use their term, became such a common practice that it was unusual not to take part in it. In Poznań officials reported that a PPR secretary had a portrait of Józef Piłsudski, the leader of interwar Poland, in his office that he refused to remove: “This Piłsudskite drank for two days during the referendum and did not help with the ‘correction’ of the ballots. . . . It is impossible to have confidence in such a person.”²²¹

The referendum was also a training ground for the thousands of new officials who had joined the MBP in 1945 in how to build informer and agent networks. One agent, Tadeusz Wojtyniak, described this period as one of “intensive operative work to discover the activities of the Peasants’ Party and Mikołajczyk.”²²² Indeed, this period correlated with an increase in the number of MBP informants from 17,600 in January 1946 to 53,000 in June 1948.²²³ Over this period, the secret police also compiled materials for a card catalogue that would be used in future operations.²²⁴ As early as 1945 the MBP had set up a Central Records Department to store the information they gathered through informers, house searches, and postal lustration as well as during the 1945 and 1947 amnesties of Polish underground members.²²⁵ Between 1947 and 1950 the MBP expanded its jurisdiction to include issuing passports and citizens’ identity cards, which proved an important source of information on the personal data of the general population.²²⁶ By 1949 MBP records contained files on 1.2 million Polish citizens for use in the general surveillance of society as well as the mass terror of the early Stalinist period.

According to Wojtyniak, the Soviet advisers gave him practical help and advice on surveillance and operative methods.²²⁷ His opinion of them was positive: “The Soviet advisers we met in our operative work were well-mannered and well-prepared from a professional standpoint. They taught us . . . how to acquire sources of information, the form and methods of acquiring information and methods of conspiracy in work with informer networks.”²²⁸ His mastery of Soviet operative methods is evident in the terms he used to describe his activities during the elections. He not only passively collected the minutes of PSL meetings but also “carried out ‘prophylactic conversations’ with members of the PSL” to threaten them against taking part in political meetings. The Soviets gave Polish agents suggestions on where they should focus their operations. Wojtyniak writes, “Soviet advisers and operative workers discussed the political and criminal organizations in our country from the German occupation and the ‘bandit underground’ after liberation that had been inspired by the West and émigré leadership in London.”²²⁹ Between August and December 1947 Wojtyniak completed his first training course in Poznań, where he formally studied the operative methods he had already informally learned from the Soviet advisers. After this schooling he was assigned to work in a district security office in central-west Poland. He regarded his time there as his first period of independent work.²³⁰ Increased surveillance and covert operative work did not entail eschewing arrests, military violence, harassment, or threats. When operative work “was ineffective,” Wojtyniak explained, agents used other methods, such as preventing noncommunists from meeting by shutting off the electricity or starting fights in their meeting halls.²³¹ Candidates were removed from the ballot or ballots with supposedly incorrect votes were simply thrown away.²³² While official statistics reported 68 percent of voters answered yes to the first question; 77 percent to the second; and 91 percent to the third, archival evidence suggests that in fact 25 percent of voters answered yes to the first question, 44 percent to the second, and 68 percent to the third.²³³ Unsurprisingly, the referendum was declared a success for the communists. Voter fraud and intimidation were also applied during the campaign for the elections to the Sejm in January 1947, when UB officials arrested and in some cases murdered PSL members.²³⁴

RECRUITING SECRET POLICE OFFICIALS INTO THE PPR

The arbitrariness and disorderly conduct of rank-and-file UB officials did not bode well for the political reliability of the force. From the perspective of 1945, political loyalty was something to be earned, not taken for granted. Over 42.5 percent of UB officials had no party affiliation.²³⁵ One of the first tasks of PPR activists was to recruit secret police officials into the party. It was no small task to recruit the heavily armed security officials, men used to carrying out directives on their own authority, into the PPR.

Due to the unpopularity of communism in Poland and the conditions of civil conflict in which the regime was established it was at times dangerous for people in villages and small towns to join the party. According to one report, “Our party is weak. Members . . . are afraid to conduct party work because of terror and bands running rampant on the territory of our region.”²³⁶ Initially, the PPR distributed land to entice peasants to join the party. But in 1945 party instructors observed that peasants were joining the PPR, receiving their land parcels, and leaving soon after.²³⁷ When party inspectors were sent to investigate why, they were told that peasants were uninterested in taking part in meetings and paying dues. The peasants explained simply that “they just didn’t want to be in the party” since no one else in the village was in the party. In some places it was safer to remain with no political affiliation. After a party member was killed in one village at the end of 1944, a Polish physician affirmed in his diary that “all active members of the communist party are extremely nervous. They are expecting more executions.”²³⁸ During the referendum in late June 1946 a member of the communist voting commission reported that in ten districts he visited, communist agitators were still accompanied by an armed guard. In a few areas it was too dangerous to send party agitators because “they might be murdered at night.”²³⁹

Like other communist parties in Eastern Europe, after the war the PPR had opened its ranks to new members with few qualifications, little experience, and no knowledge of party texts. Many joined without fully understanding what the communist party stood for. In September 1946 Gomułka chastised those he deemed to be “theoretical members,” people who registered for party membership but never showed up for meetings, or those who signed up but about whom the party had no information.²⁴⁰ He spoke also of “fictitious and half fictitious meetings,” the former referring to meetings that were reported but never happened and the latter to meetings that took place but at which no one was present.

In the first years of mass recruitment to the party, members were categorized as either “confirmed and involved in a local party organization” or simply “registered.” The latter description meant, according to the personnel department, that “in reality they find themselves outside of the party.”²⁴¹ Of the 200,000 new members registered in 1945, 140,000 were only registered, which meant that their membership consisted solely in the fact that their names had been written on a piece of paper. They did not attend meetings, engage in party life, or have any political training. The policy of mass recruitment also introduced social and political tensions between older and newer PPR members, groups that frequently disagreed over the party’s policies and the question of how to prove one’s loyalty to the cause. New members had little credibility among the general population because they rarely understood the basic tenets of Marxism. More experienced members were resented for being unwilling to implement policies in sufficiently radical ways.²⁴²

PPR members, whether new or experienced, had mixed relations with the UB. Because of the extensive powers granted to the UB and the force’s reputation for violence, PPR members were sometimes afraid to approach secret police offices, much less to issue commands to them. In June 1945 the head of a district secret police office arrested a communist party secretary. After military officials intervened to release the secretary, the secret policeman exclaimed, “I am the boss here.”²⁴³ The statement made clear his opinion about who, exactly, was in charge in postwar Poland. It was difficult to enforce compliance with the party’s orders. One report declared it impossible to gather statistics from security offices because “the comrades from security do not want to give us a list of their members.”²⁴⁴ The Party Control Commission described their members’ relationship with UB officials as characterized by fear: “Our comrades do not trust the secret police and are afraid to approach it with their concerns, observations, and facts.” Those who brought the secret police information were ignored, ridiculed, or even fired from their positions.²⁴⁵

In spite of having similar goals, the secret police and communist party had generally attracted recruits of different ages, education levels, and class backgrounds. Such differences were manifest in the documentation of the Central Party School in Łódź in October 1945.²⁴⁶ The men and women sent into the party organization tended to be good speakers, politically active, and well versed in communist ideology. The men sent into the MBP tended to have little grasp of political theory, interest in activism, or speaking talents. Such disparities informed the cultures of the institutions, a fact which sometimes led to conflicts over how, exactly, the communists should take power. Bolesław Przytuła, for example, was sent into the secret police after being assessed as follows: “At the beginning I took him for an idiot. But in school he developed a lot.”²⁴⁷ The party instructor characterized Przytuła as a good comrade who had spent two years in Buchenwald and Auschwitz during the war, but since he had no political talent and was slow in speech and writing he was assigned to serve in the secret police. Józef Gałązka, who was also sent to the secret police, was considered “not very capable” and “extremely egotistical.” He did not dedicate himself to his work and was undisciplined, unmanageable, and “in the habit of accusing people of things.” Henryk Majda was “the weakest in the group,” having no talent for theoretical work and bad speaking skills. He was physically weak since he had recently “returned from a camp, which likely caused difficulties in study.” Since he had some political knowledge, he was suggested for party work in the military or security forces. The class of 1945, weak as it seems, was one of the best classes the Polish communists had for several years. A report from 1946 expressed consternation with the level of competence in the new class, in which only 38 percent of the students had been members of the communist party before the Second World War, as compared with 54 percent in the 1945 class.²⁴⁸

In spite of these issues the PPR began in November 1945 to organize party cells in secret police offices.²⁴⁹ Soon, 395 party secretaries were working in 14 kołos (literally, “circles”) in the secret police.²⁵⁰ Between November 1945 and April 1947 the party increased its presence in the security force from 395 to 1,608 members.²⁵¹ Given the culture of suspicion, even paranoia, in the UB, officials did not always trust the newcomers. One UB official described his impression of the party members who arrived in his office in 1945: “They discreetly watched the behavior, conduct, treacherous intentions, and attitude of [security] employees to the people’s regime,” he noted—hardly the most flattering description of the party’s intentions in the security forces.²⁵²

The meetings they organized had low attendance since few secret police officials took them seriously.²⁵³ The referendum in 1946 and elections in early 1947 were turning points in this relationship. In the words of one party report, “Recruitment to our party increased in waves during the referendum and preelection campaigns.”²⁵⁴ A district secret police official remembered that communists began at this time to organize talks, political meetings, and lectures in his office. As a result of this activity, he submitted an application to the PPR.²⁵⁵ By 1947 the number of officials in the UB with no party affiliation had dropped to 9.5 percent.²⁵⁶ Soviet reports also depict the 1947 elections as a period of mass recruitment into the ranks of the PPR. Before the elections the party numbered six hundred thousand members. Afterward, membership stood at a million. Four hundred thousand members had been in the party for less than a year.²⁵⁷

Two months after the referendum the PPR announced a campaign to send party members into the security force between 15 August and 30 October 1946. They were tasked with establishing party oversight over secret police offices by setting up political education courses and party organizations in them. Twenty were sent into leading positions in the offices, including the positions of deputy director, heads of departments, and senior officers. Forty were sent to regional and district levels and six hundred to lower-level offices.²⁵⁸ The campaign was difficult to put into practice. Most party members did not want to be sent to secret police offices, which were dangerous and located in isolated areas. A report from Kielce reads, “[Party] candidates are more interested in their material well-being than in the greater social good. They would rather work in factories or institutions where they will receive better compensation than in the militia or secret police.”²⁵⁹ Because of personnel shortages and the inability of the central authorities to fully determine where officials actually went, party members could refuse to be transferred to unpopular places or quickly leave them if they were unhappy. The campaign had some successes. A message from Katowice related that the “comrades from the party and industries we sent into the secret police have improved the leading personnel of the office. Demoralized leaders and functionaries have been removed.”²⁶⁰ PPR offices fired unruly or undisciplined secret police officials, transferred them to other work, often in factories, or, in isolated cases, arrested them. After being fired, security officials often moved to the recovered territories, where they could always find work due to the constant personnel shortages.²⁶¹

Party members sent into UB offices aimed to change the behavior of security officials. From the beginning, and more intensively in 1948 and 1949, their task was to “combat religious practices” among UB officials. Given that secret police officials had been recruited from the peasant class, this was no small task. Over 90 percent of UB officials had identified as practicing Catholics in their 1945 personnel files.²⁶² A party official sent to work in the secret police in 1946 said that one of the force’s biggest problems was that “most employees were under the influence of old [religious] rituals and habits and insist that priests be at funerals and weddings be held in the church.”²⁶³ One of his tasks was to encourage UB officials to write to their parish, “where they had been baptized against their will,” and ask to be removed from the list of the faithful.

The civil conflict for power came to an end when the communists declared victory in the referendum, the 1947 elections to the Polish Parliament, and the war against the underground. After an amnesty on 22 February 1947, 36,561 former resistance fighters and 7,448 military deserters surrendered a total of 13,883 weapons.²⁶⁴ Soon after, the party set out to establish order in its security services. Between February 1947 and February 1949 Deputy Director of Counterintelligence Stefan Sobczak and his deputy, Józef Światło, began a series of investigations to curb arbitrariness in the MBP. It was Sobczak, complained a former secret police driver who had reflected with nostalgia in his memoir about drinking on the job and taking service cars on joy rides, who fired him, threatened to arrest him or send him into exile in Siberia, and began “in a rude fashion” to “force [officials] into submission.”²⁶⁵ Russia, and Siberia in particular, was evidently a threat and a curse as well as a model to be emulated. Over the next three years the Polish communists and their Soviet advisers began to transform the secret police from a military-style institution into a centrally planned state bureaucracy. They broke up family networks and private relationships in state institutions in an anticorruption campaign and put officials on trial for disciplinary infractions. In spite of the reorganization of the forces, the foundational years of communist rule had implications for the legitimacy of the regime, its narrative, and the structure of its institutions. The Polish communists had, in the period between 1945 and 1947, developed an extensive, battle-hardened internal military and security corps. But a new period in the history of these institutions was about to begin.

THE END OF AN ERA

In January 1946 a Polish secret police official in Kraków arrested a tram conductor who had requested that he purchase a ticket.²⁶⁶ The secret police official released the conductor only after the intervention of the city authorities. After the tram conductor’s work hours were over, the UB official returned, arrested her again, and detained her overnight. The central secret police office in Warsaw criticized this incident as one of a “considerable number of disputes between secret police agents and city transport workers” across the country. It was far from a singular incident. The Warsaw office specified that transportation was free only for officials in uniform, not all the time and not as private citizens.²⁶⁷ If a secret police official caused another dispute with a transportation worker, he would be arrested.

This seemingly minor incident reflected a serious problem in Poland after the war. Between 1945 and 1947 secret police officials were granted the authority to arrest whomever they wanted for whatever reason. They had spent two years as the top and in some cases the only communist authorities in local communities. They were powerful, armed, and in the habit of using their weapons without reservation. The arrest of the tram conductor was one of many instances in which they turned their weapons on civilians for little or no reason. As the case of the conductor shows, however, by 1946 an institution that had been essential to the communists’ takeover of power was perceived as a liability. The question of who was allowed to ride a tram for free was one of many everyday battlegrounds in the struggle for authority between the communist secret police, party, and civil authorities.

Whereas scholars have traditionally viewed the period between 1945 and 1947 as a conflict for political power, the larger political conflict unleashed innumerable conflicts that had little to do with the goals of the elite and were sometimes waged between communists allegedly on the same side. The Soviets played a decisive role in these conflicts by supplying advisers, security troops, weapons, and military forces. But the Soviets did not control all aspects of the takeover. The most violent areas in postwar Poland were the border regions, particularly the recovered territories in the West and territories annexed by the USSR in the East, which were riven by national as well as political conflicts. Many secret police officials engaged in conflicts more meaningful to them than the political battles of the elite, conflicts like nationalist violence, class warfare, alcohol-induced brawls, looting, anti-German violence, and personal vendettas. Villages where the central authorities had little authority were some of the most violent areas in the country. Communist leaders in Warsaw cursed rank-and-file officials for their arbitrariness (samowola) and tendency to take advantage of the weakness of the central authorities.²⁶⁸

Polish citizens were constantly pulled into this conflict, most against their will. Some were compelled to defend a farm. Others were forcibly conscripted into the military. Still others lived in fear of attacks by secret police officials and those they were fighting. The civil conflict was one of the reasons the PPR was able to win power in a country in which its ideology and affiliation with the USSR made it widely unpopular. As Stathis Kalyvas has written, the politics of civil war cannot be equated with regular politics. People do not choose sides based on traditional preferences. The stakes are infinitely higher, the choices more constrained, and military resources, not prewar preferences, often decide victory.²⁶⁹ The communists, while they were able to recruit thousands of new people into their security, military, and party institutions, did not have to convince the entire population of the correctness of their political program or ideology. By 1947 they offered something no one else could: a government.²⁷⁰

2

The Czechoslovak Road to the Secret Police

I considered it self-evident that as soon as our Party came to power, we would organize the security service according to the Soviet model. I have no idea why, starting in May 1945, we were continually experimenting with its organization.

—Karel Šváb, the head of the communist party intelligence network: the “registry division”

WHEN SOVIET-BACKED CZECHOSLOVAK operative agents arrested Karel Šváb in February 1951 they immediately confiscated the materials inside his information safe. The safe contained, among other things, a report from an intelligence office in the region of Hradec Králové, notes from a meeting of a rival political party, instructions for informers working at industrial sites, updates from Slovak party intelligence networks, and a photocopy of a thousand dollars in American banknotes.¹ Šváb was one of fourteen defendants convicted in the show trial of General Secretary Rudolf Slánský. He was executed in December 1952.

Though Šváb had attended almost all meetings of the Czechoslovak communist party (KSČ) and security leaders since 1945, received information updates from the security and intelligence offices of the postwar National Front government, and determined key personnel decisions in the KSČ, no one seemed to know precisely what his official position was. In a 1963 testimony the former secret police agent Josef Čech described the roles of other members of the force but paused when asked to describe Šváb’s. “I only really remember that Šváb ran some kind of additional sector,” he explained.² Štěpán Plaček, the head of the party’s political intelligence network, considered Šváb the embodiment of the KSČ. The intelligence materials he collected, he explained, went to “the party, i.e., Karel Šváb.”³ Osvald Závodský, who became a key security official after the communist takeover of power, noted that in spite of (or perhaps because of) Šváb’s undefined position in the leadership, “members of all security services reported to him, including security and party officials from regional committees.”⁴ Between 1946 and 1950 Šváb headed a nondescript unit called the registry division (evidenční odbor), which gathered intelligence on political rivals and the wartime whereabouts of KSČ members. It was run through party members stationed covertly in various branches of the official security and intelligence services of the National Front government.⁵ His personal archive is a road map to the reach of communist intelligence networks in the years following the Second World War, a who’s who of domestic and foreign targets: the church, foreigners, labor camps, and newspapers, among others.⁶

As Šváb’s position shows, between 1945 and 1948 the Czechoslovak secret police was not an institution. It was a set of covert intelligence networks run by leading KSČ members inside state institutions, factories, political parties, and, after the communists took power in February 1948, mass organizations and the church. Such networks gave communist leaders in Prague a snapshot of the state of affairs and public mood across economic, social, and political life. They informed KSČ leaders’ strategies to win votes, increase popular support in the May 1946 elections, and secure the upper hand in parliamentary negotiations. Although the KSČ ran several such networks, I focus here on Šváb’s registry division and the first political intelligence network, the ZOB II, short for the “regional security department.” I detail the evolution of these networks between 1945 and the end of 1948, when party and security leaders began to replace them with a single, centralized political police force. This force, recruited largely from young, working-class officials, became the infamous state security service (StB) that existed in Czechoslovakia until the fall of communism in 1989.⁷

In contrast to Poland and eastern Germany, Czechoslovakia did not have Soviet advisers in the immediate postwar period. These advisers arrived in the fall of 1949, over a year after the communist takeover of power. Before this time, the “Soviet model” was evoked from time to time in local debates and in some cases was even marshaled to support mutually exclusive sides of an argument. The KSČ’s early state-building efforts, including its road to the secret police, therefore diverged considerably from the other two countries in this period. Its secret police emerged from local personalities and decisions; was based on Czechoslovak conceptions of policing, surveillance, and state administration; and was formed against a background of mass elections, democratic checks on power, and party politics. It was unique because of the role lawyers and law, specifically the 1945, 1947 and 1948 laws on national security, played in the KSČ’s conception of security institutions and radical political change; the division between the Czech and Slovak halves of the service; and the marginal role that the secret police, local or Soviet, played in the communist takeover of power. These differences reflected the diverse, and frequently conflicting, ways in which the Czechoslovak communists thought about security and the means and ends of their revolution. KSČ leaders celebrated the national particularities of their security force. As they concluded after a meeting in June 1948, “The tasks of a security service are varied since they originate in the experience of a people, their society, and their social structures.”⁸ In security politics, as in all other issues, the Czechoslovak communists would pursue a national road to socialism.

SECURITY POLITICS IN THE NATIONAL FRONT, 1945–1948

According to the first political program of the National Front government, Czechoslovakia was a parliamentary democracy led by four Czechoslovak and two Slovak political parties. Although this system was characterized by political plurality, from the beginning right-leaning parties were banned and politicians prohibited from openly disagreeing with the decisions reached by the coalition government. Since postwar leaders considered political debate divisive and unity essential in the aftermath of war, decisions were to be made in the spirit of “above party politics.”⁹ This aspiration reflected an ideal rather than a reality. From 1945 decisions at every level of the state administration, from the parliament to the national committees, were passed only after they had been approved unanimously by all political parties. This practice, called the rule of political parity, applied until representation was reallocated in accordance with the outcome of the popular vote in the May 1946 elections. Although the purported unanimous decisions reached by the National Front were meant to underscore the notion that all political parties agreed on everything, decisions in fact regularly traversed layers of compromise, backroom dealings, deadlock, and public lambasting in party newspapers.

A parliamentary body called the security committee negotiated security policies in the postwar government. Following the rule of political parity, in 1945 seats on this committee were distributed equally among the political parties. Each had a security committee that negotiated policy on behalf of its constituency. After the 1946 elections political representation on the security committee was redistributed in accordance with the popular vote. The KSČ was allocated nine seats, the National Socialists four, the People’s Party four, the Social Democrats three, and the Slovak Democratic Party four.¹⁰ The KSČ committee included, at various times, many of those who would become key members of the communist security elite after February 1948: Václav Nosek, Karel Šváb, Josef Pavel, Jindřich Veselý, Štěpán Plaček, Zdeněk Toman, Ivo Milén, Karel Černý, and Osvald Závodský.

General Secretary Rudolf Slánský headed the KSČ security committee. Slánský came to the National Front era from a long history of communist activism. He joined the social democratic party, the predecessor to the KSČ, soon after the Russian Revolution.¹¹ In 1921 he was a founding member of the KSČ after it declared allegiance to the Comintern. He fled into exile in Moscow after the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938. After returning to Prague in 1945, he helped make the KSČ into the largest political party in the National Front government.¹²

National Front politicians, regardless of their political affiliation, were convinced that 1945 represented an opportunity to radically remake politics, society, and the economy.¹³ Under the auspices of a national revolution, as it was called, Czechoslovak politicians from across the left pushed for the nationalization of industries such as mines and weapons’ manufacturers.¹⁴ The conviction that radical change was both desirable and necessary also shaped the government’s approach to its domestic security force, the National Security Corps (Sbor národní bezpečnosti, SNB). The SNB included the state security service (Stb), the border guards, and the department of political intelligence as well as grassroots formations such as factory militias and citizen-run border guard units.¹⁵ Judging by the frequency with which the word “provisional” (prozatimní) was stamped on the documents of security institutions from the time, it is clear that, while 1945 presented an opportunity for radical change, no one knew precisely what the end goal of this change would be.

Regardless of the form it would take in the years to come, change was inevitable. The wartime security forces, those of the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the fascist Slovak Republic, were dissolved in 1945. In some instances officials simply abandoned their posts in the final weeks of the war.¹⁶ For those who did not, the SNB and all state institutions were subject from October 1945 to a “purge of public employees” (očista veřejných zaměstnanců) in which those deemed wartime collaborators or traitors were expelled from their positions.¹⁷ Purges were carried out by three-member commissions inside the institution. Two representatives on these commissions were required to be knowledgeable of the law, and the third an employee of equal rank as the person on trial.¹⁸ Cases were raised when a proposal or suggestion (návrh) was received from a person’s work colleague, a member of a labor union, or a private citizen acquainted with the accused.¹⁹

In June 1945, the national revolution in the security service saw the extension of voting rights to members of the force. While security officials had been banned from voting or joining political parties in the First Czechoslovak Republic starting in 1927, after the war security and military officials were granted the right to vote, join political parties, run for office, take part in political meetings, and read and distribute political newspapers in the corps.²⁰ The voting age was lowered from twenty-one to eighteen.²¹ The Communist official Josef Pavel, who later joined the secret police, worked first as a party agitator in the SNB in the early postwar period. Pavel had joined the KSČ in 1932.²² His training as a political commissar during the Spanish Civil War prepared him for the postwar task of recruiting rank and file security officials to the KSČ.²³

The National Front created a Department for Political Education in 1945. Its aim was to impart a unified political vision to a force whose officials had been scattered during the war to Great Britain, France, the USSR, the Slovak Republic, and the Nazi Protectorate. What this political vision exactly was, and by extension the content of the political education courses, soon became the subject of heated debate among National Front politicians.²⁴ By enfranchising officials and organizing political education courses in the security force, the National Front government brought the force into the political polemics of the time. And after the euphoria that had characterized the initial months of liberation had abated, political life became increasingly divisive. “Recently, there have been greater differences between political parties” read an intelligence report from July 1945. “People at newsstands no longer ask for any newspaper, as they did in the first weeks of liberation, but for their favorite newspaper or the newspaper of their party.”²⁵ The expulsion of security employees deemed disloyal to the postwar state continued apace. As of September 1946, 1,438 criminal charges had been issued in the purge of public employees in the SNB. A further 1,079 were under examination.²⁶ Expulsions from the security service opened up thousands of positions and opportunities for new people to join and receive promotions in the force.

Since the security force had become a large, important voting constituency, politicians, civic groups, national committees, and private citizens rushed to secure jobs and promotions in it for as many officials, acquaintances, and supporters as they could. Between October 1946 and April 1947 the SNB general staff received 683 interventions, as they were called. Interventions were requests by political parties and civic groups to grant officials raises and promotions. All political parties, not only the KSČ, intervened in security appointments on behalf of supporters. The KSČ wrote 95, the National Socialists wrote 135, the People’s Party wrote 23, and the Social Democrats wrote 43.²⁷ A successful intervention could secure an official a position or promotion without the education or years of service required to achieve it in the era of the First Czechoslovak Republic. Political parties and civic groups could also object to appointments or hold up advancements.²⁸ Those who did not benefit from these politically motivated appointments resented them. In an anonymous letter in mid-1946 an SNB official expressed his frustration with instances of political favoritism in the force: “We are waiting for compensation for the members of the security services who were not promoted so that self-serving members of political parties could be given raises.”²⁹

The National Front, far from the ideal of being above party politics, had tied security appointments to political affiliation, social connections, and party loyalty. The influence of political parties in securing promotions for members was doubtless a reason, apart from ideological appeal, that KSČ membership grew rapidly in this era. In February 1946 the SNB placed a moratorium on accepting new officials.³⁰ In December 1947 the security services numbered 38,500 men, as compared with 26,000 in the First Czechoslovak Republic. Twice as many had been granted officer ranks because of all the politically motivated promotions.³¹

PARTISANS, NATIONAL COMMITTEES, AND CITIZENS’ JUSTICE AFTER THE WAR

In 1945 Czechoslovak politicians did not so much control security politics as respond to events as they unfolded on the ground. As Nazi occupation forces retreated from the Czech lands, armed groups looted abandoned property and arrested alleged wartime collaborators. This violence, both spontaneous and state sanctioned, ended in the expulsion of millions of German civilians from Czechoslovakia.³² A June 1945 decree banned all armed forces apart from official military and national security forces. This aspiration, which aimed to integrate the many partisan units that had been hastily formed in the last months of war into official security institutions, had few means of enforcement. For the security forces this was a period of “pell-mell recruitment,” as the communist military officer Oldřich Kryštof explained. The KSČ’s priority was to “capture the armed mass of citizenry” and “bring young and suitable people into the security service.”³³

As described by Bedřich Pokorný, later a leading figure in the secret police, security officials were told to recruit members of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps, partisan groups, and resistance fighters to the force.³⁴ The 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps was created in Moscow during the Second World War. Similar to the First Polish Military, which had also been created in Moscow, it provided an institutional framework to mobilize citizens into an armed formation and identify individuals for recruitment into postwar security forces and state administration.³⁵ But there were key differences between the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corp and its Polish counterpart. Since the Czechoslovak force did not follow a policy of forced conscription, it was much smaller than the First Polish Military. By September 1944 there were 16,451 men and women serving in its ranks, as compared to the 443,330 soldiers in the Polish military at the end of 1945. Its ranks fluctuated considerably as it made its way to Prague. Along the way, it absorbed Czech refugees from the USSR, Czech nationals from eastern Poland, members of the Czech Jewish minority from Romania, and Czechs and Slovaks who had been liberated from concentration camps.³⁶

On 8 January 1945 a military intelligence organization was created in the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps (vojenské obranné zpravodajství or OBZ).³⁷ According to the founding document of the OBZ, its responsibilities included controlling military secrets, censoring the press, conducting surveillance on those who expressed “anti-democratic view,” tracking soldiers’ moods, and investigating collaborators.³⁸ In a joint decision of Czechoslovak communist Klement Gottwald and Josef Stalin, Bedřich Reicin, a member of the KSČ with close ties to Soviet intelligence, was appointed to head the department in January 1945. Karel Vaš, a Communist with ties to the NKVD, was appointed his deputy. Many OBZ recruits had been educated in Soviet intelligence schools.³⁹ As the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps and its military intelligence service moved through the Czech lands at the end of the war, both institutions demobilized men into positions in the security force.

The KSČ also considered members of partisan groups promising recruits to the postwar security forces. In many cases such groups had formed in the last months of the war to arrest German civilians, confiscate their property, or imprison them in labor camps.⁴⁰ One such partisan formation was the Revolutionary Guards, popularly known as the Ransacking Guards, a notoriously unruly group that participated in the expulsion of German civilians from the Czech lands. In some cases, its members harassed and threatened officials from the interwar Czechoslovak police, telling them that “as communists, [we will] take over the service.”⁴¹ After May 1945 around eight thousand of the thirty thousand men in the SNB entered the force after serving in a partisan group.⁴² For the KSČ, partisans were considered promising recruits to the party since they often had no previous political affiliation. As party leaders admitted in October 1946, since there had been no communists in the security service of the First Czechoslovak Republic, they were compelled to “push forward new, inexperienced comrades to edge out people who are professionally trained, but politically unreliable.”⁴³

The importance of partisan groups is illustrated by the fact that communist agents were assigned to organize such groups where they did not arise spontaneously. Miroslav Pich-Tůma was one of the best-known Czech partisans of the day. He spent the war in the USSR and attended an NKVD training school. According to his personnel file, his experience in the Soviet Union shaped not only his professional training but also his behavior: “The effect of his time in the Soviet Union is evident. He is harsh, open, determined, and direct with those who meet him.”⁴⁴ On 26 October 1944 he was parachuted into the Czech lands as a member of the Jan Hus Partisan Brigade, a twelve-person unit named after the Protestant martyr who came to symbolize the Czech national revolution.⁴⁵ Pich-Tůma, the political commissar of the unit, was its only Czech national. It was otherwise made up of Soviet citizens. The brigade carried out diversionary expeditions against the Nazis, collected intelligence for the Red Army, engaged in communist political education work, and organized national committees.⁴⁶

StB agent Miroslav Pich-Tůma. Archiv bezpečnostních složek (ABS), Prague, fond Personální spisy příslušníků MV-personální spis evid. č . 3783/19 Miroslav Pich-Tůma.

The Jan Hus Partisan Brigade organized Czechoslovak citizens into partisan formations and armed them with weapons from local storehouses and former Nazi armament caches.⁴⁷ Even if such partisan formations were created from above, they expanded their ranks from below, that is, through kinship and friendship networks. As the member of one such partisan group related, he was invited by his brother-in-law to join and encouraged his own brother to join.⁴⁸ By 1 May 1945, Pich-Tůma claimed that the brigade had recruited 444 men and women into their ranks and organized 126 national committees. Whether or not this precise number was correct, the brigade certainly had some influence over who took up positions in local security offices. In a 1947 letter Pich-Tůma explained how his partisan networks grafted onto postwar security positions, mentioning “former partisans from my unit, such as the security consultant and head of the district national committee . . . as well as chief functionaries in the party office.”⁴⁹ The partisans remained a major KSČ constituency well after 1945. During the National Front era the KSČ created a mythos around the movement, which, with Pich-Tůma as chief representative, gained its own newspaper and a voice in parliament, where Pich-Tůma served between October 1945 and March 1946. Pich-Tůma also worked for the first communist party intelligence network, the ZOB II. Like many communists of the era, he wore multiple hats: as a partisan, party spy, and National Front politician.⁵⁰

A position in which the partisans were influential was that of political education officer. Since the position did not require the professional or educational standards demanded of the regular officer corps, the communists used these positions to promote young, inexperienced people in the force. As of September 1945 almost all of the one hundred political education officers in the security service had served in a partisan group.⁵¹ For the KSČ, political education officers were a key source of information on the popular mood and political views of the security and military officials.⁵² Such information was valuable when the communists assessed the loyalty of the forces after the takeover of power in February 1948. But the KSČ’s strategy of promoting partisans in the security force had unexpected consequences. Whereas in some cases it expanded the KSČ’s influence and access to information, in others it undermined the party’s prestige. Some political education officers turned out to be former fascists. Others were grossly incompetent. A few were embarrassingly outspoken about their loyalty to the communist party and were referred to popularly as despots or Red Commissars.⁵³ Even the communists’ own members were frustrated by such upstarts. An SNB official who had served in the security force for twenty-four years and belonged to the KSČ complained to the party leadership in January 1947 about a political education officer: “a twenty-one-year-old boy, nonmilitary, who—aside from the village where he was born—has seen nothing. His only life experience has been to graduate from a one-month political education course.”⁵⁴ As Oldřich Kryštof later admitted, in many cases “improvised and unplanned political education courses brought us more harm than good.”⁵⁵

Alongside members of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps, partisan groups, and military intelligence officers, the communists sought to recruit people from national committees into the KSČ and security forces.⁵⁶ National committees, the lowest level of state administration, could be traced to the earliest years of Czechoslovak independence in October 1918.⁵⁷ From 1945 they were granted almost full autonomy to decide local affairs and appointments. Security offices in national committees could overturn or ignore central decrees deemed unsuitable to local conditions. They organized the guarding of factories, decided who in their community had been a wartime collaborator, and were authorized to confiscate and redistribute the property of German citizens.⁵⁸ Since recruitment to national committees depended on local networks and initiative, it looked different in each city, region, district, and village. In some areas citizens staked claims to the same positions, resulting in small-scale battles for power.⁵⁹ In others, officials from the Protectorate era simply retained their positions. In still others, new people took the places of those who were expelled or chose to leave.

The process of rebuilding the state administration was different in Slovakia. The issue of how to unify the Czech lands and Slovakia was a long-standing problem that had been contested since the founding of the First Czechoslovak Republic in 1918. The issue of unity was hindered by divergences in the basic principles of state administration as well as nationality and language.⁶⁰ While the Czechs had inherited their laws and administration from the Austrian half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Slovaks had taken theirs from the Hungarian half. During the Second World War such divisions were exacerbated after Czechoslovakia was divided into the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the fascist Slovak Republic. From 1939 the communist party was likewise divided, into the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) and the Slovak Communist Party (KSS), with separate memberships and chains of command. The Slovak question was one of the most acrimonious for National Front politicians. The KSČ leader Klement Gottwald suggested making the postwar republic an “asymmetrical regime” in which Slovaks would have their own administration, a compromise put into practice in the coming years. The postwar Slovak security service, the Commissariat for Internal Affairs (Povereníctvo SNR pre věci vnútorné), functioned autonomously from Prague.⁶¹ In the Czech lands and Slovakia, the May 1946 elections played a central role in reallocating power at all levels of the state administration.

THE MAY 1946 ELECTIONS: EXPANDING THE RANKS OF THE KSČ

In 1946 KSČ leaders had several plans for increasing the influence of their party: achieving victory in the elections, manipulating backroom negotiations to favor their policies, and undermining the coalitions of rival political parties. The first strategy, achieving victory in the elections, was considered the most crucial on the agenda. It was imperative to encourage as many citizens as possible to vote for the party in May 1946, a goal that met with considerable success. Between May 1945 and March 1946 the KSČ increased from 27,000 to 1,159,164 members in the Czech lands.⁶² The KSČ was attractive for many of the same reasons it had been popular in the 1920s: the Czechs’ historical affiliation with leftist politics, political tradition sympathetic to the USSR and Slavophile movement, and large working class. Party membership appealed greatly to students and members of the cultural elite and intelligentsia.⁶³

Between May 1945 and the first party verification campaign in October 1948, when the party began to expel less active members, the KSČ lowered the standards for admission and placed few demands on its rank and file. Joining the party did not require breaking off social connections with members of noncommunist political parties. While ideological belief may have been meaningful from an individual perspective, it initially mattered little for the KSČ from an institutional perspective. Victory in May 1946 required only that members show up for the elections and vote for the party. Even the communists were surprised by the margin of victory they attained, which reached 40 percent of the vote in the Czech lands (the second most popular political party, the National Socialists, received 23 percent).⁶⁴ The communists were less successful in Slovakia, where the Democratic Party won 62 percent of the vote and the Slovak Communist Party only 30.37 percent.⁶⁵

Much of the success was due to the KSČ’s grassroots activism. Members were encouraged to recruit friends, colleagues, neighbors, and acquaintances to the party.⁶⁶ Groups of ten party members, who were often from the same neighborhood or workplace, divided responsibility for tasks, meetings, and recruitment campaigns between themselves.⁶⁷ Grassroots networks also enforced accountability to the party since friends and acquaintances could pressure one another to enforce decrees and carry out orders.⁶⁸ According to Marie Švermová, who headed the party’s organizational department, “Members recruited those around them, including acquaintances, relatives, and workmates.”⁶⁹ Švermová’s experience came from directing the organizational brigades that accompanied the Red Army into Czechoslovakia to distribute applications to the KSČ and party identification cards in the last months of the war.⁷⁰

Although the electoral victory was a triumph for the party, opening the ranks of the party introduced social, political, and generational tensions into its ranks.⁷¹ As the memoirist Heda Kovály explained, this inclusive policy allowed people with questionable wartime backgrounds and motivations to join.⁷² All parties of the National Front experienced similar tensions as new members flooded in after the war, including people from the rightest parties that had been banned.⁷³ Interpersonal issues were exacerbated by rivalries and struggles for positions in the postwar state. As a communist from the time complained, a comrade in the military “backed officials from among his own acquaintances” for promotions.⁷⁴ Complaints regularly reached Šváb and other party leaders. On one occasion Šváb exploded at one man, yelling, “I don’t want to hear another word about those rogues!”⁷⁵

Against this backdrop of electoral politics, social tensions, and interpersonal rivalries, communists in the Czech lands and Slovakia began to infiltrate rival political parties, collect material on opponents’ meetings, and note who made statements against the KSČ. KSČ leaders described winning and losing battles as the ability to steal supporters from other political parties or break up coalitions perceived as unfriendly to their aims. Even so, early efforts to recruit informers to the service of the party remained haphazard.⁷⁶ In a report from early 1946 the official Jindřich Veselý described one network as a collection of “more or less randomly selected employees of state security who are cooperating with us.”⁷⁷ Informers, for their part, supplied intelligence on their own terms and to serve their own ends. In practice this often meant informing on personal rivals as much as on those who represented a threat to the interests of the party.

THE ZOB II: THE CZECH(OSLOVAK) MODEL OF THE SECRET POLICE

The first KSČ secret police network was called the ZOB II, an acronym that signaled it was a branch of the intelligence service (II) stationed in regional-level offices (ZOB: Zemský odbor bezpečnosti).⁷⁸ The ZOB II was a covert party intelligence network run illegally inside the ranks of the official intelligence service of the National Front. Consequently, it is difficult to say precisely when it was created. It does not appear to have been used by the communists to collect information until early 1946, when KSČ security leaders began to recruit informers on a regular basis and assess local agents on the basis of party loyalty. Most of its informer reports date from 1947, as Cold War tensions and political disagreements in parliament escalated. Even at its height, in 1947, the network was small. An estimated 92 agents worked in the ZOB II in Prague and 229 in lower-level offices.⁷⁹ Unlike the heavily armed, military-style Polish MBP, the Czech ZOB II had no authority to arrest, detain, or interrogate citizens.⁸⁰ The ZOB II, like the National Front intelligence service, was divided into sectors for political, economic, and counterintelligence. Agents in the political sector collected information on noncommunist political parties, the church, and the youth. Agents in the economic sector gathered intelligence on industry, agriculture, and trade. Counterintelligence agents studied former Nazi intelligence networks and cases involving alleged war criminals.⁸¹ In Slovakia KSS networks collected information on the Slovak communists’ political rival, the Democratic Party.⁸²

Many agents who became the first officer corps of the Stalinist StB were first trained in the ZOB II. Milan Moučka, one of the Soviets’ most trusted agents in 1949, was one such example. Moučka spent his early career hiding in noncommunist parties, collecting information for an office he didn’t work for, and withholding information from his superior officer, who belonged to a different political party. Officially, he was employed in the SNB office in Jihlava. Unofficially, he was tasked with building an informer network inside the SNB to collect materials on other political parties and war crime investigations to send to a ZOB II contact in Brno.⁸³ As he explained, “We built a wide network of collaborators to send information to Brno. We carried out work according to our own abilities and the instructions given to us during trips to Brno.” He used a fake name and pretended to belong to the National Socialist and People’s Parties in order to attend their meetings and collect information on their activities.

While only the KSČ built a centralized party intelligence network, it was not unusual for members of other political parties to favor members of their party in sharing sensitive intelligence. From the perspective of 1945 the Czechoslovak intelligence force had, similar to the security force, been cobbled together from agents trained in the First Czechoslovak Republic, the Protectorate regime, émigré services in Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, and partisan groups. Such disparate training, political affiliations, and foreign connections posed a constant barrier to the establishment of trust and unity in the force.

By situating ZOB II networks in regional offices, the communists took advantage of intermediary positions in the state service. In the National Front government, after all, those in top positions such as minister of the interior were harangued constantly in the press for their decisions and were dependent on a long chain of subordinates for information. Intermediaries, in contrast, could access information directly as it moved between offices. In their words, they created an “expedited route” through the security branches of the National Front.⁸⁴ Such networks functioned covertly and drew on the principle of plausible deniability. Plaček captured the spirit of this principle by describing informers as “ostensibly private persons” (zdánlivě soukromé osoby).⁸⁵ If something went wrong, the party could simply deny that the agents or informers had worked for them. Before the May 1946 elections communist agents were told to hide their party affiliation from the public and maintain the “outward appearance of ‘above party politics.’”⁸⁶ Some were not allowed to attend communist meetings for reasons of conspiracy. Others, like Moučka, hid their identity in order to infiltrate meetings of noncommunist political parties. The few organizational charts of the ZOB II depict lines of command that twist, turn, and loop around the hierarchies and departmental divisions of the institutions of the National Front. Such networks were clearly organized by agents intimately familiar with local institutions, party affiliations, laws, social relations, and personal connections. They depended on whether an agent’s boss belonged to the communist party, whether someone had friends in a national committee, or whether someone had chance connections to a rival political party.

THE ZOB II ORGANIZERS: LAWYERS AND INTELLIGENCE AGENTS

Most of the agents who helped organize the ZOB II had joined the communist party before the Second World War. Several were trained in law, the humanities, or military intelligence. Several were of Jewish background. With a few exceptions, notably Karel Šváb and Josef Pavel, most were from middle-class or professional backgrounds. Most spoke fluent German and several spoke French, Russian, English, or Hungarian.

Bedřich Pokorný was an important figure in the earliest secret police force. He had trained as a military intelligence officer in the First Czechoslovak Republic and joined the communist party after the Second World War. In April 1945 he was appointed head of the Brno security office and promoted soon after for his activism in leading the security operations in which German civilians were expelled from the region.⁸⁷ As head of the National Front department for counterintelligence (Department Z), Pokorný began to design the first communist agent and informer networks.⁸⁸

His model stressed continuities with the policing system of the First Czechoslovak Republic and favored professional competence over political loyalty. He based early prototypes for informer networks on his expertise in intelligence operations on the Slovak–Hungarian border in the 1930s.⁸⁹ In his description of communist intelligence networks from 1945, Pokorný explained that informers should be dispersed in cities, “at least one for every street,” and villages across the country. They should be selected on the basis of loyalty to the communist party.⁹⁰ Under his direction, training materials were translated from German into Czech, including the Austrian intelligence manual Kriegs- und Industriespionage.⁹¹ He was convinced that security agents should be recruited, as he himself had been, from among those with experience in a security force, gendarme, or border guard unit and have higher education or at least a high school education.⁹²

Bedřich Pokorný, a founder of the Czechoslovak secret police. Sbírka Zvláštní vyšetřovací spisy (ZV): arch. č. ZV-4 MV.

Pokorný believed that all communist party members could be called on to provide the party with information. This model of the secret police afforded no separation between the party and its intelligence service. One example of this melding of the party with its informer networks was a plan from December 1946 outlining the surveillance of a hotel. Agents were instructed to ask hotel employees who belonged to the communist party for information.⁹³ Instructions on the recruitment of informers from March 1946 specified that members of the SNB, criminal police, secretaries, drivers, and office workers could all be recruited as informants.⁹⁴ Although most informers were not paid for the intelligence they provided, they could trade it for help in securing a raise, apartment, or promotion. In at least one case an agent’s meeting with an informer specified that the latter had requested that the communist party intervene to secure her a new apartment.⁹⁵ This was the model that was vastly expanded after the communist takeover of power in 1948. For Pokorný, all competent state employees were to be taught how to gather intelligence and conduct small-scale surveillance operations inside their institutions (menši sledování). Rank-and-file officials from the state security service, criminal police, border guards, passport control, prison guards, and workers’ militia were all encouraged to volunteer information to the party.⁹⁶

If Pokorný was the theorist of early KSČ intelligence networks, Štěpán Plaček was the organizer and implementer. He graduated from the Faculty of Law of Charles University in 1933, a time when lawyers and law school faculty were closely involved in shaping Czechoslovak politics.⁹⁷ In 1945 Plaček requested to be appointed to the security force because “as a lawyer and communist, I felt I could best apply my training in the security service.”⁹⁸ Many of the laws he learned in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s had been inherited from the Habsburg Empire.⁹⁹ Others, such as the “Law on the Defense of the Republic,” which was central to the communist takeover of power in 1948, had been passed in interwar Czechoslovakia.

Within the security force, Plaček was active in postwar retribution investigations, likely because of his Jewish background. His work seems also to have fit his personality. The historian Karel Kaplan, who interviewed Plaček in the 1980s, described him as “an intelligence agent in body and soul” because of his tendency to see enemies behind any suspicious act and his conviction that the intelligence service would play a major role in shaping Czechoslovak society and history.¹⁰⁰ Plaček, along with other communist secret police officials trained in law, helped transform the security force by writing new laws on national security.¹⁰¹ As was the case with all major issues in the National Front, these laws were negotiated with members of other political parties. The draft of the 1947 law on national security was subject to rewriting, negotiations, and drafts by members of several political parties.

Pokorný and Plaček passed the information they received through ZOB II networks to Karel Šváb, who ran the KSČ intelligence network. Šváb’s background was impeccable by postwar standards. He had joined the communist party in 1921, the year it was founded. His involvement in working-class politics could be traced to the period of the Habsburg Empire, when his father had run for parliament as a social democrat. His sister, Marie Švermová, was also a fervent communist.¹⁰² Šváb was arrested soon after the Nazis occupied Bohemia and Moravia. He spent the war in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After 1945, Šváb acted as a one-man personnel department. He gathered information on KSČ members’ wartime activities and backgrounds and collected intelligence from the many networks run by other KSČ officials.

Since communist intelligence networks were linked closely to the authority of leading KSČ functionaries such as Pokorný, Plaček, and Šváb, personal disagreements between them could result in institutional breakdowns. After an argument with Zděnek Toman, who headed the KSČ’s foreign intelligence network, Plaček ordered ZOB II agents to conduct surveillance on Toman.¹⁰³ As Toman related to Plaček, “I initially gave you whatever information I received. . . . But I stopped giving you foreign intelligence, since you stopped giving me domestic intelligence.”¹⁰⁴ Plaček’s other rival was Karel Šváb, about whom he wrote a fifty-eight-page list of complaints.¹⁰⁵ In April 1949 Plaček was asked to leave the service because of personal quarrels with almost every other member of the security force.¹⁰⁶

Sometimes agents argued among themselves about what the Soviet model of the secret police was. For example, Šváb and Plaček argued over whether, in the Soviet model, the communist party spied on the secret police or the secret police spied on the communist party. This issue, relying as it did on intimate knowledge of a hyper-secretive police state, was far from clear. It was never resolved. Before the Soviet advisors arrived in late 1949, the adoption of the Soviet model was less about imitation than it was about interpretation and argumentation. Little wonder that agents who had watched each other for years with such suspicion were quickly convinced of each other’s “enemy activity” in the late 1940s. Such mistrust led to disagreements over positions and institutional jurisdictions after the takeover of power in 1948.

THE RANK AND FILE: MILITARY INTELLIGENCE AND 1ST CZECHOSLOVAK ARMY CORPS

ZOB II agents and their counterparts in district intelligence offices (the OZO, or Okresní zpravodajští odbočky) included workers, office managers, former military intelligence agents, security officials, criminal police officials, and members of national committees.¹⁰⁷ Many had professional experience in a military or security force and higher education. The head of the OZO of Litoměřice was a former lieutenant in the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps. He spoke Russian and Spanish and had experience in the military intelligence service (OBZ).¹⁰⁸ Another official had experience in the military intelligence service and spoke German, Hungarian, Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian. An official from Liberec had received training in the military intelligence in the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps and spoke German.¹⁰⁹ But not all had backgrounds in military intelligence. An agent from Hradec Králové was a locksmith by trade.¹¹⁰ An agent from Plzeň was a graduate from a law faculty who had headed a national committee.¹¹¹ The Plzeň office had another official with a degree from a law faculty who spoke English and French and had trained in the Czechoslovak army in the West.¹¹²

In March 1946 Pokorný requested that only agents with appropriate capabilities and education be left in place.¹¹³ Officials judged to be insufficiently dedicated to the communist cause or those who did not supply useful information were to be released from service. An agent from the town of Most, a former corporal in the SNB, was not recommended because he was “only interested in having fun.”¹¹⁴ Another was let go for having collaborated with the Germans.¹¹⁵ Another left of his own volition because “as the owner of two dental practices he could not fully dedicate himself to the task at hand.”¹¹⁶ For many lower-level agents, collecting information for the KSČ was one of several occupations. Others were called on to provide individual pieces of information.¹¹⁷ A member of a national committee, was “called on to cooperate [with the ZOB II] from time to time.”¹¹⁸ The role of these agents in collecting information and passing it to KSČ leaders in Prague become more salient after the parliament passed the communists’ so-called Building Program on 7 July 1946. The program, which was run under the leadership of the communist prime minister Klement Gottwald, expanded the government’s policies of land reform, the nationalization of enterprises, and economic growth.¹¹⁹ After the announcement of the program, Czechoslovak communist leaders recommended that ZOB II agents double or triple their number of informers in factories, production, and administration, “from the director to the smallest department.”¹²⁰

GOTTWALD’S BUILDING PROGRAM AND THE EXPANSION OF THE ZOB II

From July 1946 Jindřich Veselý expanded communist agent and informer networks into national committees. Veselý, a member of the KSČ since 1921, had joined the Ministry of the Interior in 1945. From the middle of 1946 he began to place communists in the position of security consultant (bezpečnostní referent), the head of security offices in national committees.¹²¹ In the handbook Veselý wrote for the position he explained that security consultants were expected “[to] determine the morale and incorruptibility of leading agents in the security force and know officials’ ‘psychological, political, and moral disposition.’”¹²² He further noted that they must “remember that the party had placed them in their position,” signaling the loyalty the party expected from them. Like ZOB II agents, they were told to use their positions to collect intelligence for the KSČ. The KSČ estimated that the party controlled around 95 percent of security consultant positions by October 1946.¹²³ During the takeover in February 1948, the KSČ considered them to be some of the most trusted officials in local communities.¹²⁴

The KSČ soon learned that the practice of bringing untrained people from the working class into the security force threatened to undermine its competence and effectiveness. To train new people in intelligence practices and communist ideology, they created a three-week-long training course for ZOB II agents in May 1946.¹²⁵ Of the twenty ZOB II agents trained in this course, eight had spent the war in the Protectorate police and five in a concentration camp.¹²⁶ The head of the political department of the ZOB II, Josef Klofáč, had spent three and a half years in hard labor during the war. The head of foreign intelligence, Vladislav Kroupa, was born in 1922 and had spent time in Mauthausen and Dachau concentration camps. The head of the economic department, Vratislav Houdek, born in 1919, was an exception. He had spent the war working in the national theater.

In this training course Pokorný lectured on methods of political intelligence; Plaček on counterintelligence measures; and Jan Hora, a former police officer who had worked in the gendarme in the First Czechoslovak Republic (1931–39), instructed students on the punishment of wartime traitors and collaborators. Students’ evaluations of the course praised lecturers like Pokorný who could speak about intelligence work based on their own experience. Another student used the evaluation as an opportunity to complain that the lecture on sabotage was “so filled with professional jargon . . . that it was impossible to follow.”¹²⁷ Communist ideology was taught in the course, but its content focused largely on postwar policies to nationalize industries and the assertion that the Second World War had been an imperialist war.¹²⁸ Agents were taught that the rise of fascism could be attributed to the rise of capitalism. As one student responded in his final exam, “Without capitalism fascism cannot arise. . . . The best weapon against fascism is a conscious working class which cannot be deterred.”¹²⁹

From October 1946 these agents began to recruit informers to the communist cause. Instructions from the period called for engaging “as many people as possible in intelligence work,” including members of trade unions and other political parties.¹³⁰ A study of the ZOB II in Ostrava noted that it was difficult to find informers in border regions since such regions were allegedly filled with “profit seekers” who worked only for their own advantage.¹³¹ This comment likely referred to the widespread looting that followed the expulsion of the Germans after the war.¹³² As in the recovered territories in Poland, it was difficult to recruit informers in areas with few established communities since the effectiveness of such networks depended on the stability of social, personal, and professional relationships. In spite of Pokorný’s emphasis on enlisting informers on the basis of party loyalty, the communists noted that some security officials worked with reservation in case of “another change in the political system.”¹³³ Others informed on other party members whom they perceived as not being loyal. In a report typical of the period, one informer mentioned that another party member was “likely not reliable enough” to furnish information.¹³⁴

In spite of the fact that communist networks were run covertly, the communists’ political rivals were aware that the KSČ had created agent and informer networks to collect information on them. Not infrequently they took the communists to task in parliament for these methods of intimidation. On 16 October 1946 Ota Hora, a representative of the National Socialist Party, argued that it was unacceptable that the ZOB II was dominated by a single political party. He criticized the communists for bringing people with no education or experience into the security force.¹³⁵ And yet in spite of the KSČ’s influence over the ZOB II, the party was far from having a monopoly on the country’s security and intelligence forces, as historians have frequently assumed. From the perspective of the Soviets, KSČ leaders had not in fact successfully infiltrated state institutions such as the Ministry of the Interior.¹³⁶ The party apparatus, a Soviet observer noted in June 1947, was the communists’ main strength in Czechoslovakia and a “large and active power base that can be mobilized for the upcoming struggle.”¹³⁷ This observation proved to be prescient in the months to follow.

Between January and September 1947 the communists began to step up their harassment of members of the National Socialist and Social Democratic Parties. They studied interpersonal relations and financial issues in these parties.¹³⁸ The creation of the Cominform in September 1947, one of the first steps toward coordinating the communist parties of Eastern Europe on an international scale, coincided with the escalation of domestic political conflicts in Czechoslovakia.¹³⁹ Parliamentary disagreements, especially those involving the communists’ manipulation of the security forces, reached such a pitch that the National Socialists succeeded in having the ZOB II and the Department of Political Education dissolved in December 1947.¹⁴⁰ ZOB II agents were transferred to other intelligence and security offices.¹⁴¹ Debates over the fate of the intelligence services of the National Front raged on, ultimately contributing to a standoff between the KSČ and its political rivals that sparked the communist coup in February 1948.

FEBRUARY 1948: ACTION COMMITTEES AND THE SECURITY SERVICE

The disputes in parliament over the communists’ manipulation of the National Front intelligence services had reached a crisis point by February 1948. In protest, fourteen noncommunist ministers submitted their resignations to President Edvard Beneš on 21 February.¹⁴² As Beneš vacillated over whether to accept the resignations, Gottwald took to Old Town Square to rally “all good Czechs and Slovaks—workers, peasants, small tradesmen, and intellectuals” to form revolutionary councils called Action Committees (akční výbory).¹⁴³ Close to a million citizens heard Gottwald’s speech over the radio. Slánský directed party organizations and factory councils to organize mass rallies and street demonstrations to pressure Beneš to accept the resignations.¹⁴⁴ Within a few weeks the KSČ and its affiliated civic organizations had formed Action Committees in state institutions, cultural groups, factories, universities, and sports clubs. Although the precise powers of Action Committees were initially nebulous, it soon became clear that they could issue “bans from public life” that could prevent citizens from holding positions of authority in a university, trade union, civic group, or the state administration.¹⁴⁵ They linked many aspects of everyday life, including employment, access to a university education, social benefits, and housing, to party membership and loyalty. Citizens who refused to join the party risked losing their jobs or incurring stigmas that could haunt families for decades.¹⁴⁶

The fear and terror spread by Action Committees pushed many citizens to go into exile rather than risk imprisonment or expulsion from their positions. Although the numbers are far from certain, the communists estimated that around twenty-five thousand citizens went into exile between 1948 and 1950, many for political reasons.¹⁴⁷ The Slovak communist party (KSS) formed its own Action Committees to expel members of the Democratic Party from state administration and public life in Slovakia.¹⁴⁸ Through Action Committees, not the secret police, millions of KSČ members brought the revolution into everyday life across the country.

The KSČ constituted their government, which they somewhat confusingly also called the National Front, as a coalition of political groups, civic groups, partisan units, trade unions, and peasant organizations. It included ninety-three representatives of political parties, both communists and members of noncommunist parties who were deemed sympathetic to the revolution. Similar to the principles outlined by the reform communists in Czechoslovakia in 1968, the communist takeover of power in 1948 relied on the alliance of a single political party and a diverse civic and organizational base. Where Action Committees did not arise spontaneously, the Central Action Committee, created on February 25, ensured that they did.¹⁴⁹ Antonín Zápotocký headed the Central Action Committee. Rudolf Slánský served as first deputy.¹⁵⁰ Otto Šling, a prominent figure in regional party politics, headed the Brno Action Committee. Jarmila Taussigová, who later headed the Party Control Commission, was deputy to the general secretary, Alexej Čepička.¹⁵¹ Marie Švermová, the head of the KSČ organizational department, was also a member.¹⁵² With the exception of Zápotocký and Čepička, all these figures were arrested in the internal party terror of the late 1940s and early 1950s, when these Czechoslovak institutions were increasingly replaced by centralized, Soviet-inspired ones.

In creating Action Committees, the KSČ in effect created a state of dual power in Czechoslovakia. A leaflet from the time described Action Committees as the “voice of revolution” and declared that their verdicts overrode the laws and hierarchies of the National Front government.¹⁵³ There is little doubt that their success was due in part to the tensions caused by the political favoritism that influenced state appointments, promotions, and raises. As revolutionary as these committees were, however, they did not represent a complete break from the previous political order. The legal framework underpinning their rules and responsibilities duplicated the 1945 presidential decrees, including the Great Decree on the punishment of Nazi criminals, traitors, and collaborators; the Small Decree on national honor; and the decree on the purge of public employees.¹⁵⁴ Like the presidential decree on the purge of public employees, Action Committees granted officials inside each institution the authority to expel people from their own ranks and solicited denunciations from colleagues to judge defendants. A difference was that the 1945 purge of public employees required two members of the purge committee to be knowledgeable of the law and the third to be a person of equal rank as the person on trial.¹⁵⁵ On Action Committees, subordinates could fire superiors, communists could fire each other, and people with no knowledge of the law could enforce verdicts.

Armed workers stormed factories and trade unions to overthrow unpopular bosses and managers. The party press celebrated this subversion of hierarchies. In the newspaper Rudé právo party journalists expressed pride that “workers across the republic” were removing ministers, managers, and bosses from their positions.¹⁵⁶ Such articles unwittingly revealed how terrifying such incidents could be, as in this account of the removal of the minister of transport by railway workers: “Dr. Pietor, a Slovak democrat and the Minister of Transportation, was surprised when the doors of his office flew open. In stepped the blue uniformed workers of the Czech Transportation office. His secretary ran after them, stuttering. This unusual audience was short. Dr. Pietor, you are no longer a minister. We workers have lost faith in you. Leave your office by 1:00pm. Dr. Pietor tried to speak of legality, of terror, of the president, but no one listened. The soldiers of the blue army are as hard as stone. You can never move them. The Ministry of Transport was empty by 1:00pm.”¹⁵⁷

If sentenced, an official could lose his job, be demoted, or receive lower pay. Given the lack of checks on the process, some members of Action Committees used their powers to pursue personal gains or exact revenge against rivals, occurrences common in the postwar retribution trials as well. KSČ leaders were aware of such instances. In an article in Rudé právo on March 11 titled “How to Conduct a Purge,” Zápotocký, then the head of the Central Action Committee, specified that the first step toward conducting a successful purge was to rid oneself of “personal interests, fits of vengefulness, and sadism” before acting.¹⁵⁸

Action Committees could also punish citizens for dissent, the potential for dissent, and moral failings.¹⁵⁹ The communists added four new transgressions to the postwar retribution decrees: unreliability, incapability, incompetence, and ineffectiveness, charges that went beyond the political goals of the purge and touched on issues of professional competence, a notorious problem for the new officials who had joined state institutions after the war.¹⁶⁰ The charge of being unreliable was applied to those who expressed discontent with the new political order as well as issues such as working incorrectly or not keeping proper work hours. The charge of incapable encompassed “any kind of personal shortcoming that may affect the administration of office,” including sickness, character defects, drunkenness, gambling, an amoral lifestyle, or arrogant behavior. The charges of incompetence and ineffectiveness described a lack of professional experience, the tendency to leave work randomly, or the habit of “engaging in pointless activities.” While such charges were elastic and open to local interpretation, they seem generally directed at strengthening work discipline in response to chaotic postwar conditions.

As during the National Front period, the KSČ believed that a wide variety of state and civic groups should help enforce state security. The People’s Militia was formed out of postwar factory militias on 21 February 1948 and placed under the leadership of Josef Pavel. Around six thousand militiamen marched in Prague in support of the KSČ during the revolution. Inside of factories, power was devolved to workers’ councils. National committees created their own militias. As the town of Most reported, “During the [February] crisis we employed ‘factory guards’ to defend factories and guard the borders against illegal crossings.”¹⁶¹ National committees were granted the authority to confiscate and distribute the property of those deemed enemies of the new regime.

In an interview on March 7 Slánský set the goal of “opening [the party’s] doors to all right-minded people” and recruiting two million new members into its ranks.¹⁶² During these months the communists extended KSČ membership to former political rivals. The merger of the KSČ with the Social Democratic Party (SD) in June 1948 was in some ways a formality after Action Committees had destroyed the Social Democratic Party from the bottom up by forcing its members to join the KSČ. In some districts the SD was already dissolved at the time of the merger.¹⁶³ Rudé právo gleefully celebrated the defeat of enemy political parties and publicized the number of new people who had joined the communists: “In two days 7,540 new members of the KSČ!”¹⁶⁴ It celebrated the “mass withdrawals” from the national socialist party. “Hundreds of National Socialist functionaries are entering the KSČ!” trumpeted one article, naming influential National Socialists who were joining the communists, including members of factory boards, trade unions, and national committees. Even though the decisions of members of other political parties to join were celebrated vociferously, in fact over 75 percent of new KSČ members in 1948 had never belonged to a political party.¹⁶⁵

Unsurprisingly, the broad, unchecked authority granted to Action Committees spread fear and uncertainty in local communities. In the town of Písek the head of the security office demanded that all agents in his branch be transferred elsewhere.¹⁶⁶ In Olomouc a member of the Action Committee had a nervous breakdown and committed suicide.¹⁶⁷ In Liberec four members of the Action Committee were arrested for theft. Some Action Committees did not limit themselves to removing people from their positions. A security official reported that local civilians had “taken the right to arrest upon themselves” and detained ninety people in the community.¹⁶⁸ The KSČ applied special rules to Action Committees in the security service.¹⁶⁹ Such wariness proved to be justified. In one case members of Action Committees fired on-duty border guards without informing their superiors, actions that posed a threat to border security.¹⁷⁰

The call to purge state enemies led to unexpected outcomes when central and local perceptions of enemies were misaligned. In Těšín, a city historically contested by Czechoslovakia and Poland, the Poles expelled Czech nationals from the Action Committee and used the Action Committee as a platform to demand Polish language administration. National conflict against the Germans was reignited in many areas.¹⁷¹ A security agent from Česká Lípa reported that Action Committees had expelled Germans and other “unreliable elements” from their homes and gave them four hours to prepare for departure (odsun). Action Committees forced 108 Germans to flee the district of Klatovy. The devolution of power and rapid promotion of citizens with little professional experience contributed to the spread of corruption in the party and state. National committees, Action Committees, or security officials could confiscate the property or apartment of those who were arrested or attempted to flee abroad.¹⁷² The property of those who were arrested, including cars, typewriters, and telegraph machines, were taken over for use in local security offices.¹⁷³ This authority incentivized security employees to entrap citizens, encouraging them to flee in order to expropriate their property.¹⁷⁴

The power to take the job of a person who had been expelled from state service during the retribution trials or by an Action Committee was widely coveted among new party members. As the memoirist Heda Kovály wrote, “A Party card became a credential for the large number of men jockeying for positions as managers of nationalized companies, farms, and factories or custodians of property left behind by evicted German and Czechoslovak émigrés, whose numbers were swelling. A few years later, I happened to visit a ‘comrade’ who had just returned from a two-year stint in a border region. His apartment was like a museum. I had never seen so many exquisite antiques and paintings in a private collection. He told me, ‘When I left Prague, I had nothing except a little suitcase in hand. And now just look!’”¹⁷⁵ Corruption was fueled by Action Committees’ authority to confiscate apartments for those deemed loyal members of the state. Leaders in Prague were aware of this corruption. In the words of Minister of the Interior Václav Nosek, “The comrades have been covering up certain irregularities.”¹⁷⁶ Jan Hora, the head of the Prague security office, admitted after a tour of the security forces in 1948 that the KSČ had “[tolerated] property theft carried out by members of the security corps, in many cases alongside abuse of office.”¹⁷⁷ Such reports informed the decision to create a Party Control Commission in June 1948 to punish abuses of power in the party’s ranks.

The security and intelligence services also played a role in the communist takeover of power. During and after February agents loyal to the KSČ carried out house searches, interrogations, and arrests and forced noncommunists into exile.¹⁷⁸ Plaček and other agents arrested noncommunist ministers they believed represented a threat to the communist monopoly on power.¹⁷⁹ Former members of noncommunist political parties were forced to inform on their colleagues to prove their loyalty to the KSČ and the new state.¹⁸⁰ In one case likely representative of many, communist agents recruited an informer to spy on other members of his party. The recruitment materials admitted that he was clearly working “out of fear.”¹⁸¹

After several months of purges and expulsions, Slánský proclaimed victory over the old regime in April 1948: “We have rid ourselves of the old police bureaucracy inherited from Austria and the pre-Munich Republic.”¹⁸² The communist national identity was linked in this way to the anti-bureaucratic spirit of the Action Committees and the desire to purge the Austrian influences from the state. Local self-rule affirmed the dignity of a small country emerging from years of foreign domination: “Czechs are ridding themselves of their minority complex,” noted Slánský. “We no longer have to bow before gentlemen from Vienna or supplicate before Czech factory owners or Austrian district leaders or the millionaires from London and New York.”

In spite of the chaos and disorder that characterized the first months of the revolution Action Committees did succeed in diminishing the influence of noncommunist political parties in public life. Between February and June 1948 the number of communists in the military and security services doubled as compared with the period before February.¹⁸³ Outcomes differed depending on local participation and initiative. By the end of 1949, Action Committees had removed around twenty-eight thousand people from their positions. Around two-thirds of them were assigned to menial jobs, a punishment similar to that meted out during the “normalization” campaign that followed the Prague Spring in 1968.¹⁸⁴

The Soviets, for their part, reacted with ambivalence to the way the KSČ had taken power. After a Soviet observer spoke with local party members and activists, he determined that the majority “could not define the role of the so-called Action Committees” that had been “created spontaneously in every area of government and social life.”¹⁸⁵ He noted with apprehension that members of Action Committees tended to intervene unpredictably in state affairs. Certainly the Soviets’ response was far from celebratory when Stalin issued a note criticizing the supposed mistakes of the KSČ on 5 April 1948 and attacking the party for focusing too much on increasing mass membership and winning elections.¹⁸⁶ Similar criticism was reiterated in front of an international audience at a meeting of the Cominform in June 1948, when Slánský was blamed for allowing members of the Social Democratic, National Socialist, and Slovak Democratic Parties to join the KSČ.¹⁸⁷ While the Czechoslovaks viewed their road to communism as involving mass participation and winning elections, Moscow evidently saw things differently.

And yet criticism of the way the KSČ had come to power also emerged from its own ranks. Over time, KSČ control authorities became frustrated with party members’ tendency to interfere in state appointments or use their positions for personal gain. KSČ members, emboldened by the power they had been granted in Action Committees, continued to issue orders to security officials arbitrarily and even overturn orders made by other party members. “It is unthinkable,” explained Hora after completing a control visit to security offices in Prague in mid-1948, “that party organizations should intervene in the internal affairs [of the security service] and appoint officials directly to tasks. In at least two cases they did so without speaking with anyone from [the central office] about it. Such interventions subvert discipline and order.” Someone somewhere in the party, he wrote, had prohibited security officials from conducting investigations of foreigners. It was unclear why, where the order had come from, or where the authority to investigate foreigners had gone. In another case a party official refused to approve two nominations for positions in the force: “Out of interest I note that although I attend plenum meetings regularly, to this day I don’t know whether those officials were accepted or not, or what they said against the party.”¹⁸⁸ In some places groups of relatives had taken charge of security branches. In others “unscrupulous characters in the party” abused their power to “demand restitution for supposed injustices” or “attain political success.”¹⁸⁹

Whether because of Stalin’s criticism, their own observations, or both, the KSČ announced the end of mass recruitment in July 1948. Henceforth the party would follow the “Bolshevik policy” of selecting members on an individual basis after an extensive background check.¹⁹⁰ On 29 September 1948, the Slovak Communist Party was merged with the KSČ. On 3 November 1948 a two-year candidacy period was introduced to the party that set in place a further barrier to entry. If a person was not familiar with the foundational principles of party ideology, Rudé právo stated, he should work for between six months and a year in a mass organization where he would “become familiar with the politics of our party.” The term “paper communists” was used to describe members who were deemed insufficiently active.¹⁹¹ In December 1948 a ban on accepting new members was instituted.¹⁹² The communists had won power by quickly expanding the ranks of the party and devolving authority to its rank and file to determine who was loyal to the new political order. But they had done so in conditions of widespread corruption and with little information about who had come to power in lower-level offices. They had taken power at a high cost to the stability of the country and with little consensus on what, exactly, the newparty state would look like.

THE SEARCH FOR THE SOVIET MODEL OF THE SECRET POLICE

In May 1948 Hora was tasked with reporting on the state of affairs in the state security (StB) offices in Prague. This task was easier said than done.¹⁹³ Initially, he could not find the buildings in which the offices were housed. Evidently the Ministry of the Interior was situated in at least six separate buildings.¹⁹⁴ “How, given this state of affairs,” he lamented, “are the heads of [security] expected to run a unified service and carry out oversight?” In his report he explained why the buildings were so dispersed: “Out of necessity and circumstances, completely unplanned locations were searched out.”¹⁹⁵ From the early days of the revolution security offices had been established on an ad hoc basis rather than in accordance with a central plan. Such confusion applied to the institutional organization of the force as well as location. KSČ leaders did reach a consensus on a few issues. First, their service would employ people who had never served in any other security or police force. In early March 1948 a plan was established to recruit two thousand communists into the ranks of the SNB, of which the StB was one part.¹⁹⁶ Second, political education officers were reintroduced to impart a unified communist vision to the force.¹⁹⁷ Third, grassroots formations such as national committees, the People’s Militia, and Action Committees would be involved in enforcing their vision of state security. As summarized by Karel Černý, “The construction of a modern state security service demands the collection of information and a decentralization of the agenda.”¹⁹⁸

KSČ leaders also decided to study how secret police institutions were organized in other countries of Eastern Europe. Such information was intended to help shape discussions on a new national security law to be passed later that year. Veselý, Šváb, Plaček, Pokorný, and others met in June to discuss preparations for the law.¹⁹⁹ They pored over the laws and policing models of the First Czechoslovak Republic as well as those of communist Bulgaria, Poland, and Hungary. All were criticized for not giving enough autonomy to the lowest levels of state administration.²⁰⁰ In the end they maintained the structure of the National Front security force. They agreed not to create a strong centralized political police since such a service would render national committees and other grassroots organizations “submissive instruments without their own initiative.” They concluded that the “special conditions in Czechoslovakia” justified relying on local models to design their security service.²⁰¹

In the spring of 1948 KSČ security and party leaders traveled abroad for inspiration. In June 1948 Plaček was sent to observe secret police forces in Bulgaria, Romania, and Yugoslavia. He sent copies of his notes to Moscow.²⁰² His intention was not to imitate these services but to adopt aspects of them he believed would improve the Czechoslovaks’ model. As he wrote from Bulgaria, “There is no doubt that mechanically introducing the experiences [of other countries] would be harmful. But our own system has been built almost entirely on our own experiences and mistakes. It would be beneficial to compare it to the outcomes and experiences of others and take what is possible to apply in our context.”²⁰³ Plaček took extensive notes on the methods, organization, and culture of other East European secret police forces. His notes are a remarkable source on the internal workings of institutions that were almost entirely closed to outsiders.

Given the large number of reports on corruption and arbitrariness in the force, a central concern was to develop control and oversight mechanisms. As Plaček noted, Soviet-style secret police forces such as the Bulgarian secret police had numerous control authorities that checked compliance with central directives, and punished instances of corruption or political disloyalty. These included the instructor division, which inspected regional and district offices, and counterintelligence units, which verified the information that agents provided in their personnel files and handwritten biographies. Unlike Czechoslovak officials, who were under the spell of the revolutionary fervor of February 1948, Plaček noted that Bulgarian officials “seemed very serious and are not subject to illusions or romanticism.” Evidently, Bulgarian agents had a different attitude toward communism than their Czechoslovak counterparts.

The Bulgarian force, he noted, consisted of two main divisions: the operative branch and the realization branch. While the operative branch was responsible for opening cases, running agent networks, and gathering materials on suspects, the realization branch carried out arrests, house searches, and interrogations. The two branches overlapped with respect to jurisdiction and training: “Realization agents are also operative agents to a certain extent. They are not divided by the Great Wall of China,” Plaček explained.²⁰⁴ With respect to policing methods, Plaček remarked that the Bulgarians placed more emphasis than the Czechs on recruiting informers and conducting surveillance on suspects.²⁰⁵ In Czechoslovakia as of July 1948, he explained, only 386 of 2,021 security employees were dedicated primarily to the collection of intelligence.²⁰⁶ In part this was because ZOB II networks had been small in the National Front era for reasons of conspiracy. Now that the KSČ was in power, it could organize training and recruitment drives on a national scale.

The services also differed in their use of professional terminology. One of Plaček’s tasks was to translate Soviet operative terms into Czech. His goal in translating such terms, he explained in later years, was to enable Czech agents to think in new ways about policing and operative work.²⁰⁷ The Soviet operational lexicon describing informers, for example, differed from that employed by the Czechoslovaks. While the Czechs distinguished between informers on the basis of political reliability, favoring party members over others, the Soviets emphasized an informer’s social proximity to the enemy.²⁰⁸ For the Soviets, it was more valuable to recruit a friend or acquaintance of the target than a party member since the former was more likely to have access to privileged information. Although Plaček was Sovietizing the force by translating such terms into Czech, the act of translating showed that he was interested in making the Soviet model more comprehensible to locals, as opposed to simply adopting the Russian terms, which increasingly became the practice from the early 1950s.

Plaček’s trip also familiarized him with the realities of everyday life in other secret police forces. In Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Hungary he ate in expensive restaurants, resided in high-end hotels, and accompanied local party and security officials on outings to lavish private dachas. During his time abroad East European communist leaders pressured him, in public and private settings to more closely adopt Soviet practices in Czechoslovakia. Bulgarian officials suggested that he introduce the rhetoric of the class struggle in Czechoslovakia. Polish officials expressed surprise at how small the Czechoslovak security force was and asserted that the Czechs should increase their number of their operative agents. On the last day of Plaček’s trip, when he happened to be in Belgrade, Tito was expelled from the Cominform. After Plaček read about the incident in the Czechoslovak party daily he cut his trip short and hurried back to Prague.

Slovak agents traveled to Hungary to study postal censorship and surveillance technologies in October 1948.²⁰⁹ They spoke with the Hungarians about the latter’s methods of manipulating elections, doubtless based on the Hungarians’ experience in the falsified 1947 elections. Slovak agents remarked that the “most effective way the security force intervened in the Hungarian elections was to deprive those with ‘reactionary opinions’ of the right to vote.” The Hungarian communists also falsified ballots and engaged in “dry terror,” a term they used to describe the practice of following and intimidating noncommunist political candidates. As such exchanges show, the Hungarians had evidently enriched the Soviet model of the secret police in the areas of postal censorship and manipulating elections.

Plaček laid out the findings of his trips in a letter to KSČ leaders on 13 July 1948. He described the letter as a “voice of warning” (varovaný hlas) signaling his conviction that it was necessary to radically reorganize the security force in Czechoslovakia to conform more closely with the practices and models he had observed abroad. Above all, he recommended recruiting members of the working class into leading positions in the force.²¹⁰ He proposed expanding the size of the force and using it to infiltrate mass organizations, particularly Sokol, the Czechoslovak gymnastics organization, which had organized protests against the KSČ regime earlier that year.²¹¹ He claimed that the communists had too few agents stationed in “state offices, courts, and the security forces,” places he believed there to be “a large number of wreckers, spies, and reactionaries.”²¹² He pointed to the Catholic church as a new area of concern, declaring it a “dangerous and openly hostile enemy of the People’s Democratic Order” and citing cases in which church figures had been caught distributing antiregime fliers. Finally, he argued that it was imperative to place agents in economic targets to ascertain why the economic plan was not being fulfilled. He recommended dividing the Ministry of the Interior into separate institutions for political policing and policing the public order. In short, he advocated expanding the security forces into new areas of state, public, and economic life, many of which were applied to the force in the coming years.

Following these trips Slánský, Nosek, Veselý, and Pavel met to discuss how to reorganize the Ministry of the Interior. Perhaps influenced by the Bulgarian model, they decided to separate the security service (StB) from the ministry of the interier, in effect creating an independent political police.²¹³ Veselý and Pavel were sent to Poland to study the MBP’s personnel department and take notes on the methods they believed could be adopted to “the Czechs’ own needs.”²¹⁴ The most important qualities of a Bolshevik cadres’ department, KSČ security leaders decided, were that it was highly centralized and coupled personnel decisions with political and professional schooling.²¹⁵ A new law on national security was passed on 28 December with the goal of making the security service “an effective instrument of the class struggle.”²¹⁶ The law eliminated formal educational requirements to enable workers to rapidly achieve officer status. It imposed a centralized command structure on the Czech and Slovak halves of the force, although the Slovaks still retained considerable autonomy vis-à-vis Prague.²¹⁷ Referencing the Soviet model, a centralized party organization was created in the service to collect information on StB officials, run party education courses, and verify officials’ knowledge of ideology.

A special unit to train female security agents was created on 15 September. Women were trained for tasks like conducting raids on theaters, recreational areas, cabarets, bars, dance clubs, and cafes as well as particular responsibilities in the force such as social services, detaining young people suspected of running away from home, and investigating the family circumstances of enemies from a “social and security perspective.”²¹⁸ New people, like Osvald Závodský, were granted leadership positions in the StB. Závodský was born in October 1910 and, like many Czechs at the time, joined the KSČ in 1936 during the years of the Great Depression.²¹⁹ In November 1937 he joined the International Brigades and served in the communist underground in France during the Second World War. In 1942 he was arrested by the Gestapo and spent the remainder of the war in Mauthausen concentration camp. In November 1948 he was appointed to head the state security service (StB).²²⁰ Under his leadership the KSČ shifted security operations from targeting political enemies to infiltrating society and the economy. The economy—its shortcomings and growing pains during the transition to communism—became the focus of one of the most notable initiatives of the second half of the year, the campaign to send “asocial elements” to labor camps.

THE LAW ON LABOR CAMPS AND THE REVIVAL OF THE ACTION COMMITTEES

The communist security forces were put on high alert for the funeral of President Edvard Beneš, who died on 3 September 1948. KSČ leaders in Prague initiated such precautionary measures since they expected the funeral to be accompanied by protests against the new regime.²²¹ They had been uneasy since members of the gymnastic organization Sokol, a civic group that was closely associated with the First Czechoslovak Republic, had organized protests in July. But they also decided to take advantage of the increased security measures to carry out yet another step in the takeover of power: the confiscation of apartments from wealthier members of society and the distribution of these apartments to those considered loyal members of the new state. In the phrasing of KSČ leaders, the aim was to expel class enemies, defined as “those who aroused public anger,” from apartments in Prague, Karlovy Vary, and Jáchymov. According to the communist official Václav Kopecký, the campaign would consolidate support for communist rule: “Apartments should be taken away from the rich and given to those who need them most. It would really help us.”²²² He suggested moving thirty-five thousand people out of the city since “our main streets are all occupied by members of the bourgeoisie.”

As KSČ leaders had expected, student organizations and civic groups gathered in September to protest the regime.²²³ To counter the threat, the security forces detained 237 people in Prague and a similar number in other cities.²²⁴ But it soon became clear that their information on whom to detain was outdated and incomplete. Some people they tried to arrest no longer lived in the country, and others were no longer even alive.²²⁵ These issues prompted security leaders to rethink how the service collected intelligence. Pokorný placed the fault for the cases of mistaken identity on the institution’s card catalogue system (kartotéka).²²⁶ He suggested replacing the card catalogue with a “black list” based on the model of the military intelligence service of the First Czechoslovak Republic. This black list collected suggestions on whom to arrest (návrhy) by members of the KSČ, national communities, and Action Committee who knew “local conditions and the people who acted in a harmful way in their communities.”²²⁷

The two most important revolutionary laws of the year were enforced in this manner. The first was the Law on the Defense of the Republic, passed on 6 October 1948, which had been adopted from a 1923 emergency law passed during the era of the First Czechoslovak Republic.²²⁸ It included five chapters defining crimes against the state, including “provocations against the republic,” “economic sabotage,” “gatherings against the state,” “insulting the republic,” and failing to alert the authorities of a crime. Comparable to the emergency laws in the Weimar Republic, France, and elsewhere from the same period, it sanctioned the use of extensive executive authority in cases in which the Republic was facing an existential threat.²²⁹ The second piece of revolutionary legislation was the Law on Labor Camps, passed on 25 October.²³⁰ This law was based on a campaign to arrest black marketeers in Slovakia after the Second World War. It targeted categories of citizens to send to labor camps: those who traded on the black market or failed to deliver quotas; so-called asocial elements defined as criminals, recidivist criminals, prostitutes, homosexuals; and “politically unreliable people,” including members of banned political parties, former collaborators, wreckers, terrorists, and distributors of antistate propaganda. As in February charges went further than party affiliation alone. The harsh measures that followed were informed by a breakdown in the food supply that left local administrators demanding the punishment of people who did not deliver their share of agricultural products: “Voices were raised in factories, counties and regional party organizations calling for tough measures against the black market and shopkeepers and peasants who did not meet delivery quotas.”²³¹ KSČ officials and Action Committees were allowed to set up labor camps in their regions or districts.²³²

Slánský called on members of national committees, civic organizations, partisan groups, trade unions, and Action Committees, to identify class enemies in their communities in connection with these campaigns.²³³ After all, both laws were designed to be readable, and therefore enforceable, by average citizens.²³⁴ Rudé právo asserted that a goal of simplifying legal procedures was to allow workers and peasants to take part directly in governance: “It is not necessary for citizens to travel to ministries or central offices in Prague, Brno, and Bratislava, or even regional offices for official business. They can handle everything in their village, county or—at the highest level—district offices. This is the meaning of the decentralization of public affairs.”²³⁵ As Alexej Čepička, then minister of justice, wrote in September 1948, the “new legal order must be understandable to everyone.”²³⁶ State administration need no longer depend on professional knowledge or education.

The campaign against asocial elements was carried out with the minimal participation of the central government.²³⁷ The final decisions on whom to arrest were made by anonymous three-member commissions acting on the behalf of regional national committees.²³⁸ The number of citizens sent to labor camps depended on local initiative and decisions. The numbers were highest in Prague (1,631), Brno (1,228), and Ostrava (833). Between 300 and 400 persons in České Budějovice, Plzeň, Karlovy Vary, Mladá Boleslav, and Pardubice were sent to labor camps. Liberec and Olomouc incarcerated around 200 people, and Ustí nad Labem, Gottwaldov, Hradec Králové, Kladno, and Jihlava around 100 people.²³⁹

Only later did KSČ leaders in Prague take stock of who, exactly, had been sent to labor camps in this campaign. A report from early 1949 noted that, of 50 arbitrarily selected people in labor camps, 4 were thieves, 3 were black marketeers, 1 a drunk, and 2 work shirkers. The remaining internees were “random people,” usually workers who had been punished for petty crimes.²⁴⁰ It was necessary, proclaimed Veselý in light of this report, to stop putting workers into labor camps and start arresting class enemies. In a process lasting until the end of 1949 leaders began to turn in fits and starts away from their model of security, which had relied on identifying enemies through party channels, decentralized networks, local knowledge, and participation from below and toward one based on centralized bureaucratic process and planning. The unit assigned to implement these changes and create a centralized political police force was the instructor group (Instruktáž).²⁴¹ On 15 September 1948 the instructor group, doubtless reacting to the chaotic response to Beneš’s funeral, noted that it was necessary to create a state security service with “decisive influence” over political policing.²⁴² From the end of 1948 they helped build the Stalinist StB in Czechoslovakia. The ad hoc councils in regional national committees that had been commissioned to send citizens to labor camps were replaced when the Stalinist Penal Code was adopted in 1950. This Code placed the authority to arrest citizens in the hands of the courts and prosecutors.²⁴³

Although the instructors later lamented that the February revolution had not gone far enough, in fact, the year 1948, had seen dramatic changes to everyday life in Czechoslovakia. Political pluralism had been destroyed through the repression and forced dissolution of noncommunist political parties. Action Committees, not the Ministry of the Interior, dissolved National Socialist, People’s, and Social Democratic parties by forcing citizens to join the KSČ. Another consequence of 1948 was the expansion of the KSČ to include millions of new members. Although the party closed its doors to new members at the end of the year, many rank-and-file KSČ members had joined during a period in which “national roads to socialism,” political pluralism, and a heterogeneous public and civic sphere had been the norm. The expansion of the KSČ had brought generational tensions into the party, most notably between younger communists from the working class and older communists from the middle class or intelligentsia.

The impact of the February revolution on civic life was mixed. On the one hand, Action Committees expelled many noncommunists from civic organizations. But, on the other, as the Sokol protests demonstrated, communist control over society was far from complete at the end of 1948. And the KSČ’s vision of power included room for a plurality of civic organizations like partisan groups, peasant organizations, the People’s Militia, and trade unions that, while proclaiming loyalty to the KSČ, often pursued their own interests. This period saw the beginning of the redistribution of property and the policy of confiscating property from wealthy classes or enemies of the state. But, as was the case with most policies enacted by Action Committees, initiatives were carried out in a localized, even arbitrary, manner.

The strategies that had enabled the takeover of power, namely, opening up KSČ membership and decentralizing the authority to carry out repression and law enforcement, posed challenges to the party’s grip on power in the months to follow. Certainly the Soviets saw it this way when they concluded that the KSČ did not have sufficient control of state institutions and criticized KSČ members’ tendencies to intervene arbitrarily in the functioning of the state administration. The Czechoslovaks diverged on the question of how far the revolution should go. While some began to ask whether the revolution had gone too far, others asked whether it had gone far enough. Were those who had joined the KSČ after February 1948 truly loyal to the party, or only opportunists who wanted to retain their positions? The takeover of the state also introduced new, prosaic issues to the way the KSČ would manage power: Who would receive which position in the new state? Who would be given apartments in the center of Prague? Such issues which were either sidelined or irrelevant during the takeover of power, resurfaced now that the common enemies had been vanquished.

THE CZECHOSLOVAK MODEL OF SECURITY

Between 1945 and 1948 the Czechoslovak ZOB II was formed in the chaotic atmosphere of postwar retribution trials and backroom parliamentary politics. After February 1948 communists with expertise in intelligence gathering or legal affairs dedicated their know-how to increasing the influence of the party and securing its monopoly on political power. The takeover would not have been possible without their direction or the networks they built in factories, political parties, and other areas of public life.

The Czechoslovak model also involved broad parts of the population and campaigns from below to collect information and even carry out arrests. Given the decentralization of power in the National Front, the plurality of civic and political actors in public life, and the disorder in the security and intelligence forces in their earliest years, understanding why and how the communists took power in 1948 requires shifting the lens of inquiry from Prague to include regional party bosses, rank-and-file party members, Action Committees, and national committees from all walks of life. Members of these committees, not leaders in Prague, decided whom to expel from the state administration and civic life in Czechoslovakia. Millions strong and dispersed across institutions and public life, the KSČ rank and file dominated Action Committees. Action Committees were the offspring of retribution laws, communist party networks, and improvisation. They provided a platform for communists to pursue revenge, resolve interpersonal rivalries, and send people who did not work hard enough or those who had, in the language of the time, “roused public anger” to labor camps. They reignited conflicts against local Germans. Not only the secret police force but also members of national committees, partisan groups, and workers’ militias provided information to the party on whom to arrest or detain. They helped solidify the takeover of power and enabled the campaigns against political enemies and asocial elements that followed.

Along the way Czechoslovak leaders rejected or debated key aspects of the Soviet model of the secret police: its card catalogue (kartotéka), its elite status, and its centralized bureaucratic structure. And yet, as different as Czechoslovakia was, it was not entirely dissimilar to communist takeovers in Poland and eastern Germany. East European communists returned to their countries in 1945 with similar ideas for party networks and the conviction that they could make decisions based on local conditions. To varying degrees they used partisan groups, militias, and militaries as recruitment grounds for postwar security forces. The revolution in Czechoslovakia was neither completely improvised nor completely planned. Because Soviet advisers and their local agents arrested Czech and Slovak communist leaders starting in 1950, it is impossible to say whether Action Committees would have transitioned from ad hoc revolutionary councils to a permanent system of governance. Either way, the 1948 moment—the Czechoslovak road and its antibureaucratic, decentralized administration—loomed large in the history of the movement and would inform the arrests of many prominent officials who had served in either Action Committees or the state’s early security forces.

3

Secret Police Networks in the Soviet Zone of Occupation in Germany

IN SEPTEMBER 1945 Martin Casper belonged to K5, an elite unit of the criminal police created by the Soviet occupation authorities in eastern Germany after the Second World War. In February 1946 he was promoted to the surveillance department, where he answered to a Soviet captain and lieutenant. As he related in his memoir, the Soviet advisers taught him how to collect information, follow people, and trail suspects. His training focused on investigating Nazis and alleged war criminals from the Gestapo, SS, security forces, and Nazi military police. “I was taught,” he wrote, “that I needed to determine not only the address of the person in question but also with whom he had connections.” The Soviets instructed him to become personally acquainted with suspects, watch their apartments, and watch when they left their apartments. Following a person for hours was difficult, Casper remembered, not to speak of when the suspect boarded a tram or left town, “when the fish slipped out of the net.”¹

Between 1945 and 1949 the Soviet Union occupied eastern Germany in accordance with the law of unconditional surrender. In 1945 a million and a half Soviet troops were stationed in the Soviet Zone of Occupation in Germany (SBZ) or, less formally, the Zone. In the Zone the Soviets relied on German officials such as Casper to fill positions in the state administration and assist with investigations of fascists and war criminals. The Soviets—and all the Allies—arrived in Berlin not only to defeat and dismantle the Nazi regime they had fought for the past four years but also to build a new political and social order in Germany, even if there was initially little consensus on what this would look like in practice. In July 1943 the Soviets helped organize the National Committee for a Free Germany (NKFD), an antifascist organization with prominent members who became the first East German leaders, including Walter Ulbricht, Anton Ackermann, Wolfgang Leonhard, and Wilhelm Pieck.² As the Allies debated at Yalta over what to do with occupied Germany, the Soviets and Germans began to dismantle Nazi institutions. Former Nazis fled their posts, committed suicide, or were deposed by locals. The Nazi state had also begun to collapse of its own accord. As a woman in Berlin wrote in 1945, “Bureaucracy strikes me as a fair-weathered friend. The whole civil service shuts down at the first sign of shrapnel.”³ The political and social revolution in the first months of the occupation was neither completely spontaneous nor completely organized by the Soviets or the German exiles returning from Moscow but a mixture of both that depended on local conditions and sentiments.

“We come as Judges,” proclaimed the Red Army journalist Ilya Ehren burg in an article written while on the march to Berlin.⁴ After the destruction of large parts of their western territories, four years on the battlefield, and the death of an estimated 26.6 million soldiers and civilians, the Soviets approached the occupation of Germany with obsessive resolve.⁵ In accordance with the May 1945 law on unconditional surrender, the Allied powers—the USSR, United States, Great Britain, and France—were granted all functions of the German government from high command to municipal administration.⁶ It is unsurprising, then, that the Soviet occupation authorities made all major and minor appointments in the east German administration after the war. The Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) was headed by Marshal Georgy Zhukov and his deputies, Colonel General V. D. Sokolovskii and Colonel General Ivan Serov.⁷ By the end of 1946 SMAD employed 49,887 Soviet military and civilian officials.⁸ Soviet control over eastern Germany mirrored the situation in other former Axis powers that were occupied by Allied Control Commissions after the war, including Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria.⁹

Understanding the entangled history of Soviet and German security in the Zone requires examining the era from both Soviet and German perspectives. In 1945 the NKVD and NKGB, the Soviet security and intelligence forces that entered the territory of eastern Germany with the Red Army, had primary authority over arrests and operations. They relied on assistance from German citizens serving in the People’s Police, a police force they trained and staffed, to help establish order. The Soviets also collected intelligence from informers in the German communist party (the KPD or, from April 1946, the SED) and K5, the elite unit of the criminal police that worked for the Soviet occupation authorities, to implement denazification efforts and vet new officials for service in the postwar administration.

I trace the evolution of these forces from the beginning of the occupation to the creation of an independent East German state. The first German political police in the Zone, K5, was more than a carbon copy of the NKVD or NKGB, although it adopted many of these forces’ practices since its officers were selected and trained by them. It also emerged from the particularities of Soviet-occupied eastern Germany: the denazification campaigns in which agents were trained; the extensive powers granted to the Soviets, who made virtually all personnel decisions in the SBZ; the complete destruction of the Nazi state in the war, which gave the Allies a free hand in shaping postwar politics; and the continued mistrust between the Soviets and Germans, countries that had recently fought on opposing sides of the most devastating war in history. This reality led the Soviets to frequently withhold information, intervene in cases, or simply take over operations from their German counterparts at the expense of building a strong political police in eastern Germany. Although the East German Stasi later became the most extensive secret police force in the Eastern Bloc in terms of its number of agents and informers, it was, in this period, the least developed of the three precisely because of the extensive Soviet influence over it in the early postwar era.

SOVIET SECURITY FORCES IN THE ZONE

Several Soviet security forces entered the territory of eastern Germany alongside the Red Army in 1945. These included the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD), headed by Ivan Serov, and the People’s Commissariat of State Security (NKGB), headed by Viktor Abakumov.¹⁰ Both answered directly to Stalin rather than to the Soviet military occupation authorities.¹¹ Between 1945 and 1946 the NKVD dominated operations in the Zone.¹² In his notes from June 1945 Serov described how the NKVD micromanaged German decisions and administration: “It is becoming difficult to find time to write [in this diary] for a number of reasons. First, there is little time because it is necessary to watch and direct [sledit’ i rukovodit’] the Germans literally day and night in case unexpected questions or occurrences arise. Second, it is necessary to leave Berlin frequently to travel to the provincial centers of Leipzig, Halle, Mecklenburg, Jena, Dresden, etc.”¹³ What, exactly, the NKVD was so busy with was left unsaid.

Between 1945 and 1946 the NKVD conducted mass arrests and pacification campaigns. Serov led these operations. He had overseen similar mass repression in Poland and in the newly annexed western borderlands of the Soviet Union.¹⁴ Arrests in the Zone targeted categories of the German population deemed a threat or potential threat to the occupation authorities, including former Nazis, war criminals, and young people considered potential members of the Werewolf resistance group. These groups were swept into NKVD-run Special Camps through raids on public places or on the basis of information collected from local informers. Some were deported to labor camps or to the Soviet far east.¹⁵ In these Special Camps the NKVD collected information on suspect categories of the population for use in future operations.¹⁶ According to their statistics, between May and October 1945, 94,000 people were arrested in the SBZ.¹⁷ As Richard Bessel has pointed out, this number was analogous to the number of Germans interned in the American Zone of Occupation. While the Soviets interned 1 of every 144 inhabitants, the Americans interned 1 of every 142.¹⁸

Between May 1946 and October 1949 primary authority over Soviet security in the Zone was granted to the NKGB under Abakumov.¹⁹ This shift coincided with the transition from conquering the territory of eastern Germany to building the German administration in the Zone. The NKGB was run with obsessive secrecy. NKGB agents worked covertly in offices that were detached from the rest of the military occupation administration. Liaison officers shuttled information between them and the rest of the administration to maintain conspiracy and to keep agents’ identities secret.²⁰ The NKGB received information from operative groups and informers that were, in their words, “well hidden under the ‘roof’ of Soviet institutions on German territory.” These institutions included the political adviser apparatus, the Soviet Coordinating Committee of the Allied Control Commission for Germany, the department of repatriations, and a “relatively small but qualified network of agents in different sectors of the population and German party and state institutions.”²¹ In some cases MGB agents served as the deputy to an office, such as the deputy to a political adviser.²²

Abakumov was, like Serov, part of a generation of Stalinist security officials who rose in the ranks during the years of the Great Terror. Born in Moscow in 1908, he joined the communist party in 1930 and the Soviet secret police in 1932.²³ Other high-ranking MGB officers stationed in Germany had similarly served in the Soviet secret police for decades. Petr Mitrofanovich Chaykovskii, the deputy head of the MGB in eastern Germany between 1 January 1947 and 25 December 1951, had served in the secret police for twenty-four years by the time he was appointed in Germany. He was born in 1902 and joined the communist party in 1926, soon before the launch of the First Five-Year Plan and collectivization drives in the USSR.²⁴ Stepan Ivanovich Filatov, the deputy head of the MGB in Brandenburg from March 1946 to April 1950, had been in the service for twenty years.²⁵ Filatov was born into a family of poor peasants in 1901. He joined the MGB in April 1925 after a brief career in the Red Army. His personnel file from his service in eastern Germany specified that he was “very familiar with agent and operative work,” the specialty of NKGB operatives in the Zone.²⁶ The decades these men spent in the Soviet secret police force during a period that saw violent collectivization drives, class warfare, mass operations against socially marginal people and nationalities, and the Great Terror would doubtless have impacted their perceptions of enemies and methods of policing.

While there is no doubt that the NKVD’s and NKGB’s use of brutal arrests, interrogations, and covert operations was influenced by officials’ training in the terror of the 1920s and 1930s, it was influenced as well by the more recent experience of war and occupation. Reports from the postwar era noted the frequency of corruption, looting, desertion, and unauthorized killings by NKGB and NKVD officials that hardly evinced the institution’s reputation for discipline and order.²⁷ Such instances suggest parallels with the violence committed by Red Army soldiers at the end of the war.²⁸ In some cases NKGB officials were punished for excessive violence, as when two interrogators were sentenced to three years in prison for killing a German who was in custody.²⁹ A circular from 10 September 1947 outlined the disciplinary issues evident in the NKVD at the time, including desertion, stealing weapons, looting, anti-Soviet agitation, and attempted suicide. In December 1945 an NKVD border official had tried to flee to the American Zone of Occupation. He told the authorities, “I didn’t want to serve in the NKVD. I wanted to serve in the Red Army, but they wouldn’t let me.”³⁰ There were instances when NKGB officials attempted to flee.³¹ The section of the circular dedicated to attempted suicides reflected the impact of the war on even the most hardened of institutions, mentioning an agent who tried to kill himself “after receiving a letter from home informing him of the death of his mother and murder of his brother-in-law.”³²

Soviet security officials, particularly the NKGB, helped select Germans to serve in the postwar state administration. As the Red Army moved through Germany in the last months of the war, Soviet security and military officials appointed mayors, police chiefs, prosecutors, and judges.³³ As Georgi Dimitrov, the former head of the Comintern, explained in a diary entry from 26 June 1945, Serov was involved in selecting Germans for postwar positions: “Serov to see me (on Zhukov’s instructions) regarding the composition of the provincial governments of Brandenburg, Saxony, and Mecklenburg.”³⁴ The factors NKVD officials were told to consider when appointing Germans were their loyalty to the Soviet Union, ability to win the trust of the local population, and aptitude for carrying out the function they were given.³⁵ From the perspective of locals these appointments seemed, and often were, hastily made and somewhat random. In one case the Soviets appointed former Polish forced laborers to head a local town.³⁶ One official, Karl Grünberg, related in his memoir that he was appointed in May 1945 to head a district court after a Soviet military commander scrawled an ID card in Russian and German on a piece of blue cardboard: “Equipped with this authority, I set to work in the old courthouse.”³⁷ Soviet commanders had assigned judicial authority with improvised ID cards and a handshake.

Such hastiness was doubtless a result of the priority of winning the war and the necessity of establishing order in the conquered territories. But it appears also to have been part of a strategy of employing as many locals as possible, barring war criminals and high-ranking Nazis, in the new state administration. In his memoir a German communist related the instructions of a Soviet commander in 1945: “Everyone who wants to work should be taken. It doesn’t matter what he was before. We need every hand.”³⁸ This was important given the prerogative of replacing the many state officials who had been members of the Nazi party. For the same reason the Soviets sought to bring as many Germans as possible into the ranks of the communist party (KPD). Even “minor Nazis” were accepted into the KPD provided they actively participate in party life or a factory organization.³⁹ This policy of accepting former Nazis into the KPD was a source of frustration for long-term members, who saw it as a betrayal of communist principles. As a KPD member described in her memoir, she complained to a Soviet commander in 1945 that “anyone, without recommendations or clarification of his political past,” could enter the party. She had mentioned the issue to her German comrades, who responded that they had received a similar command: anyone who wants should be allowed to join the KPD. She approached a Soviet commander to voice her discontent over the issue:

“What types of people are these that we are accepting—careerists and even traitors! When we go into the street and recruit people, we get all sorts of ‘communists’ in our party! . . .”

The Soviet commander responded, “Whom are we accepting?”

“Everyone, everyone who shows up!”

“And who shows up? Militarists? War criminals?”

“No, they are afraid of us and ‘Siberia.’”

“So capitalists?”

“No, they don’t expect anything from us.”

“So factory and municipal workers? Nazi hangers-on? Those that come to you voluntarily are your common people. Your people are sick, very sick. You have no influence over the man on the street, unfortunately. But you have influence over party members. You must use this influence. And you can always kick people out.”⁴⁰

This conversation reveals a great deal about mass recruitment at the time: the tensions between older and newer KPD members, the disagreements between the Soviets and German communists on the issue of KPD membership, and the Soviets’ view that party members could be more easily influenced than those who remained outside of the party. And the people who did not prove their loyalty could simply be expelled from the KPD, whether in training programs, purges, or verification campaigns.

Before a Ministry of the Interior was created in eastern Germany in 1946, Soviet commanders assessed Germans who were interested in joining the KPD or postwar administration in face-to-face interviews. It is likely, since NKGB agents were stationed in the adviser apparatus, that they were privy to the information collected during these meetings and used it to build a body of intelligence for future personnel decisions. From the earliest days of the occupation Soviet advisers and military officials gathered information on Germans who approached them to offer their service to the new state. Although the Germans did not always comprehend these tactics, there seemed to be a widely understood sense that something was up. “Don’t let them in on our ‘little intrigues’!” one German was told when he was sent to register the branch of his political party with a Soviet commander.⁴¹

Vasily Grossman, a war correspondent for the Red Army, captures the Soviets’ suspicion of Germans, even long-term KPD members, who approached them in 1945 to proclaim their loyalty: “An old man, a house painter, produces his [Communist] Party identity card. He has been a member since 1920. This does not make a strong impression. He is invited to sit down. Oh, how weak human nature is! All these big officials brought up by Hitler, successful and sleek, how quickly and passionately they have forsaken and cursed their regime, their leaders, their Party. They are all saying the same thing: ‘Sieg!’—that’s their slogan today.”⁴² Given the extent of persecution of KPD members under Hitler, the German communists who spent the war in prison, concentration camps, or exile in Moscow were suspicious of the communists who had managed to live for years under Nazism.⁴³ Likely for this reason recruitment for higher positions in the administration, including the later secret police force, required proof that a candidate or one of his family members had been persecuted by the Nazis. The Soviets regularly appointed not only KPD members but also former concentration camp prisoners, forced laborers, political prisoners, and émigrés regardless of political affiliation to critical positions in the postwar state.⁴⁴

One KPD member recalled the interview she had with a Soviet commander when she expressed interest in joining the KPD. She was, in her words, “put to the test.” The commander questioned her motivations for joining the party and familiarity with KPD history: “Questions rained down one after the next: our personal life, the economic relations in our area, the political attitudes of the population, the history of the German and international workers’ movement. . . . The conversation lasted the whole night. It began almost as an interrogation and ended as a friendly discussion.”⁴⁵ Soviet advisers carried out discussions on motivations and political knowledge with anyone who wanted to establish a branch of a political party in eastern Germany. Having put together an “anti-fascist committee,” one communist was questioned on “our intentions, what we wanted to do, where we came from.”⁴⁶ Branches of political parties were registered only after their founders had been questioned in this way.

The Soviets assessed Germans’ trustworthiness and efficacy on the job in such interviews. As one KPD member recalled, a Soviet commander asked whether he had fixed a road as he had promised to do. The German official answered that he had not, and it was obvious that the commander knew this. As the official related, such tests were “an example of how [the Soviet commanders] tried to find out whom they were dealing with. Is he trying to avoid straight answers or is it possible to rely on what he said? I had this experience many times. [The commanders] used this method at every opportunity since they needed to know who could be relied on and who couldn’t.”⁴⁷

SOVIET MILITARY TRIBUNALS

NKVD and NKGB officials handed cases to Soviet military tribunals (SMTs) to resolve.⁴⁸ Such tribunals were created on 22 June 1941, the day the Soviets declared a state of war with Nazi Germany.⁴⁹ They remained active in East Germany until January 1955, when the state of war was finally lifted.⁵⁰ SMTs issued sentences of ten or twenty-five years of hard labor for crimes like speaking out against the occupation authorities, carrying weapons, or harming Red Army soldiers.⁵¹ Although they convicted 270 people in the last months of the war, between January and May 1945, they were most active between 1946 and 1948, when they issued 13,600 verdicts.⁵² Unlike Poland or Czechoslovakia, which did not adopt Stalinist legal codes in the first years of communist rule, 72 percent of cases held before SMTs were tried under Article 58 of the Soviet Penal Code, for counterrevolutionary crimes. In the words of the historian Bettina Greiner, this law consisted of “fourteen elastic clauses capable of accommodating almost any interpretation that penalized espionage, sabotage, anti-Soviet propaganda, and the formation of illegal groups.”⁵³ Article 58 had been used extensively to punish political crimes during the Great Terror of 1936–38 in the Soviet Union.

These military tribunals and Soviet security forces introduced a new legal vocabulary to eastern Germany. Three categories of political crimes introduced in the SBZ were used in the GDR for decades to come: diversion, agitation, and counterrevolutionary crimes.⁵⁴ The term “diversion” was applied in the earliest months of the occupation during NKVD mass operations 00315 and 00780 to prosecute alleged members of the Werewolf resistance group.⁵⁵ The concept of agitation (Hetze) signified that a person had expressed a negative opinion of the Soviet Union, occupation authorities, or communist party.⁵⁶ Both terms, “diversion” and “agitation,” were codified in the 1968 GDR legal code and remained on the books until 1989.⁵⁷ The concept of counterrevolutionary crimes evolved from Article 58 of the Soviet criminal code. It was evoked between 1945 and 1955 to prosecute an estimated thirty-five to forty thousand Germans, many of whom were sentenced to twenty-five years’ imprisonment or even executed. The term continued to be used to prosecute crimes in the GDR, including those associated with the uprising in June 1953. The legacy of the legal changes introduced during this period had repercussions for decades after the death of Stalin, although the connotations, punishments, and frequency with which certain criminal charges were evoked would change.

KPD membership afforded no legal immunity from SMTs. Quite the opposite. After the merger of the KPD and the SPD into the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in April 1946, twice as many former KPD members as SPD members were sent to NKVD internment camps for making anti-Soviet statements, protesting the creation of the SED, or speaking out against the occupation authorities.⁵⁸ One communist was condemned to ten years’ imprisonment in October 1947 for “demanding that Soviet troops be recalled from Germany at a public gathering of the Bloc parties.”⁵⁹ He was released ten years later, in 1956, since he had been a member of the KPD since 1921. Of course communist party membership extended no legal immunity in the Soviet Union either. But the repression and fear during the period of mass recruitment to the KPD set it apart from the case of Czechoslovakia, where mass recruitment took place in conditions of parliamentary democracy. For Czechoslovak communists, the years of internal party terror were confined to the 1950s.

Likewise, there was no legal immunity for those who joined the state administration or police forces in eastern Germany. In 1947 a member of the People’s Police was condemned to twenty-five years of hard labor after he and another member of the police shot at a Soviet military vehicle and killed a military official (it is unclear why).⁶⁰ Another was sentenced to ten years of hard labor in 1946 for attempting to arrest two Soviet soldiers who were stealing laundry from a German woman. He shot at one soldier and injured the other. Another police official was sentenced to twenty-five years for war crimes committed in Poland. In some cases German police officials tried to prevent Soviet soldiers from raping German women. Between May and December 1945, thirty-seven members of the People’s Police were killed and, in 1946, eighty-seven police officials were killed in such incidents.⁶¹ In spite of the Soviets’ welcoming gestures in 1945, then, it was clear that such inclusive policies could be rapidly reversed as the threat of high putative measures hung over members of the KPD and new administration alike.

THE SOVIETS AND THE GERMAN COMMUNIST PARTY (KPD/SED)

On 10 June 1945 the Soviets allowed political parties and trade unions to be created in the Zone. Four German political parties, the KPD, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), were reestablished.⁶² As occurred in other communist parties at the time, the KPD and its leaders, Anton Ackermann in particular, espoused the policy of national roads to socialism. In a February 1946 paper titled “Is there a special German path to socialism?” Ackermann advocated a policy line that differed from that of the Soviet Union.⁶³ Even so, given the conditions of occupation and the late, contested statehood of the GDR, the concept of a German national road to socialism was never as meaningful as in the other countries. KPD officials were simply not given the same room to maneuver independently of Moscow. Before the GDR was founded, members of the NKFD, and Pieck, Ulbricht, and Grotewohl especially, made critical political decisions only after consulting Moscow.⁶⁴ Speeches, policies, and proclamations of the (SED) Central Committee were subject to the approval of, and were often simply written by, the Soviets.⁶⁵ Like the Polish communists, the KPD came to the postwar period with ranks that had been decimated in Nazi Germany and the Great Terror in the Soviet Union. During the Great Terror around 70 percent of KPD emigrés in the Soviet Union had been arrested. Of the 500 leading German communists in the 1920s, 102 had been killed by Hitler and 41 by Stalin.⁶⁶ It was necessary, given these conditions, to admit hundreds of thousands of new members into the party. Between August 1945 and April 1946 membership in the KPD increased from 150,000 to 624,000.⁶⁷ Only around one-tenth of these members had been in the KPD prior to 1933.⁶⁸

There were many reasons for Germans to join the KPD in 1945. The defeat of fascism informed a political shift to the left across Europe. According to one woman, her husband had been “radicalized by terrible war experiences and wants to join the communists.”⁶⁹ Whereas in Poland it was possible to be killed for joining the PPR, in eastern Germany joining the KPD posed no risk to one’s life. Like Czechoslovakia, Germany had a large working class and a long history of communist agitation. In fact, tens of thousands of German communists came to the Zone after being expelled from Czechoslovakia and helped found the SED in April 1946.⁷⁰ Many joined through trade unions, which had reached 1.8 million members by 1946.⁷¹ Many everyday privileges, including food rations, land allocations, and employment, depended on the Soviet occupiers, who favored KPD members in the distribution of such privileges. The SMAD propaganda chief, Sergei Tjulpanov, openly advocated economic pressure to increase KPD membership, intimating that areas of eastern Germany governed by communist candidates should be favored in the distribution of coal and other goods.⁷² Soviet reports also noted that Germans were joining the KPD to receive land that had been confiscated from Nazis and war criminals.⁷³ Some Germans were pressured to join the party in their workplaces in order to gain employment.⁷⁴

The Socialist Unity Party (SED), which remained the ruling party of East Germany until 1989, was founded after the merger of the KPD and SPD on 21 April 1946. The SED was the product of a split as well as a merger since it divided the KPD and SPD in the East from their Western counterparts. In both senses, as a merger of the Communists and the Social Democrats and as a split between both parties and their Western branches, the SED was a new political party. The creation of the SED, while drawing on local initiative, had been managed by Soviet troops and security forces. Soviet liaison officers oversaw security measures for the elections and approved of candidates to positions in the SED and mass organizations.⁷⁵ After the merger the Soviets took an active role in building the SED rank and file. As one party member noted in his memoir, “Our Soviet comrades provided much help during the foundational period. . . . They helped us solve ideological questions and organize the party.”⁷⁶ They, and SMAD’s political advisers in particular, wrote SED speeches, distributed propaganda, and censored political documents of all types.⁷⁷ The SED was advised on matters of ideology, organization, and the training of personnel.

Even though Germans who joined the party had been closely assessed by Soviet advisers, criticism of the occupation authorities was not infrequent in the early SED. As noted by the SMAD propaganda chief Sergei Tjulpanov in 1946, “SED propaganda has not succeeded in convincing the population that the SED is a genuinely German party and not an agent of the occupation authorities.”⁷⁸ He cited a case in which an SED member argued that “we should not orient ourselves toward the Soviet Union or England, but to Germany. We heard that Russian workers live badly. We are German and should speak about the German working class.”⁷⁹ He scolded an SED member who criticized how the Social Democrats were treated after the Unity Congress. He dismissed another for the claim that the SED was “attacking the Social Democrats,” claiming that the person who said this had a “hysterical character.”⁸⁰

Members of the Soviet occupation administration, particularly the Soviet political advisers, silenced such criticism by sitting in on SED meetings or intimidating those who expressed such opinions.⁸¹ In some cases the Soviets intervened to favor one or another side in a local dispute. The presence of a Soviet adviser at a meeting, even if he did not say anything, greatly affected what attendees did or did not say. In his memoir one SED member recalled the way a Soviet political adviser had intervened in a party meeting.⁸² The officer stood on the side most of the time but spoke up to refute a Social Democrat who had declared that “we in Germany don’t want the situation they have in the Soviet Union.” The adviser spoke calmly and condescendingly. He told the Social Democrat that, though the latter had doubtless done much for the workers’ movement, “I must ask you once again to read the Communist Manifesto, because there it says. . . .” The Social Democrat interrupted him, calling his words impertinent by implying that he was unfamiliar with socialist theory. The Soviet adviser continued: “And yet, please read the Communist Manifesto again because you will learn what we and your Party want. I have read the Manifesto several times and always discover something new.” Soon after, the Social Democrat was expelled from the SED. In this case the Soviet adviser had intervened to discredit his ideas, humiliate him, and undermine him in front of the group. Shaming in a group setting, a tactic later institutionalized in SED-run criticism and self-criticism sessions, was a lasting component of Soviet influence. It took the form of sharp and pointed criticism for shortcomings in official duties or negative comments about state policy. It served to deter others from behaving in a similar way.

KPD/SED INTELLIGENCE AND INFORMER NETWORKS

In 1945 and 1946 an important source of information for the Soviets was KPD intelligence networks.⁸³ The KPD had run networks that shuttled information between Berlin and Moscow since the early years of the Comintern.⁸⁴ One historian has gone so far as to characterize these networks as an “internal party secret police.”⁸⁵ Certainly many top officials who went on to become leading figures in the Stasi, including all three heads of the institution, Wilhelm Zaisser, Ernst Wollweber, and Erich Mielke, had worked for the KPD’s party or military intelligence networks in the twenties and thirties. In July 1945 the KPD created a counterintelligence unit to conduct background checks for its personnel department, an office much like that run by Šváb in the KSČ in Czechoslovakia.⁸⁶ Although the primary focus of the network was eastern Germany, it also ran informer networks in the West German communist party. NKVD documents attest to the fact that Soviets also ran residentura contacts in the KPD, a term denoting a set of long-term agent and informer networks.⁸⁷ An estimated 2,304 German informants collected information for the Soviet security forces as of January 1946.⁸⁸ These informers made the Soviets aware of what was happening in political parties, factories, and state administration across the territory of eastern Germany.

KPD/SED members collected information on German state officials to determine who was loyal, who carried out directives, and who expressed opinions that deviated from the party line. In 1946 a party instructor and his network of trusted persons (Vertrauensleute) in districts, counties, and cities were assigned to ensure that “every member of the police is politically and morally flawless.”⁸⁹ This job, later institutionalized in party organizations in the police force, was carried out first in the SBZ by loosely organized networks of party informers and trusted persons. Party instructors enlisted confidants, as they were called, to keep track of what police officials said in public and private and whether they were competent or corrupt. They took note of the popular opinion of police officials and the political mood of the district more generally, implying that SED authorities paid at least some attention to officials’ reputations and perceived legitimacy. It is difficult to believe that these reports did not factor into the decisions to expel thousands of police officials from the force in 1948. In May 1948 SMAD representatives discussed “the question of purging the ranks of the police” and specified that this purge was to take place “with the assistance of leading members of the SED and police.”⁹⁰

The Soviets regularly called on SED members to provide individual pieces of information on their colleagues or on what was said in party meetings. Hugo Bergmann, the head of the district SED office in Haldensleben, related one such encounter with a Soviet commander after the merger of the communist and social democratic parties in his town.⁹¹ He handed the commander a list of those who had joined the SED. As he described it, the commander “went through [the list] name by name with one of his officers who spoke German. His finger did not miss one line. While going through the names he asked about each person’s political attitude.” Bergmann responded by explaining the antifascist credentials of the people on the list. “After further questioning, I related their previous party orientation.” After more questioning the commander approved the list. He specifically asked what Bergmann’s impression of the city’s mayor was. Bergmann answered that the mayor came from a bourgeois social circle. The commander asked if the mayor was competent. Bergmann replied that he didn’t know but thought probably not. After hesitating, he added that the mayor was a Social Democrat and probably should not be trusted with such a significant position.

While some SED members, like Bergmann, were called on a single time to provide information, others became regular informers. The example of Rudolf Bühring, an SED member and self-declared party informer, is telling in this regard.⁹² His memoir contains many details about the information he collected for the Soviet occupation authorities. He described how, in November 1946, he worked as a district party secretary to compile reports for the Soviet political advisers and the NKVD. The Soviets told him to observe the behavior of other SED members and listen for enemy comments “in internal conversations and public meetings.”⁹³ As he remembered, it was not easy to distinguish between friendly and enemy comments in such settings: “Honestly, it is still difficult for me to differentiate between class enemies, alien elements, and those in favor of strengthening our German Democratic Republic. But I learned how to at the time and received pointed questions from the NKVD on what to investigate. In this way, I began to assess comrades in my own party. As you can imagine, as a young comrade I had some reservations about doing this.”⁹⁴

Bühring listened for opinions aired in party meetings, including the reaction of German party members to certain policies, “enemy arguments,” and evidence of negative attitudes toward the USSR. He referred to the Soviet political officer to whom he reported as his best friend, hinting at the intimate relationship that developed between them at this time. Of course this was a variation of the East German tendency to refer to the Soviet advisers as “the friends,” a euphemism particular to the GDR. Bühring still exchanged letters with his former Soviet contact in 1978, the year he composed the memoir. His experience was not unique. Another party official recruited to K5 and later to the MfS spent his early career in the “party information service.”⁹⁵ As these networks show, party members initially carried out functions later handed to the MfS. It is misleading to draw a thick line between the party and its security forces in this period or to assume that the Soviets made clear distinctions between the two.

THE GERMAN POLICE IN THE SBZ

In May 1945 the Soviets created the People’s Police (Volkspolizei), the first German police force in the SBZ. According to the Soviet commander in Berlin, it was necessary to create a local police force to help establish order in the Zone: “In the interest of rebuilding life for the citizens of Berlin, struggling against crime and disorderly conduct, regulating road safety, and protecting administrative buildings, the Red Army will allow the city to build a police, judiciary, and public prosecutor.”⁹⁶ As Jens Gieseke has pointed out, the question of whether the police force in eastern Germany represented a continuity or a break from its Nazi predecessors reflects two separate questions: that of personnel and that of methods. First, did individuals who had served in the Nazi era continue to serve in the communist era? Second, to what extent did communist police officials, even (or especially) those interned by the Gestapo, adopt Nazi methods in their investigations?⁹⁷ While it is impossible to measure the second issue, Gieseke concludes that with respect to the first, the People’s Police represented a definite break from Nazi police and security forces.

Ninety percent of officials came to the service with no previous professional experience.⁹⁸ Officials in the elite K5 unit created inside the People’s Police, who became members of the first political police in the Zone, were checked thoroughly for evidence of a Nazi past, as were their parents and relatives.⁹⁹ Any evidence of Nazi party membership immediately disqualified a person from serving in K5. This priority made sense given the context of denazification and the policy of demilitarizing the police force to distinguish it from its Nazi predecessors. Officials in the People’s Police were not allowed to carry weapons until 1946.¹⁰⁰

As in Poland and Czechoslovakia, in eastern Germany many new officials were brought into the police from institutions of war. For Germans, these included POW camps rather than militaries or militias. Former Wehrmacht soldiers, around fifty thousand in total, were recruited from Soviet prisoner-of-war camps to serve in the postwar administration in eastern Germany. Since service in the Wehrmacht had been compulsory for young Germans, many members of the later Stasi, around 45 percent in total, had served in the military. From 1942 so-called reeducation courses, or Antifa schools, which lasted four to six months, were held in POW camps in Oranki, an area located east of Moscow, and in Krasnogorsk, an area outside of Moscow.¹⁰¹ In January 1946 control over Soviet POW camps was handed to the NKVD.¹⁰² A four-week course for the People’s Police trained an estimated five thousand POWs. Antifascist Field Schools (Antifa-Feld-Schulen) were run directly on the Soviet front. From January 1945 such schools also trained Germans to work in the administration and police forces.¹⁰³ Such camps continued to function for years after the end of the war. In 1949 around fifteen to eighteen thousand POWs were still enrolled in them.

Women were also recruited to the new antifascist police force.¹⁰⁴ As the Ministry of the Interior explained in 1948, this policy reflected practical demands as well as the principle of female equality in the workplace: “We are bringing more women into the police service in the Soviet Zone of Occupation both out of necessity and the demand for women’s equality in all areas of public life.” The women brought into the force were held to the same political standards as the men, which included having a “flawless political background” and a “highly developed sense of social consciousness.”¹⁰⁵ Police offices in Saxony and Dresden show that these policies met with some success. The Dresden police resolved in March 1946 that 30 percent of positions in the Order and Transportation police should be filled by women, an estimate met at least in part. By November 1946 over 22 percent of the Saxony criminal police were women.¹⁰⁶

The People’s Police answered to the Allied Control Commission, the Soviet Military Administration, the German parliament, and regional and provincial German authorities.¹⁰⁷ The Soviets carried out personnel, oversight, and control functions in the People’s Police, not least because local officials often had little experience in such matters. Certainly before and even after the Ministry of the Interior (DVdI) was created, the Soviets issued instructions and made personnel decisions in the force.¹⁰⁸ In the DVdI the Soviets continued to have authority over personnel decisions and organizational matters. They named the president, vice president, heads of departments, deputy heads of departments, heads of major branches, and the head of the police school.¹⁰⁹ German laws written before 1945 that did not contradict the directives of the Allied Control Commission were kept in place “as long as they [were] not unusable due to their Nazi character.”¹¹⁰ Since no laws could be enforced without Soviet approval, silence on the part of Soviet headquarters agitated German officials. In October 1946, after the creation of the DVdI, a police official complained that the office in Saxony had sent two queries to the Soviet military administration in Karlshorst for approval. The first had been sent in September of the previous year and the second two months before the meeting. Both went unanswered. The official explained that although the German authorities in Saxony had accepted the queries, the lack of approval from Karlshorst meant that “in practice, the police has no legal foundation for its activities.”¹¹¹

While the People’s Police was granted authority over establishing public order in the Zone, Soviet officers maintained control over investigations into political matters or war crimes. The line between political and nonpolitical cases, and, by extension, Soviet versus German jurisdiction, was not always straightforward. In cases when laws were silent, German police officials could simply hand the case to the NKVD for an interpretation. In his memoir a German police official gave an account of a case in 1947 in which he had spotted beggars wearing pieces of German and Russian uniforms who claimed they had escaped from a prisoner of war camp in Russia. The police official doubted their story but did not know the legal basis for the case: “The objective and subjective conditions for fraud were clear. But it was not enough to say fraud. This was a political offense: agitation and slander against the Soviet Union. We did not have our own state yet or laws for this offense. We handed the case over to the NKVD, our friends.”¹¹² The decision to hand the case to the Soviets rather than process it was based on the judgment of the policeman. Police officials seem to have been able to navigate the complex skein of Soviet/German/occupation decrees, even if in practice this simply meant consulting a member of the Soviet occupation administration or NKVD for the final word on which laws should be enforced and how to enforce them.

At the end of the day the Soviets, without providing a reason, could overturn or override cases in which they disagreed with the outcome. German officials complained about cases when the Soviets rejected their requests without explaining why: “The district commander released fourteen police officials from service with the stroke of a pen, putting the security of the entire city into question,” said one.¹¹³ A Soviet commander refused to approve one official’s appointment to the city police until he received confirmation from elsewhere: “It is of course unpleasant when someone is supposed to begin work but has not been recognized in his position,” the German protested. The Soviet hand in selecting east German administrators sometimes caused resentment. As one German official pointed out, continual Soviet intervention created the impression that “this or the other police chief is in his position because of his connections with, and dependence on, the friends. Such impressions are discussed in the ranks of the police and have a demoralizing effect.”¹¹⁴ Walter Ulbricht, whose years in the Soviet Union had accustomed him to the Soviet style of rule, acted as a translator for the Germans’ introduction to the vagaries of Soviet political culture. In a meeting in August 1947 a German minister expressed his confusion over whether a command issued by a Soviet adviser orally was a decree (Verordnung) or an order (Befehl). Ulbricht clarified: “It is an order. [The Soviet official] Dratwin only signs orders. He can’t sign anything else.”¹¹⁵

Within the police the Soviets advised on methods as well as personnel appointments. Given the interest of the USSR in securing local industries for war reparations, the advisers were closely involved in the German reconstruction of industries. Decree 160, “on responsibility for sabotage and subversion” from December 1945, allowed the Soviets to help carry out land reform, nationalize the property of former Nazis, and confiscate state-owned enterprises such as coal, metallurgy, and energy, in order to secure war reparations.¹¹⁶ These industries were subject to considerable police oversight. One German prosecutor, Wilhelm Bick, described an investigation in which several fires broke out in villages in Mecklenburg in 1946 and 1947.¹¹⁷ He and the head of the criminal police assigned to investigate the fires were brought to see the Soviet military commander in the region. Upon entering the room the prosecutor noted with surprise that the general’s desk was spotless. There were no documents, only a small piece of paper with five points written on it. According to the prosecutor, “The General asked the head of the criminal police and me to tell him about the results of the investigation. That was precisely what we had intended to do. We brought several kilos of documents with us. From this mountain of documents, we reported to the General about the work that the police and prosecutor’s offices had done. We had used a large amount of paper to describe the circumstances surrounding the origins of the fires and their damages. In most cases, in spite of the considerable number of observations we had made, we could not determine the culprits.”

The general looked at the documents and explained, “My dear comrades, the employees of the People’s Police and Prosecutor’s office have spent much time on these investigations. My translator has explained to me that everything is written in excellent, flawless German. But you did not find the culprits. Your approach is wrong and therefore unsuccessful. The culprits are enemies of your democratic order. Analyze the political situation in the village and speak with farmers and agricultural workers. Approach the investigation from the perspective of your class and the class struggle. The number of pages that you fill, how much the documents weigh, is not a measure of success. Success is the investigation and the punishment of the culprits, of the class enemy.” The prosecutor noted that, after this conversation, “We changed our investigation methods and thinned out the number of documents.” As the Soviet adviser indicated, only cases that ended with an arrest were considered complete. He advised approaching the case from a class perspective, which entailed determining the class background of suspects or those living in the area, for example, kulaks, old specialists, bourgeoisie, as a way to uncover guilt. This method was a form of social profiling. Over a year before the Cominform demanded in June 1948 that East European communists engage in a class struggle against domestic enemies, German police officials were told to profile suspects according to class in their police work.

The Soviets investigated cases of corruption and the abuse of power in the German police. An oversight commission visited Brandenburg in May 1946 to ascertain why the German police was involved in unauthorized house searches and the confiscation of property: “Items and food that are confiscated are neither registered nor delivered to headquarters. They are stolen by police officials.”¹¹⁸ Complaints about the police poured in from the radio, press, and average citizens. In September 1947 a report criticized the “boorish behavior of police officials,” referencing citizens’ comments on officers’ “gangster methods” that included rude behavior—in one case in which neither the context nor the meaning were clear they called people “Russian nuts”—confiscating food and asking for bribes of cigarettes.¹¹⁹ In some cases these policemen, who had been chosen because of their lack of training or professional expertise, were an embarrassment to the occupation authorities and new administration.

The professionalism of the police working in lower-level offices was hardly helped by the fact that the Soviets tended to take the best employees from regional and district offices and assign them to special missions or to the central office. To save the effort of haggling with regional offices over personnel, they did not consult the German heads of the office before doing so. Agents arrived in an office on a technical pretext only to abscond with its most talented employees. During a tour of the Saxony police office, the inspector noted that Kurt Fischer, the head of the office, was “angry and indignant” at the Soviets’ tendency to spirit away the best employees. Fischer’s complaint that people were “sniffing around” his office to take away his subordinates captured his frustration with this Soviet practice.¹²⁰ In a sense, though, it reflected the trade-offs inherent in the Soviets’ own cadres’ department. The most competent officials were rapidly advancing into service in the central administration, leaving lower-level offices with fewer and less competent officials.¹²¹ Beginning in early 1946 German police officials, after they finished their schooling, were moved to areas where they did not have a personal history, friendship networks, or family connections since, according to the personnel department, the police should “not be bound in the district to any friends or relatives.”¹²² This practice contrasted notably with tendencies in the secret police in Poland and Czechoslovakia, where offices were sometimes staffed by networks of acquaintances, friends, or relatives.

Understanding how officials were selected requires looking at training materials over the course of several years. German documents noted that police officials were selected according to a process of “education and expulsion”: “Our new police must go through a long process of purging and education to become the instrument we expect it to be,” implying the role of training and institutional surveillance in determining reliability.¹²³ Since officials entered the service with no prior qualifications, instructors in police training programs were told to focus on a recruit’s potential for development (Entwicklungsfähigkeit). The assessment of an agent’s potential differentiated between his knowledge of learned skills, such as writing, grammar, and accounting, and his innate skills, such as his talent for observation and an ability to process information. Since the former could be learned, instructors were told to emphasize the latter qualities. Certainly innate skills were a key concern in selecting men for the K5 political police. Party and police instructors used the denazification investigations—education through practice as well as formal schooling—to observe who had talent for police work and who made progress. Those who did not were expelled.¹²⁴ In a three-month party course in 1947 in which eighty-six officials participated, seven were removed for not meeting the requirements and four for disciplinary problems (theft). Two departed on their own initiative, being unable or unwilling to handle the demands of the force.¹²⁵

K5: THE FIRST POLITICAL POLICE IN THE ZONE

Officially, the Allied Control Commission forbade the creation of a political police force in occupied Germany. And yet, as one K5 official pointed out in a meeting in October 1947, “Other Allied Control Commission decrees, directives, and laws and the orders of the Soviet occupation authorities made the existence of K5 possible from a legal perspective.”¹²⁶ The K5 unit was granted extralegal authority to carry out policing tasks for the Soviet occupation authorities, advisers, and security forces. Its first tasks included conducting investigations and background checks on German officials as well as surveillance operations and interrogations for the denazification order 201 of August 1947. It also resolved cases involving economic sabotage.¹²⁷ The official history of the MfS describes K5 as “the German agents who played a decisive role in carrying out the struggle against political enemies of the new revolutionary order during the transition from fascism to democracy. From the beginning, it fulfilled these tasks in close cooperation with the Soviet comrades.”¹²⁸

K5 officials answered to both German and Soviet authorities. As one German historian has described its successor, the Stasi, it was the “servant of two masters,” a term that captures the way it answered to both a foreign and a domestic power.¹²⁹ In fact the unit had a widespread reputation for representing Soviet rather German interests. According to one K5 agent, when he arrested a former member of the Gestapo, the latter’s first question was, “Are you bringing me to the Russians?”¹³⁰ An annual report issued by K5 in 1947, one of the only documents available on the unit’s activities, confirmed that of 51,236 cases processed by K5 in Saxony, 14,137 had been assigned to it by the Soviets and 1,318 by the German authorities. The rest resulted from joint investigations by both.¹³¹ The close links between K5 and the Soviets became a legend in the secret police for years to come, as the unit gained the reputation as a kind of founding father of the MfS. Indeed, several characteristics of K5 and its officials—for instance, their closeness with the Soviets, longtime KPD membership, and antifascist credentials—as manifested in wartime imprisonment and an active role in postwar denazification investigations, were central parts of the foundational narrative of the MfS.

The files of K5 officials show that for most the bond with the Soviets was personal as well as professional. The biography of Erich Jamin, who headed the K5 unit, fits this descriptor. He was born in 1907 and trained as a baker. From the onset of the Great Depression to the rise of Hitler (1928–33), he was described simply as being unemployed.¹³² He joined the KPD in 1929. After Hitler rose to power, Jamin spent years in and out of prison and concentration camps. Between 1944 and 1947 he was in a Soviet POW camp, from which he was recruited to K5. Another K5 official, Rudolf Gutsche, came from a working-class background: his father was a bookbinder and his mother was a worker in a metallurgy factory. After the rise of Hitler, his father, who was a communist, fled with his family to Moscow. Gutsche spent the war in exile in the USSR. He married a Soviet citizen and adopted Soviet citizenship in 1931. Between 1942 and 1945 he served in a partisan group that fought on the territory of occupied Belarus.¹³³ In July 1946 Soviet authorities assigned him to return to Germany to work, first, in the People’s Police in Leipzig and, from 1948, as head of the K5 unit in Leipzig. In January 1950 he was transferred to Berlin and appointed to the position of lieutenant colonel in the East German MfS. The backgrounds of these leading officials point to a number of reasons for having dual loyalties to Germany and the USSR or even primary loyalty to the USSR.

Other members of K5 had fewer personal ties to the Soviet Union but the proper social and political background to ensure enthusiasm for the new force. Such was the case with Walter Heinitz, who came from a working-class family and had not belonged to any political party during the Nazi period. He had served in the Wehrmacht between 1937 and 1945.¹³⁴ He joined the KPD in 1945 and, as party members from the time attested, showed “great activism” in meetings and activities. He attended KPD school for one month at the end of 1946 and headed one of the political circles in the criminal police. His file contained the results of numerous inquiries made of his colleagues and neighbors about his character, reputation, and personal habits: “He is a good colleague. . . . He has a good reputation in the district he lives in. We were not able to uncover any evidence of womanizing or drunkenness.”¹³⁵ Other officials took a similar route to K5. Emil Wagner was a former locksmith recruited to K5 from the criminal police in 1948.¹³⁶ He had joined the criminal police after demonstrating “good political knowledge” in Antifa schools in Gorky and Moscow.¹³⁷

K5 officials, much like the People’s Police, enforced the decrees passed by the Soviet Control Commission, Allied Control Council, German provincial administration, and laws from the Strafgesetzbuch, the penal code of Imperial Germany.¹³⁸ Examples of Soviet decrees from a K5 handbook included the SMAD decree on antifascist political parties and an Allied Control Commission order on the disbanding of Nazi organizations. K5 had several major duties, among them locating caches of weapons, investigating illegal border crossings, and reporting cases of espionage.

Most cases carried out between 1947 and 1948 focused on conducting investigations and background checks on German state employees in the Zone. As Heinrich Fomferra, a K5 employee, wrote in his memoir, until 1950 “I, like all other K5 employees, was responsible for personnel issues. We received the names and addresses of persons and comrades to check up on.”¹³⁹ As the K5 report from 1947 confirmed, the duties assigned to the unit “consist almost entirely of background checks on individual persons.”¹⁴⁰ These checks included state employees’ wartime history and political affiliation.¹⁴¹ Investigations also aimed to uncover instances of corruption, a widespread problem after the war, when the black market flourished in conditions of social uncertainty, institutional chaos, and economic shortages. In 1947 K5 investigated 465 of 1,318 total cases involving corruption, abuse of office, profiteering, and sabotage.¹⁴² A special unit was required to carry out these investigations, in part because it was members of the People’s Police that engaged in much of the corruption. Of the cases investigated, 140 were committed by the police, 40 by provincial authorities, and 17 by members of the judiciary.¹⁴³

Most K5 investigations, whether involving corruption, background checks, or illegal border crossings, could be resolved using criminal policing methods. It was this field in which K5 officials were trained, in contrast with secret police training in Poland, which focused on military-style operations, or in Czechoslovakia, which centered on gathering intelligence. A four-week course for K5 officials included methods of investigation and interrogations. The legal foundations of policing, arrests, the use of weapons, house searches, and the creation of a card cataloging system were also discussed.¹⁴⁴ The course specified that information be gathered on whether suspects participated in political parties, organizations, or clubs.¹⁴⁵ As Markus Wolf, who became the chief of the foreign intelligence service of the GDR, wrote in his memoir, certain aspects of the training of the K5 unit were carried out covertly, particularly the use of torture: “The West Berlin Social Democratic paper, Telegraf, published a story that in the cellar of the residential house where I lived people were being interrogated and tortured by a police section known as K5. I publicly denied this completely and accused the paper of inventing not only torture but the very existence of a section K5. Only later, when I was appointed to the Ministry of State Security, did I discover that K5 did indeed exist, and it had been torturing suspects in that very basement.”¹⁴⁶

K5 AND ORDER 201: DENAZIFICATION AS A SCHOOL OF COMMUNISM

The main campaign in which K5 employees were trained and selected was held in conjunction with denazification order 201, passed in August 1947. Denazification was a central component of Allied and KPD policy toward the Zone from the early postwar era. On 2 August 1945 the Potsdam Agreement laid out clauses for banning Nazi organizations and punishing war criminals as well as plans for the denazification of the judiciary, education system, and administration.¹⁴⁷ The first political program of the KPD from June 1945 contained more specific points on denazification, including plans to expel former Nazis from public office, punish war criminals, expropriate Nazi property, and break up large landholdings belonging to groups that supported the Nazis.¹⁴⁸ Throughout 1945 Antifas, or grassroots antifascist committees made up of workers, communists, and others, deposed Nazis from their posts and confiscated their property.¹⁴⁹ According to one KPD member, after liberation he and his fellow antifascists had “unmasked and removed active Nazis from their offices and apartments to give these apartments to the homeless and to antifascists.”¹⁵⁰ Germans in the SBZ regularly approached the Soviets with information on local Nazis.

Although denazification efforts had been under way for years, order 201 was unique. It was the first law that standardized investigations across the SBZ rather than allowing each region or district to run investigations in locally specific ways.¹⁵¹ It was accompanied by a propaganda campaign that encouraged citizens to bring relevant information to the authorities.¹⁵² Finally, it shifted the responsibility for the purges from local commissions staffed by members of various political parties to the police and the Ministry of the Interior.¹⁵³ In carrying out these investigations German police officials and the K5 unit in particular proved their dedication to antifascism and state service.

Hundreds of recruits were brought into the German police force at this time and tested on the job. They complained constantly to party leaders about the workload, enormity of random tasks, and short deadlines imposed by the Soviets. As a K5 official from Halle noted, “The volume of work arriving from different municipal authorities forces [policemen] to be on their feet day and night to meet the deadlines.”¹⁵⁴ An official from Dessau noted that K5 officials worked about twelve hours a day. It is unclear whether the Soviets intentionally made service in K5 time consuming to test people on the job or whether the difficulties were a product of disorganization, although both are likely. Whatever the reason, officials were watched carefully for how they responded to these challenges and whether they were willing to sacrifice their free time and personal life to get things done. As one report noted approvingly, during investigations for order 201 Rudolf Mittag made his private life a secondary priority.¹⁵⁵ Mittag joined the MfS in 1950 and served in the institution for the subsequent four decades.¹⁵⁶ Mittag’s story was hardly exceptional. In 1946, 160 officials were serving in the unit. The number rose to 700 in April 1948 and reached 1,600 in June 1949.¹⁵⁷ A sizable part of the MfS officer corps was trained in the K5 unit during investigations for denazification order 201.

By training officers in denazification campaigns, the Soviets were in effect selecting those most willing to prove their antifascist credentials in the interrogation room. Personnel files of K5 secret police officials underlined the importance of officials’ personal hatred of the Nazi regime as well as their professional competence. A question on the application to join the German police force was, “Were you or any of your family members persecuted or punished by the Nazi regime for political beliefs?”¹⁵⁸ Older K5 officials, who had spent time in concentration camps or Nazi prisons, of course fit the bill. One, Erich Bär, had been imprisoned under the fascists.¹⁵⁹ Another, Wilhelm Enke, had spent four years in a Nazi prison.¹⁶⁰ Younger K5 officials often had family members who had been murdered by the Nazis. The file of twenty-four-year-old Siegfried Leibholz indicated that “his father was persecuted in the Nazi era and murdered by the fascists.”¹⁶¹ A young official, Werner Kukelski, received a similar report: “His father was an old communist shot for desertion in 1941.”¹⁶² The file of Gerhard Franke specified that he was “filled with hate about the cruel gassing of his father. He knows what he owes the workers’ movement and is putting into action the struggle begun by his father.”¹⁶³

Class background as well as personal hatred of the former regime mattered. Recalling the Soviet adviser’s suggestion to take a class approach to police investigations, the annual report of K5 noted with discontent that 50 percent of all denazification cases were directed against members of the working class, while 30 percent were against former civil servants and small businessmen. In 1948 the chief of police in Saxony directed the police to lower the number of workers under consideration and introduce a more class-based approach to denazification efforts.¹⁶⁴ The 1947 report of K5 mentioned the political education that agents received. Courses were held only two days a month.¹⁶⁵ Of eighty officials in the unit, only eleven had attended a party school before being recruited to the force. Although there was no list of political education courses given, topics of discussion included “the tasks of the People’s Police,” “the Russians and us,” and “the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”¹⁶⁶

Erich Mielke, whose many years as the head of the Stasi (1957–89) rendered his name virtually synonymous with the institution, oversaw K5 investigations for order 201.¹⁶⁷ At the time, he was deputy head of the Ministry of the Interior (DVdI). By 1947 he was a prominent figure in the SED and German police force. He had joined the communist party in 1927 and served in a communist paramilitary unit that engaged in street fighting with the Nazis in the Weimar Republic. After killing a policeman in 1931, he fled to the USSR, where he attended Soviet military–political school and the Lenin School for foreign communists (1934–35). He fought in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939 and returned to Germany in 1946 to serve as deputy minister of the interior.¹⁶⁸ It was Mielke who insisted that K5 agents organize a card catalogue in which information on those arrested under order 201 would be centralized from across the SBZ.¹⁶⁹ These materials did not disappear after the denazification campaign was brought to an end in 1948. They remained in MfS holdings as a source of compromising information that was used to pressure GDR citizens into becoming Stasi informers.¹⁷⁰

Whereas in the early postwar period the Soviets encouraged spontaneous violence against the Nazis, over time they began to select those officials able to channel these personal hatreds into state service and carry out official investigations with fervor. Such was the case with Rudolf Mittag. When he was recruited to work on the denazification investigations for order 201, Mittag was only twenty years old. Assessments linked his service in these investigations to his dedication to the communist cause: “Mittag has distinguished himself as an activist for his exemplary achievements in order 201. He has recently improved these achievements by bringing many Nazis to trial through intensive work.”¹⁷¹ Another assessment observed that he was “mentally, physically, and—with a little direction—politically suitable” for the position of operative worker.¹⁷² An assessment from April 1950 linked the notion of class consciousness to the willingness to carry out investigations for order 201: “As an investigator for order 201 [Mittag] proved that he is class conscious because of his contributions to the punishment of Nazis and war criminals.”¹⁷³ This, together with his membership in the communist youth group and attendance at a district party school, made him the ideal candidate for the job. He, like the others, was watched closely for his attitude toward the Soviets and political issues. One assessment concluded that “his position toward the current political order and occupation authorities is very positive, which is clear from what he says in political discussions and reports.”

As the denazification campaign came to a close, the focus of the police shifted toward investigating the economy. Future priorities involved guarding industries, ensuring the fulfillment of production quotas, and defending factories from sabotage. According to the K5 report, 1948 was a turning point in the focus of the service: “The year 1948 can be divided into two periods. The first was characterized by order 201, which reached a high point when 3,999 cases were processed in April. From the middle of the year, and particularly after the announcement of the two-year plan, there has been a significant rise in cases of sabotage, the spread of fascist and antidemocratic propaganda, and agent work.”¹⁷⁴

Reports of K5 offices from industrial areas in Saxony from October 1948 contain extensive observations of party members, nonparty members, and state employees that they gathered through local informer networks stationed in factories.¹⁷⁵ They commented on employees’ reliability, competence, and willingness to carry out orders.¹⁷⁶ They noted their attitudes toward work, talents, and political activism, regardless of party membership, and recorded instances of anticommunist or anti-Soviet statements.¹⁷⁷ One employee, for example, was criticized for ignoring the party line and “laughing off” a Soviet directive in a personal conversation.¹⁷⁸ The shift toward a new focus on economic targets applied to the People’s Police as well as to K5. Members of the People’s Police were assigned to guard Soviet installations and prevent sabotage in factories controlled by the occupation authorities (Sowjetische Aktiengesellschaften, or SAGs).¹⁷⁹ This coincided with a wave of expulsions from the People’s Police in May 1948 in which 11,707 officials were released from service. Not only hatred of the Nazis and class background but also political loyalty was fast becoming a focal point for selecting state officials, a shift that coincided with the transformation of the SED into a “party of a new type” between 1948 and 1951.¹⁸⁰

THE MAIN ADMINISTRATION FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE ECONOMY

As denazification efforts were drawing to a close, Cold War tensions were intensifying. In June 1948 Stalin expelled Tito from the Eastern Bloc. Soon after, the Cominform demanded that East European communist leaders wage a struggle against class enemies. The Western Allies introduced a new currency in Western Germany in June 1948, thereby dividing the Zones into separate economic spheres. The Soviets left the Allied Control Commission in protest and began to blockade West Berlin.¹⁸¹

In the SBZ preoccupation over economic production led the Politburo to pass a new set of regulations on crimes against the economy on 23 September 1948. The term “sabotage,” which signified the intentional disruption of economic production, was introduced to the books in this year. It was codified in the GDR criminal code in 1968.¹⁸² K5 was assigned to investigate acts of sabotage in connection with these regulations, the first to apply to the entire Zone.¹⁸³ The unit handled 388 cases of sabotage across industry, transportation, and the postal service.¹⁸⁴ The SED Party Control Commission was created soon after with a similar aim: to ensure that economic plans were fulfilled and to uncover illegal activities in German industry.¹⁸⁵ In line with these initiatives, Stalin approved the creation of the Main Administration for the Protection of the Economy in December 1948 (Hauptverwaltung zum Schutz der Volkswirtschaft) under Mielke’s leadership. It was a highly selective unit. Of 6,670 officials considered for positions, 5,898 were rejected.¹⁸⁶

This administration was the direct predecessor to the MfS. The assignments it carried out to ensure the fulfillment of the economic plan, to conduct surveillance on employees in key industries, and to run informer networks in factories were handed to the MfS on 8 February 1950, specifically, to Department III on the Protection of the Socialist Economy. The centralization of intelligence and surveillance functions, from the scattered party, K5, and Soviet networks of the SBZ era, to the MfS applied across the territory of East Germany. As the party intelligence agent Rudolf Bühring explained in his memoir, many things he had done as an SED informer—collecting information on SED members, listening for enemy comments in meetings, and assessing employees’ attitudes toward the Soviets—would later be handed to the East German Ministry for State Security.¹⁸⁷

BUILDING EAST GERMAN SECURITY

In May 1945 a German communist gathered together a group of antifascists to run the local government. He was brought before a Soviet commander to explain why he had created such a committee. As he related in his memoir, the Soviet commander asked him, “Who are these people in your national committee, and what do they want?” The German communist replied, “They are antifascists and communists like me and want to rebuild the country.” The Soviet commander smiled and said, “It seems everyone is a communist and antifascist today—no one has ever been a Nazi!”¹⁸⁸

Although the Soviets appointed German party and state officials in a rather haphazard manner in 1945, they spent the following years collecting information on them through NKVD/NKGB networks and informers stationed in the German communist party, police forces, and Soviet occupation administration. Some KPD and SED members acted as informers, overseeing and observing local police officials for their compliance with the party line and issuing recommendations for appointments based on who participated most actively in party training courses. Functions later built into East German institutions, such as background checks, tests of political knowledge, training, and inspections, were initially carried out by Soviet officials and advisers. For East Germans, as for Poles and Czechoslovaks, learning the Soviet system was a process of adjusting to a new political culture that required learning, making mistakes, and being corrected. In East Germany in particular, it involved the constant interference of Soviet security and political advisers, sometimes in ways that facilitated operations and other times in ways that brought investigations to a state of frustrating deadlock. Since such interventions often went unrecorded, we may never be able to assess the extent of Soviet interference in the early state administration in eastern Germany. But as the creation of the People’s Police and K5 unit from new people with no previous policing experience shows, the Soviets were willing to take inexperienced people into service to find those who could fit these positions in the long term. It is therefore not always useful to look at a person’s first position in the administration but whether he still filled it three months later or had left or been fired, transferred, given a promotion, or whisked off to a special Soviet-run unit.

In the coming years Germans began to take many policing, judicial, and administrative functions over from the Soviet occupation authorities. Starting in 1947 placement in an elite unit such as K5 required candidates to submit recommendations from German as well as Soviet institutions. The file of an applicant to K5 noted that his candidacy was supported by a Berlin SED branch, district SED branch, and the Ministry of the Interior, none of which “expressed any doubts about his placement in K5.”¹⁸⁹ Although Soviet officials sometimes delegated personnel decisions to the German police, they retained the power to veto decisions well into the 1950s. And many structures evident in the Zone, including SMTs, the NKGB, and NKVD, continued to function after the country of East Germany was founded in October 1949. The dual German–Soviet structures and command functions built into SBZ institutions continued to impact how MfS officials made decisions, ran policing operations, and interacted with their Soviet “friends” in the GDR.

II

THE TRIAL OF THE HUNGARIAN COMMUNIST LÁSZLÓ RAJK, TRANSNATIONAL STALINISM, AND THE CREATION OF THE EASTERN BLOC

News of the trial of the former Hungarian Politburo member László Rajk, staged as a show trial in Budapest between 16 and 24 September 1949, traveled quickly across the Eastern Bloc. Over the course of these fateful, widely propagated eight days, Rajk came to represent many things to many people. Some decried him for being an intellectual. Others condemned him for being a high-ranking communist who had betrayed his country. Still others raised questions about the connections he had made during his time in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Across the region vigilance was demanded of all communists since, as the case of László Rajk showed, intellectuals, high-ranking party members, and Spanish Civil War veterans could be unmasked as traitors or spies. Such messages were repeated in Warsaw, Berlin, and Prague and in regional, district, and local party cells in each country. As the historian George Hodos pointed out, the “details, charges, and persons in the Rajk trial were kept deliberately interchangeable” so they could be interpreted in different national contexts.¹

It was not only the message of the Rajk trial that traveled across the Eastern Bloc. Secret police agents from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany landed in Budapest to observe the Hungarian secret police and their Soviet advisers at work in investigations, interrogations, and the staging of the show trial.² Józef Światło and Roman Romkowski arrived from Poland and remained in Hungary for close to two weeks. While there, they participated in interrogations, conversed with members of the Hungarian secret police, and recorded their impressions of the trial.³ The Czechoslovak officials Karel Šváb and Ivo Milén also went to Budapest, accompanied by members of the Czechoslovak procuracy, Ministry of Justice, and state court.⁴ Their observations informed the radical changes they made to the investigative and judicial systems in their own country and the creation of a new department to uncover enemies in the KSČ. One defendant in the Slánský trial that followed in Czechoslovakia, Artur London, recalled exclaiming to his interrogator, “But those are questions that Rajk was asked!”⁵ The Poles and the Czechoslovaks returned home with lists of names of their fellow party members who had been identified as enemies by the Hungarians. Such international connections and cross-border exchanges, which began with the common campaigns against class and social enemies declared by the Cominform in 1948 had evolved by the late 1940s into a joint crusade against internal enemies in the highest ranks of East European communist parties.

Although similar messages were repeated across the Bloc, each country took its own lessons away from the trial. In Poland, Bołesław Bierut announced that the trial had demonstrated the need to replace the potentially disloyal intellectuals who were holding party and state positions with members of the working class.⁶ In Czechoslovakia KSČ cells reached a similar conclusion: since the majority of those on trial were intellectuals, it was necessary to start recruiting new people from the lower class into state positions.⁷ After “assessing the Rajk trial,” they created a new position in the security force—the defense officer—to uncover potentially traitorous behavior among the service’s own agents.⁸ Soviet advisers arrived in Czechoslovakia in the fall of 1949 in conjunction with the search for enemies in the KSČ. They introduced new policing methods to the StB, including brutal interrogation methods to “uncover the Czechoslovak Rajk.”⁹ In East Germany (the GDR was founded less than a month after the trial) the trial informed a verification campaign that turned the SED from a mass party into a ruling elite, the “party of a new type.” It also led to the creation of a committee in the Party Control Commission to investigate links between East German communists and the alleged American agent Noel Field.¹⁰ In July 1952 Walter Ulbricht, referencing the arrests and trials of communists in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Romania, announced that enemies were likely undermining the SED as well.¹¹

Rajk’s trial in Hungary as well as the trials of hundreds of party leaders, church figures, economic managers, and alleged kulaks staged throughout the region brought similar messages about the new political order to regions, districts, and remote villages. The timing of these trials was not random. They were staged as new criminal codes were introduced to each country, codes that affirmed the principle of class justice in law. In Poland the principle of class justice was introduced to the criminal code on 20 July 1950.¹² In Czechoslovakia a new criminal code was passed in May 1950. In East Germany show trials coincided with the introduction of a new constitution, new legal codes, and a shift in judicial authority from Soviet military tribunals to GDR courts.¹³ The transcripts of the show trials of communist leaders in the early 1950s can be read as a means to propagate these new criminal codes and the principle of class justice in law. The lead defendants’ class backgrounds were stated clearly in the proceedings and the severity of their punishments explained in part on that basis.¹⁴

The terror unleashed inside communist parties, which took the form of expulsions from the party, demotions to candidacy status, arrests, imprisonment, and even executions, differed in each country. But in all three places it communicated the idea that it was necessary to uncover secret enemies by expanding covert, blanket surveillance networks in new areas of social, state, and economic life. It also opened positions for a new generation of young officials to take the places of those who were arrested, demoted, or moved to less elite services (for example, from the secret police to the civil police). In the coming years these officials were trained in a second wave of violence against alleged kulaks, church figures, and citizens with Western contacts.

At a meeting of the Cominform on 27 November 1949 the language of vigilance was propagated to the countries of Eastern Europe.¹⁵ “Every Communist and Workers’ Party is faced with the important task of strengthening vigilance” read the transcript of the meeting. “It is necessary to expose and eradicate bourgeois-nationalist elements and agents of imperialism from our ranks, whatever flag they hide under.”¹⁶ Party members across the Eastern Bloc were called on to watch each other for enemy behavior.¹⁷ The term “element” was introduced to multiple European languages to dehumanize enemies and lump antiregime statements into a single, easily dismissed category. Variants like “class alien element” or “chance element” were translated from the Russian sluchayni element: Polish: przypadkowy element; Czech: připadní element; German: zufälliger Element. This expression was used to describe communists who had joined the party during the period of mass recruitment but were now deemed insufficiently committed to the cause. Societies were divided into proregime or antiregime categories where they had not necessarily been polarized before.¹⁸ Party membership became a full-time occupation to which all other social and personal commitments were to be subordinated. It was no longer conceivable to partly agree with the party’s policies or to show up only at some meetings. Deviations were noted by peers, subordinates, or superiors in criticism/self-criticism sessions, where party members issued self-effacing apologies for not complying with social norms or political directives.

These campaigns took place against the backdrop of escalating Cold War tensions between East and West. The Berlin Blockade and expulsion of the Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz Tito from the Eastern Bloc both took place in June 1948. NATO was created in April 1949. East and West Germany were founded in the spring and fall of 1949. The political reverberations of these events seeped into the logic and ethos of the communist institutions formed at the time. In Czechoslovakia it became dangerous to use Western terms or cite Western institutional models during the so-called isolation campaign that began in 1949 and in which the StB cut cultural and political ties between Czechoslovakia and the West.¹⁹ This campaign was in full swing when the Soviet advisers helped create a department for foreign intelligence in Czechoslovakia in 1951. A foreign intelligence service was likewise founded in East Germany in 1951. Given the anti-Western language promulgated on international and domestic airwaves at the time these departments were certain to develop an anti-Western outlook.

This atmosphere, which spread suspicion of high-ranking communists and demands for mutual surveillance, informed the opening of new secret police schools in the region. A new MBP school, a two-year training program with the capacity to accommodate seven hundred recruits, was opened on 1 September 1949.²⁰ It opened its doors as the propaganda campaign against Rajk in Hungary was set in motion. The new StB school in Czechoslovakia opened on 1 October 1949. It lasted for twelve weeks and coincided with the KSČ’s search for enemies in the party. Although the MfS training school in East Germany did not open until 1951, recruitment to the Stasi took place soon after the Rajk trial and simultaneously with the campaigns of violence to transform the SED into a party of a new type. The message that secret enemies had snuck into the party and state permeated all aspects of agents’ training. The thousands of new secret police officials who entered the force in 1950 and 1951 were exposed to new training practices that focused increasingly on surveillance, recruiting secret informer networks, and developing covert skills to uncover hidden enemies like taking surveillance photos and installing telephone bugs and other listening devices.

In these and other ways show trials and the propaganda campaigns that surrounded them initiated important state-building processes in the region. They changed the social composition of the secret police force and other communist institutions by justifying the removal of old elites and intellectuals from high-ranking positions. They informed the training of secret police officials in covert surveillance operations, new interrogation practices, and counterintelligence methods. They propagated new legal codes and the principle of class justice in law. And they coordinated the services across national boundaries by spreading common methods of policing and common terms for enemies. The new officials who entered secret police forces at this time from factories, party organizations, or communist youth groups, never inhabited a world inspired by rebellion or revolution. They entered one marked by conservative values and military discipline.²¹ In Czechoslovakia, for example, the word řád, “regulations,” appeared time and again in party and secret police documents in 1949. New StB officials were issued service regulations, examination regulations, disciplinary regulations, and organizational regulations.²² Convenient pocket-sized manuals of regulations were translated from Russian into Czech. The order they provided—a highly centralized order inspired more directly by the Soviet model than the postwar force had been—became one of several arenas of battle in which a new generation of secret police officials, backed by the Soviets, declared war on the old elite’s tendency to do things on an arbitrary or case-by-case basis. The message of order sent a clear signal by 1954 that communist revolutions in Eastern Europe, with all of their chaos, excitement, repression, and confusion, had come to an end.

4

Conquering the Secret Police in Poland

ON 26 NOVEMBER 1950 two former Polish secret police (UB) officials, Antonin Senderowicz, a former interrogator, and Tadeusz Iwanski, a former guard, stood on trial before the military court in Szczecin, a region in Poland’s western borderland.¹ Senderowicz was charged with stealing prisoners’ packages, carrying an unauthorized weapon, conducting an unauthorized interrogation, kicking and beating a prisoner, and stealing a watch from a prison holding area. Iwanski was charged with drunkenness while in uniform and discharging a weapon while intoxicated. Senderowicz was given seven years in prison, Iwanski two. Between 1948 and 1951 over one hundred former UB officials were put on trial in Szczecin.² These trials were part of what Polish communist leaders referred to as the “war on criminality in the security forces.” Militia and UB officials who had previously been granted virtually unchecked power to arrest or interrogate citizens were tried, sentenced, and imprisoned on charges of drunkenness, desertion from the force, corruption, theft, and arbitrariness, all issues widespread in the lowest ranks of the communist security forces since 1945. Szczecin was not the only region in which such trials were held. UB officials were brought before military courts in Rzeszów, Lublin, Poznań, Białystok, Wrocław, Kielce, Warsaw, Bydgoszcz, Olsztyn, and Katowice.³

These trials were part of a larger campaign to rein in arbitrariness and corruption in the lowest ranks of the Polish state administration, economy, and security forces.⁴ While in Czechoslovakia, the arrests of communists had focused largely on prominent party members, in Poland they were directed at the lowest ranks of the force. These arrests and the anticorruption campaign of which they were a part followed Polish communists’ announcement in February 1947 that the PPR and its armed forces had achieved victory in the civil war against the underground. As Julia Brystiger put it, “The Polish reaction has been destroyed. Today we retire from the war to take power.”⁵ During the class struggle, proclaimed first by the Cominform and then by President Bolesław Bierut in 1948, the MBP began to extend informer networks into new areas of social and economic life. The principle of “prophylactic policing”: collecting information that would allow the police to predict and prevent crimes in advance was used increasingly as the party began to focus its efforts on transforming the economy at the beginning of the Six-Year Plan in 1951.

The rank and file of the Polish communist party, renamed the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) after the merger of the PPR and the Polish Socialist Party in December 1948, played a central role in transforming the MBP’s structures and internal culture. Members of the PZPR, from their positions in party organizations in the security forces, chastised UB officials for their “moral transgressions” and began to watch them closely in their private lives for signs of religious beliefs or social relationships with noncommunists. Whereas the party’s control over its security force had been tenuous in 1945, especially in areas located far from Warsaw, by 1951 party organizations, criticism/self-criticism sessions, internal surveillance, disciplinary procedures, and oversight commissions enforced the subordination of the MBP to the party on a daily basis. And yet in spite of PZPR members’ efforts to demilitarize the secret police and transform it into a state bureaucracy, UB officials continued practices they had internalized during the conflict for power well into the 1950s, such as disregarding PZPR members as “mere civilians,” ignoring their requests, or issuing them military directives.⁶

PROFESSIONALIZING THE MBP, 1947–1948

The legacy of the postwar era remained well into the Stalinist period for Polish institutions of violence. Polish military courts that had sentenced thousands of civilians between 1945 and 1947 retained jurisdiction over civilians until 1955.⁷ Between 1947 and 1948, such courts convicted 22,000 people.⁸ Between 1950 and 1953 they sentenced 22,500 citizens for crimes against the state.⁹ Many armed forces that had been built and trained during the civil conflict—which in 1947 included a force of around 250,000 armed officials—were never fully demobilized.¹⁰ But institutional change, while slow and halting, began in 1947 when secret police officials were chastised for their arbitrariness, failure to plan operations, and professional shortcomings.¹¹ Officials were criticized for their tendency to work “on a case-by-case basis”: “without a system, without a plan, and without consideration of the future.”¹² More selective criteria for admission, as opposed to the low standards of the period of mass recruitment, were instituted, and professional training became a central focus for development. As a set of instructions for operative agents read, “It is better to have fewer operative employees who are competent and worth training than a large number of worthless ones.”¹³

These policies coincided with the creation of a Schooling Department in the MBP in July and the Central MBP School in Legionowo in August 1947 (Centrum Wyszkolenia MBP w Legionowie).¹⁴ The Central MBP School operated, with a few changes in its name, until the fall of communism in 1989. Before the school was founded training had been less focused on operative work.¹⁵ In Legionowo agents were also trained to work in a specific department rather than take a general course of study. An officer school was created in February 1948 for four hundred students to prepare them for positions as heads or deputy heads of district offices. To be accepted to the school it was necessary to have worked in the MBP for six months, have an elementary education, and have “proven one’s dedication” to serving the People’s Democracy.¹⁶

The push to professionalize the MBP was accompanied by a disciplinary campaign to punish those who failed to comply with the new standards of conduct. From January 1948 cases of UB officials who were put on trial for disciplinary infractions were widely publicized in the force.¹⁷ The heads of security offices were instructed to read the reports aloud to their subordinates before returning them to the central ministry in Warsaw. One such report described the six main categories of infractions that UB officials were charged with: collaboration with the enemy (the Polish underground), working for the Nazi occupiers during the war, misdemeanors committed while in a drunken state, abuse of power, bribe taking, and theft. Each category listed examples of agents who had committed these crimes and the punishments they received. For example, Kazimierz Lis, an interrogator, was charged with working for the underground. The AK had supposedly ordered him to infiltrate the security office and tell them about its structure and activities. Other examples of infractions included shootings and violence committed while in a drunken state. Such incidents appear to have been widespread after the war.¹⁸ In one case, two UB agents, Zygmunt Wiechowski and Zbigniew Małota, were charged with beating citizens after drinking vodka with friends (it is unclear why). They proceeded to kick and shoot at two militia officials who tried to stop them. In another, similar incident a UB official, Michał Baszyński, resisted arrest while drunk. When confronted about this by a militiaman, he yelled, “I will show you who you are dealing with!” and shot at the man with a pistol. As these examples show, the disciplinary campaign was not about condemning violence inside the institution, such as beatings or brutal interrogations of prisoners, but rather in its dealings with those outside the institution, such as random citizens and militiamen. As Gomułka had noted to the Central Committee as early as November 1945, the unchecked authority the party had granted to the UB continued to undermine the fragile regime’s ability to function and establish order, as well as its reputation and credibility.

The war on criminality in the security forces was concurrent with a February 1948 campaign to combat corruption in the Polish state administration and economy more generally. The PPR appointed a special commission to deal with corruption and establish central control over the budget and the distribution of national resources.¹⁹ Calls to fight corruption went hand in hand with efforts to standardize how state institutions were administered from top to bottom, many of which had, up to that point, developed in an improvised, locally specific manner. In February 1948, for example, Radkiewicz criticized UB offices for using “peculiar, local organizational terminology that introduces confusion into [party] ideas” rather than standardized language to describe policing methods.²⁰ He claimed that offices were using different terms to refer to the same department and employing the names of positions inconsistently. Party directives were henceforth to be issued through a single source, the newspaper Party Life, which spread an identical language and common directives to party organizations across all state institutions.

MBP officer Faustyn Grzybowski. IPN 0329/27.

Another shift in the internal culture of the MBP entailed removing officials who had been trained in postwar military-style operations from positions of leadership. One such case was that of Faustyn Grzybowski, who had carried out military pacification campaigns as the head of regional secret police offices in Białystok, Lublin, and Wrocław. As his file specified, although he had “considerable achievements in the war against reactionary bandits,” he could no longer head a regional UB office because “the tasks of the security force have changed their form and methods of war with the enemy.”²¹ His military training and military background were no longer appropriate given the new methods and tasks of the service. He was transferred in May 1948 to the Sector for Guarding Public Figures.

THE POLISH UNITED WORKERS’ PARTY (PZPR) AND THE MBP

At the Unity Congress held between 15 and 21 December 1948 the Polish communist party, with 955,900 members, merged with the Polish Socialist Party, with 531,350 members, to form the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR).²² At the time, around 400,000 PPR members had been in the party for less than a year.²³ Membership in the PZPR was closed and tightly regulated thereafter. Before party membership was conferred, new applicants were required to traverse multiple layers of bureaucratic approval, receive references from other party members, and complete a two-year candidacy period to prove their activism and participation in mass organizations, political education courses, and party meetings.

In February 1948 news that the communists had taken power in Czechoslovakia served to bolster the message that socialism was victorious abroad as well as at home. The Polish party newspaper Nowe Drogi celebrated the outpouring of popular support for the KSČ and its Action Committees: “When Gottwald called for the creation of Action Committees, they quickly spread across all institutions and workplaces in the country. Working-class Prague reacted immediately to party leaders’ every request. Thousands of people gathered to attend meetings within only a few hours.”²⁴ Although this image was idealized and paid little attention to the chaotic nature of Action Committees and the destruction they left behind, it was not incorrect. The speed with which Action Committees had been created was indeed remarkable, and popular support for the KSČ’s takeover of power represented a triumph for all countries in communist Europe.

Likely emboldened by the news from Czechoslovakia, the PPR began to expel members from its ranks who were deemed insufficiently active, had allegedly made comments against Soviet or PPR policies, or who were judged to be of enemy class backgrounds. A farmer who joined the PPR in September 1947 was expelled in February 1948 for not showing up at meetings. No one in the party organization had seen or heard from him.²⁵ A peasant was expelled in November 1948 for attacking a convoy transporting cows from the USSR and for an unelaborated charge of “bad conduct in a group setting.”²⁶ Another lost his membership card for calling the party a “bunch of bandits,” not attending meetings, and laughing at anyone who reminded him to attend. One man was expelled for hanging up posters for the Peasants’ Party and muttering that “the People’s Democracy is the rule of the Jews.”²⁷ The term “foreign class element” became part of the communist lexicon during the class struggle in June 1948. This led to expulsions of PPR members who owned shops or small businesses. One party member was expelled for owning a shop that sold goods made of iron. Another was forced out for owning a soap factory, and yet another for owning a bakery and a private home.²⁸ By November, a month before the Congress, lower-level party organizations had expelled around eighty-two thousand people from the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and twenty-nine thousand from the PPR.²⁹ In the midst of these expulsions, on 13 November 1948 the first party member arrested in connection with what in succeeding years became the terror in the PZPR, Włodzimierz Lechowicz, was detained. Those who participated most actively in expelling purported enemies from the party or security forces were granted state awards. The file of the personnel chief Mikołaj Orechwa, for example, includes an award for his service in the “uncompromising battle for class and political purity in the security apparatus.”³⁰

The new PZPR rank and file that emerged from these expulsions began in turn to more actively create party organizations in the security force. Party members in the security force criticized secret police officials for being, in the language of the time, “detached from the party.” This phrase was used only in Poland. It stemmed from the specificities of the PPR’s takeover of power, namely, the way many UB officials had for years acted without direct party oversight or consulting local party secretaries. In March 1948 Tadeusz Paszta, who headed the Warsaw UB office, was removed from the service for “detaching himself from the party.”³¹ In July 1949 Henryk Palka, who headed several secret police offices between 1945 and 1947, was criticized for “not taking an active part in meetings run by the party organization.”³² The party organization claimed that Palka had failed to assist a party secretary who was stationed in his office. It was decided that although he deserved a severe punishment they would allow him to “make a self-criticism of his transgressions to make up for his errors.” After the self-criticism, he was reprimanded and transferred to another office. With the disciplining of one agent, Palka, the party was making a clear statement about the power it wielded over MBP officials and its desire to use this power to actively change agents’ behavior.

In this and other ways PZPR members began to have a more visible, everyday presence in the force. From 1948 this took the form also of political education courses and fifteen-minute daily news updates to discuss the party line on international and domestic issues (prasówka).³³ As the security agent Józef Światło later described, whereas in the early postwar period it was common practice for UB officials to hand completed cases to regional party secretaries, from 1948 “the party gained more influence over operations. . . . The heads of regional UB offices were required to inform regional party secretaries about what they were doing. They were not obligated to reveal details about informers or specific cases. But they were required to let them know, at least in general terms, about their actions in the region.”³⁴ In effect he was describing a change not in the rules, as, officially, UB agents had always been subordinated to the party, but in institutional practices, which had developed in a decentralized way during the civil conflict.

PZPR control over security operations was also strengthened in the party’s highest echelons. In April 1948 Stalin criticized the PPR leadership for anti-Marxist and nationalist tendencies.³⁵ Gomułka stopped attend ing Politburo meetings in early June.³⁶ After Gomułka was sidelined from power, Jakub Berman, Bolesław Bierut, and Hilary Minc became Poland’s so-called ruling troika.³⁷ On 24 February 1949 a Commission on Security Issues was created in the Politburo (its records no longer exist, if they ever did). The members included Bierut, Berman, Radkiewicz, Mieczysław Mietkowski, Roman Romkowski, and Konrad Świetlik.³⁸ The commission’s instructions described its purpose as increasing political control over the security apparatus and ensuring that MBP agents focus more on agent and informer work.³⁹

Party members aimed to change the MBP’s internal culture. During the conflict for power, the relationship between officers and subordinates had been organized along the lines of a military-style command structure. This began to change in the middle of 1948. In April 1948 a party executive committee chastised the head of a UB branch for his tendency to swear and scream at subordinates.⁴⁰ During the proceedings the UB official stood before a committee of five PPR members who had the authority to fire him, transfer him, or expel him from the party. In the course of the discussion it was revealed that the party members had obtained knowledge of his behavior from his subordinates, hinting obliquely at the informer networks they were running in the MBP rank and file. They accused the officer of engaging in “inappropriate behavior toward his employees.” He apologized and attributed his habit of yelling at subordinates to his years in the military. The PPR members on these commissions, for their part, were doubtless pushed toward upholding strict standards by the ongoing campaign to expel insufficiently active members from the ranks of the party. Not just ideology but violence and fear were helping change the everyday behavior of secret police officials.

For years PPR members had expressed dissatisfaction about UB officials’ political knowledge. During the 1947 election campaign one PPR member disparaged secret police officials for their lack of political sophistication: “[Secret police] employees cannot explain why the Peasants’ Party is unnecessary and harmful.”⁴¹ Instead of thinking in terms of political differences, he noted, “they approached work ‘with a stick’—with the help of the military.”⁴² In June 1948 PPR members introduced political education courses to regional and district UB offices to address this issue.⁴³ The topics they covered were the history of the workers’ movement in Poland, the history of the reactionary underground in the war for power, and the union between the workers and the peasants. Every MBP official was required to pass the exams at the end of these courses. Results determined future promotions and placement.⁴⁴

Many of the party members sent to secret police offices to run these political education courses had themselves been trained only recently. They often had little knowledge of what the UB actually did. They arrived in UB offices wielding ideologically loaded descriptions of the security force and naïve conceptions of its role in the civil conflict for power. The teaching materials on the topic of security in the PPR Party School combined the party’s unflagging faith in the triumph of communism with poorly phrased and cloudy generalizations of the enemy: “Our security forces are necessary for the destruction of the leftovers of banditism as well as diversion, economic sabotage, and espionage, which have become the reactionary underground’s main forms of warfare.”⁴⁵ Violence was sterilized and explained away as an inevitable part of governance. There were no attempts to discuss moral or political gray areas or the desertions, threats, torture, or interrogations that made up life in the UB. The narrative of us versus them, only tenuously applicable to the conflict itself, emerged from PPR writings on the conflict rather than from how the conflict was perceived of at the time. The war for power, which had ended less than a year earlier, was quickly appropriated as the foundational narrative of the regime, reimagined, and internalized in simplified ways in party education courses.

For the newly recruited PPR officials who were sent into UB offices in 1948, the conflict for power already looked different from what it was in 1945. When the PZPR member Zenon Celejewski was assigned to teach a political education course in a UB office in Kielce, he took up the role with the élan of a newly recruited party member. As he wrote in his memoir, “After school I dreamed of fighting the enemies of socialism. I knew that people my age had continued to fight this war since liberation. I had read a lot about it.”⁴⁶ Celejewski’s optimism did not outlast his first interview with a secret police officer. “Is your family okay?” the officer queried. Interpreting this as an inquiry about their general health, Celejewski answered that his parents were alive and well and that he had a sister and two brothers. “It’s not about that, comrade.” The UB officer explained that the question was whether his family had compromising backgrounds. Celejewski was aghast: “So, you don’t just accept members of the communist party and [the communist youth organization] into your office?” “We do. We accept even nonparty members, but they must have clean hands.” To work in the secret police office, Celejewski spent days filling out a questionnaire he was not allowed to carry off of the premises. “When I realized that I needed to remember what year my parents, siblings, grandmother and grandfather were born, I nearly resigned,” he said, “because I figured that they would never demand that of you anywhere else.” After several background checks, he was accepted to work in the office.

Divergent cultures had evidently developed in the party and security force during the years of civil conflict. Each institution had different conceptions of mutual trust and understanding. The MBP, on the frontline of the conflict, had developed a paranoid, closed culture that was deeply hostile to outsiders. The PZPR, on the other hand, had trained members to think in optimistic, linear ways about the party’s route to power. Such perceptions were difficult to reconcile and influenced communication between the institutions. As an informer report from February 1947 noted, the head of the MBP Economic Department in Warsaw had said in a private conversation, “I don’t like the Party. It’s nothing but a bunch of empty chatterboxes.” The report explained that this officer, who had reached the rank of Captain in the MBP, did not carry out his function with “internal conviction.” He had joined the party three months before the election as a concession to other PPR members in his office. He hoped to soon leave work in the security force and set up his own law practice.⁴⁷

A report from a party school in the secret police in 1952 suggested that such views were not easily changed. It commented on UB officials’ hostile attitude toward party members and ideology. Some security officials had never read communist texts. Few were interested in being sent to the school in the first place. Several tried to leave or simply skipped classes.⁴⁸ One hurled expletives at a party secretary, telling another, “I should have him arrested on the spot.”⁴⁹ Several expressed the opinion that political education was a waste of time since they “already knew the lessons of the VII Plenum.” Offices commonly refused to send their men to training courses, believing that their labor was better used elsewhere. The Wrocław office sent only ten men even though the party had requested that it send twenty-six. After further pressure, it sent six more. The Kielce office sent more men than were requested but none from the operative department. They sent one official from the health sector and three from the supply sector.⁵⁰ Many UB officials also expressed indignation at being told what to do by party secretaries who knew little about their institution. “What does he, a party secretary, know about our work?” grumbled one UB officer.⁵¹ Another refused to follow orders issued by party members, who were, in his words, “only civilians.”⁵² The habits of intimidating party members had not entirely disappeared. When secret police officials wanted to recall their men from party courses, they threatened the heads of the course to release them.⁵³

A topic that elicited a lively discussion among participants, particularly “in the corridor” (the report was based on information the party instructor gathered while eavesdropping on the private conversations of UB officials that took place in the corridor) was the demand that MBP officials report on the behavior of their superiors. For officers trained in the military and partisan culture from which many UB officials had emerged, this demand was difficult to comprehend. Younger rank-and-file members were more open to the requirement. They readily informed on their superiors’ tendencies to drink, instances of immoral behavior, and “pride.”⁵⁴

TRANSFORMING THE CULTURE OF THE UB

In 1948 the PPR declared an open attack on the Catholic church. This declaration brought to an end the relatively hands-off policy the party had advanced toward the church since 1945.⁵⁵ In August a prominent Catholic publication was shut down and its editors arrested.⁵⁶ Around the same time, a party campaign was initiated inside the MBP to socially isolate officials who engaged in religious practices. After all, many agents recruited from the traditionally religious peasant class still identified as practicing Catholics in the late-1940s. From 1948 this began to change on many levels. Superiors pressured subordinates to renounce religion. Promotions and employment in the service became contingent on not engaging in religious practices. Party members initiated humiliating self-criticism sessions for those who insisted on getting married in a church. In a letter to her father in November 1948 a woman working as a secretary in a UB office wrote of the dilemma she faced when she received an offer to move to a higher office: “If I started working in the [party office], I would surely become a party activist. But I would have to renounce God because my boss says that a good party member does not recognize God.” She consulted her priest, who advised her that “God is forever, and the party is transient.”⁵⁷ This letter was found in the archive of the feared counterintelligence unit, Department X. Since the priest advocated faith in God over faith in the party, his words were doubtless interpreted as an indication of the church’s enemy influence in communist Poland.

Transforming the culture of the UB involved not only campaigns of repression and violence. It also involved positive measures to bring women into party and state institutions. The early Stalinist period saw the recruitment of more women into the ranks of the PZPR than any other.⁵⁸ As the historian Natalia Jarska has argued, in this era the PZPR was more “feminine” than the PPR in a way that it would never be again. The number of women in the PZPR decreased quickly from 1956.⁵⁹ Not that women held many prominent positions in the force. Most often they were assigned to the women’s organization or propaganda department. But there were notable exceptions. Julia Brystiger had been appointed head of Department V, the department for culture, religion, and mass organizations, in 1945. This appointment was a rare instance of a woman holding a significant leadership position in an East European secret police force.

The culture of unchecked arrests began to come under fire starting in 1948. MBP circulars demanded that UB officials stop arresting state employees without giving notice before doing so.⁶⁰ Before arresting an employee, the instructions noted, security officers were required to inform the head of the personnel department of the office or institution where the person was working. An increasing number of oversight commissions compiled alarming reports on the corruption, disorganization, and unsanitary conditions in UB prisons. On 22 September a report declared that a Wrocław UB office was “basically a prison.”⁶¹ Its sanitary state was referred to as “catastrophic.” There had been three suicides in the prison.⁶²

Organizational chart of the Ministry for State Security, 1948. IPN BU 0649/9/1.

A shift in party–security relations that took place out of the spotlight was the decision on 10 June 1948 to release PPR members from their obligations as secret police informers. From the beginning of the postwar period, and during the 1946 referendum in particular, the MBP had routinely recruited PPR members to serve as informers. In mid-1948 there were 606 agents (a term used to describe those who provided information on a regular basis) from the PPR working for the UB, 11 percent of the total number; and 7,909 informers, or 17 percent of the total network.⁶³ Thereafter informers were to be recruited not from the PPR but rather from enemy groups, a shift that mirrored Soviet practices.

The reports on brutality, while clearly informed by issues in the MBP, were used to justify the campaign to establish greater party control over the MBP at all levels. This was announced in the fall of 1948. On 8 September 1948 Radkiewicz criticized UB and militia officials for putting themselves above the party. “Among our employees, it’s common to see pride, arrogance, a haughty attitude toward Party officials, and a careless and uproarious way of living,” he stated.⁶⁴ His criticism of party–security relations centered on secret police and militia officials’ use of the word “cooperation” to describe their relationship with the PPR. “The word cooperation,” he declared, “makes it seem that the secret police and militia are equal to the regional party committee.” There was to be no talk of cooperation, only of subordination: “The Party Committee has a right and obligation to demand obedience from all members of the Party, regardless of whether they work in a state cooperative or head a regional security office. He concluded that “a security official, militiaman, or soldier in the Internal Security Corps or Reserve Citizens’ Militia is not only a functionary with a pistol, rifle, or automatic weapon. He is conscious of his class position, a warrior fighting for the foundations of the People’s Democracy, for socialism in Poland.”

Party organizations began to hold criticism and self-criticism sessions to “curb the egos” of MBP officials. As one set of instructions put it, “Party members must oppose security employees’ tendency to thrust their noses in the air in their everyday work, to battle the danger of those so ‘dizzy from careerism’ that they make decisions on their own authority, and to respond to instances in which [secret police employees] have detached themselves from the party.”⁶⁵ By not following party orders, the claim went, agents had placed themselves outside the collective. This tendency was, from 1948, no longer permissible.

The Party Control Commission (CKKP) was also instructed to ensure that the ranks of the party were “pure” and that members led a correct lifestyle (tryb życia).⁶⁶ This included but was not exclusive to MBP officials who were party members. Although the CKKP had been created as early as 1945, it initially paid little attention to officials’ personal lives. After the PZPR was founded, the CKKP was granted a varied and extensive array of disciplinary measures over party members that increasingly infringed on matters concerning their private lives. The consequences of a CKKP investigation could be severe. Party members could be expelled from the PZPR as well as issue reprimands, rebukes, serious rebukes, and serious rebukes with a warning, punishments carefully noted in personnel files and which had consequences for job placement, career advancement, and access to education.

The stakes were high for those who were expelled. While it had been possible for a party member to leave the PPR with little consequence before 1948, the costs (and benefits) of PZPR membership were far higher after this year. As the Soviet politician Georgy Malenkov purportedly told Rudolf Slánský, a person expelled from the party was socially far worse off than someone who had never joined it.⁶⁷ Expulsion from the PZPR entailed losing one’s job, apartment, privileges, access to education for his children, and social life. Those who left the elite were decried as enemies and subjected to long-term secret police surveillance measures. Similar to the process of accepting someone into the PZPR, the process of expelling someone required multiple layers of bureaucratic approval. Through institutions such as the CKKP the new norms about what party members were allowed to say and who they were allowed to spend time with in the years following 1948 were continually enforced.

Organizational chart of a regional state security office, 1948. IPN BU 0649/9/1.

THE “VIGILANCE PLENUM” AND THE CLASS STRUGGLE

MBP officials took seriously the Cominform thesis of June 1948 that the class struggle in their country was intensifying. In response, they changed not only their internal rhetoric—repeatedly echoing the narrative that the party was under siege by internal and external enemies—but also the structure and policing methods of their institution. Józef Różański, who headed the interrogation department, made a powerful statement on the issue at a gathering of central and regional officials in March 1949: “Every security official and interrogator must understand that this is a period of great transformation of peoples’ souls. Such changes do not come about mechanically. People around us are hesitating. Thousands are hindering our work. They have doubts. They raise problems. But only now are we taking the first steps toward reorienting people’s psyche and winning it for socialism.”⁶⁸ To combat class enemies, he sanctioned the use of torture, lowered the standards of evidence required to prove guilt, and advocated a policy of no tolerance for interrogators who hesitated to use such methods in their work.

According to Różański, all interrogators were required to employ brutal interrogation techniques: “It is necessary to remove those who hesitate or are reluctant to take part in what we are doing.” He criticized what he perceived to be the “unnatural and dangerous tendency” of interrogators to refuse to be assigned to cases because they believed that investigations had not followed what Różański termed “formalities,” apparently standards of evidence. Henceforth, he insisted, the material collected by MBP operative agents was sufficient proof that a crime had been committed. If a person was arrested, that meant that enough evidence had been gathered on him to justify the arrest. Różański made clear, then, the interrogation department’s assumption that guilt was proven at the moment of arrest. All that was left for interrogators to do was force the person to confess. Starting in 1950 the interrogation department, much like the Czechoslovak StB at the time, adopted more brutal forms of interrogation aimed at achieving confessions rather than establishing guilt. In theory, prisoners could be interrogated for up to twelve hours. In practice, relentless questioning lasted even longer.

MBP chief interrogator Józef Różański, IPN BU 0193/7093.

Since interrogators had tortured prisoners during the period of civil conflict as well, what Różański was proclaiming was less a change in the methods of the force than a policy of explicitly sanctioning, encouraging, and even demanding the use of torture against those deemed class enemies. Such practices were thus standardized across the force. Prisoners’ accounts of their time in UB prisons confirmed that the violence and brutality of the service escalated from 1949. Tonia Lechtman, a communist arrested in July 1949, explained that she was subjected to “harsh interrogations” (ostre śledztwo).⁶⁹ For nine months she was interrogated for up to twelve hours at a time. She was beaten, kicked, and dragged by the hair for not confessing to having collaborated with a foreign intelligence service. She was not allowed to sleep for twelve days.⁷⁰ In her words, “All of the underhanded behavior and torture was nothing compared to the fact that I was convinced that I was guilty and the anguish I felt when I asked myself what I was guilty of.” The interrogators, for their part, viewed the beating of prisoners as simply how things were done. An investigator for a 1956 party commission mentioned that “one of the comrades said that Różański struck Lechowicz in the face during an interrogation. He considered this so normal that he did not even remember to mention it to the commission.”⁷¹

The class struggle also influenced the methods and ethos of the operative department. On 12 March 1949 Radkiewicz described the service’s expectations of operative agents: “An operative agent should be characterized by his skill and passion for agent work. He should be unable to live without it.”⁷² This image reflected new assumptions about agents’ dedication to the force and the skills required to remain in it. Radkiewicz criticized the previous methods of the force: “Before, our practice had been—he confesses to the attack, he has a weapon—verdict.”⁷³ Now, he asserted, it was necessary to recruit informers in areas where members of the underground were known to be located. In connection with the class struggle, he explained, it was necessary for the security force to begin employing new methods against the enemy, including disinformation, diversion, and disorganization, terms describing the strategy of undermining enemy groups from within.

These tactics, which would be used by the service for decades to come, required building new surveillance and informer networks to influence targets’ behavior quietly over time. In early 1949 Radkiewicz noted that the MBP had enlisted 1,164 agents and 19,000 informers into service.⁷⁴ Of course this emphasis on informers was not a complete departure from previous practices. MBP officials had regularly recruited informers during the referendum campaign in 1946 and elections in 1947. After these operations were over, they released many of them, particularly those deemed “dead souls,’ who no longer furnished relevant information.⁷⁵ It was a routine practice to release informers after operations were completed. Informer networks, similar to the ranks of the MBP, waxed and waned continually, making it difficult to compare across national cases since numbers fluctuated from year to year and the material that informers collected varied highly in its usefulness. Not that these changes decreased the violence committed by MBP agents. The number of political prisoners nearly doubled between 1948 and 1952, from 26,400 in January 1948 to 49,500 in November 1952.⁷⁶ Many new arrests were linked to the service’s expansion of operative work, which increasingly allowed agents to “see” into private conversations. This led to the discovery of new crimes, such as expressing negative opinions of the state in private conversations, a criminal charge referred to as “propaganda of whispers.”⁷⁷ Tens of thousands of people were arrested under this charge.

Attempts were also made to extend the MBP’s operative networks into villages. Villages had been a notorious weak spot for communist and UB authority since the early postwar era. It was difficult, if not impossible, for outsiders, particularly secret police officials dispatched from Warsaw, to gain the trust required for cooperation or to maintain conditions of conspiracy in places where everyone knew each other. Cases of violent attacks on party and security officials in villages were not uncommon. At a Central Committee meeting in June 1946 Gomułka had spoken of this issue: “We have an apparatus on paper, but nothing is being done. Comrades are begging us to remove them from their functions because they are scared. Comrade Zapałka can shoot a target at two hundred meters. He is in the militia and saying, ‘please help me, I am scared that they are going to shoot me.’ . . . This is a widespread phenomenon. All our wonderful plans are for nothing if we have such a security situation in the villages.”⁷⁸

The MBP began to collect information more systematically in villages from the fall of 1948.⁷⁹ Agents were issued “instructions on the tasks of the security force for the class war in the countryside.” They were told to identify which farmers were willing to give information to the secret police.⁸⁰ One UB office, to give an example, reported identifying eight potential informers and two possible residents, that is, informers who ran their own networks, from among the “kulak milieu.” Information was gathered on those who expressed negative opinions of collectivization in private conversations. Agents also made use of information gathered by other state institutions with close connections to the community, such as the local militia. As MBP instructions explained: “Every member of the militia walks around the village and sees and hears a lot. He knows the issues that arise in the village. He has conversations with people there. . . . With the help of the militia it will be possible to recruit and identify local informers in the village.”⁸¹ By drawing on the information collected by other institutions as well as their own, MBP officials removed themselves increasingly from direct operational work and visibility in many areas.

In the summer of 1949 the PZPR initiated a party verification campaign.⁸² Whereas the previous verification campaign had focused on expelling members with enemy class backgrounds, in 1949 party members were closely scrutinized for personal relationships, habits, and the behavior of their family members. Many were expelled for other issues. One security agent was expelled for hiding a fellow security agent who had been sentenced to five years in prison and helping him escape abroad. Another was expelled for allegedly being a homosexual.⁸³ A discussion in a party organization in the MBP focused on whether the wife of the MBP personnel chief Mikołaj Orechwa had “behaved properly” at a gathering. After the discussion a party member mentioned rather timidly that that conversation was of little importance: “We are speaking of wives, but we could say a lot about our own officials, the bosses and others. We say that we are a sort of military institution, so we never raise the issue that people are beaten. People talk about executioners and laugh. But we can’t escape the sheer number of issues.”⁸⁴ This comment, suggesting a (singular) voice of criticism was either ignored or the response to it was removed from the books. Either way, it went no further.

The verification campaign took place soon before the Rajk trial in Hungary, the event that increased police powers in communist countries across the Bloc. MBP agents traveled to Budapest to observe the trial.⁸⁵ Agent Józef Światło, who was sent in spite of the fact that he did not speak Hungarian, was nevertheless able to report back to Warsaw on the tone, setting, and staging of the trial. He noted the behavior of the accused and the audience’s reaction to the proceedings: “Among the audience members it was possible to hear shouts of indignation—why aren’t they in jail already?” He watched how Hungarian secret police officials reacted to what the defendants were saying and noted that they were “surprised that more than once the defendants said or mentioned people the Hungarian authorities did not want them to mention,” indirectly hinting at the extent to which the majority of the proceedings had already been committed to paper and memorized to avoid such surprises. He concluded with seeming astonishment that the Hungarian secret police “did not always control the direction of the trial.” The procurator, he noted, asked no questions apart from procedural ones, giving “the impression that [he] is afraid to ask certain questions.” Światło was not just a passive observer. He actively interrogated prisoners and witnesses under the guidance of the Hungarian secret police. These witnesses mentioned the names of Polish communists as potential enemies, names Światło took back to Warsaw to initiate investigations into the enemy activities of PZPR members.

The suspicion of high-ranking communists aired during the trial hung in the air as a new school for MBP officers opened on 1 September 1949.⁸⁶ This two-year school had the capacity to train seven hundred recruits. Its first session convened as the propaganda campaign against Rajk was becoming increasingly frenzied. The message that enemies were hiding in the party permeated the way agents were trained. The school pushed forward a more targeted focus on surveillance and uncovering hidden enemies through skills such as secretly taking photographs and setting up listening devices.

For the MBP, enemies were not sought out only in the party. From 1948, operations began to more systematically emphasize the economy. The MBP’s economic department was reorganized between August and September 1949.⁸⁷ Units referred to as Guard Units, which conducted surveillance in factories, were integrated into the MBP (Referaty ochrony—RO).⁸⁸ This merger was justified on the basis that the class struggle “required extending the security apparatus into economic targets.” Agents in Guard Units collected information on factory employees who belonged to supposed enemy groups, such as former AK soldiers. If a problem arose in a factory, agents’ suspicion fell first on those who had black marks of this sort in their files, suggesting a pattern of social profiling.⁸⁹ Guard Units worked on the basis of a centralized plan. A branch of the RO in Gdańsk, for example, spoke the language of planning. It reported in December 1950 that it would initiate 66 meetings with residents and 650 meetings with informers and increase the number of informers, residents, and agents recruited that year from 100 to 359.⁹⁰ These units were used as models for the entire MBP when the institution was reorganized on the basis of a system of centralized quotas and long-term planning.

For the MBP, this and other institutional changes were part of a larger strategy to shift the force to a system of preventative policing. In this model, agents would be stationed in targets over a long period of time and develop intimate knowledge of the personnel, professional know-how, and internal workings there. If a problem arose they could rely on informer networks to find out what had caused it. If an agent stationed in a factory received information that workers were planning a strike, for example, he could initiate a “prophylactic conversation” with them (rozmowa profilaktyczna) to warn them against involvement in the strike and thereby prevent it from taking place.⁹¹ As in Czechoslovakia, where the class struggle informed the creation of a network of counterintelligence officers, or “defense agents,” in the StB, in Poland it expanded the reach of policing networks into new areas of the economy.⁹² Such networks grew to encompass eighty-five thousand informers during the years of the First Six-Year Plan.⁹³

Centralized planning in the force was also enabled by a reorganization of lower-level MBP offices in 1952 from a system based on individual targets to one based on geographic territories.⁹⁴ Agents were assigned to territories or targets on a full-time basis, targets such as banks, farms, or industries, where they collected information and recruited informers over time. Soviet officials were evidently satisfied with these developments. They recalled several of their own men from regional MBP offices in 1952, presumably because Polish officials were able to operate without direct oversight or instruction.⁹⁵ Polish agents, for their part, continued to implement the practices they had learned from their superiors and Soviet advisers. Even after the death of Stalin many practices remained the same for rank-and-file operative agents like Tadeusz Wojtyniak. He headed an RO unit in a metal industry until December 1953, where he ran operative and informer networks in economic production and various social milieus.⁹⁶ He recruited an engineer who served as a technical specialist to help him investigate cases of sabotage and another informer who “managed to find himself in all milieus and situations.”⁹⁷ His main task was to provide oversight over production norms, especially for goods exported to the USSR for military purposes.⁹⁸ When an accident occurred, he related, the first to come under suspicion were those with compromising backgrounds.⁹⁹

The search for enemies in the party also justified the introduction of higher standards of admission into the PZPR. The atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust informed obsessively close inspections of new members, standards now enforced by party organizations and cells at all levels.¹⁰⁰ In his report on the Rajk trial, a member of a party organization in the MBP raised the issue of “foreign class elements making their way into the party [elementy klasowo obce].”¹⁰¹ Since Rajk had been branded as an “intellectual,” a group now officially deemed hostile to the working class, the trial brought class background yet again in the process of vetting party members. The Soviets also had a voice in the matter. In late September 1949 the Soviet diplomat in Poland reported to Moscow that an issue that should be raised in the Polish Central Committee meeting on 22–24 October was “the promotion and placement of cadres.” Politburo member Jakub Berman had agreed with them on this. “Bierut’s speech,” Berman explained, “will link the question of promoting new cadres with the Rajk trial.”¹⁰² This policy of promoting new people was carried out more thoroughly in some institutions than others. One of the most far-reaching purges was in the Polish military. The Soviet commander Konstanty Rokossowski was appointed minister of defense in November 1949. Soviet citizens and Red Army officers—52 generals, 670 officers, and 200 advisers—were granted leading positions in the Polish military and arms industry.¹⁰³

The Vigilance Plenum, held between 11 and 13 November 1949, was an additional blow to a party already fractured by accusations of enemy behavior. Interpersonal relationships within the party lay in tatters. At the Plenum Gomułka was expelled from the Central Committee. The Rajk trial was evoked to justify the removal of supposedly disloyal party and state officials and promote members of the working class in their place. A Soviet observer reported PZPR members’ mixed reactions to the Vigilance Plenum. Some members, adopting the language of the time, accused each other of enemy behavior, disloyalty, or covering up enemy class backgrounds.¹⁰⁴ These members approved of the expulsion of Gomułka and others who expressed anti-Soviet sentiments. Others defended Gomułka. A member of a factory party organization protested against the secret police informer networks that had been created in his factory: “We don’t have any enemies in the factory. Workers are too stupid to know who an ‘Anders’¹⁰⁵ person is or what imperialism is. We work from morning to night–it just doesn’t concern us.”¹⁰⁶

Some expressed their objections by either not attending the meetings convened to discuss the Plenum or by leaving them early. As the Soviet observer noted, only 250 of 759 PZPR members in the area attended the meeting to discuss the Plenum. Of those, only 100 remained to the end, and 150 left during the gathering. While outspoken critics of the party’s policies were exceptional, given the harsh punishments at the time for antistate utterances, PZPR members reacted to the Plenum in a variety of ways, whether by expressing indifference, support, disapproval, or passive resistance. Given the fear that the Plenum had unleashed in the highest echelons of the party, the historical example of the Great Terror in the Soviet Union was raised as a warning. The Politburo member Hilary Minc cautioned the party not to start a “Yezhovshina,” the term used to describe the arrests and executions overseen by the NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov in the USSR between 1936 and 1938.¹⁰⁷

In spite of the personnel changes initiated at the Plenum, the Soviets did not believe that the Poles had gone far enough. In February 1950 the Soviet ambassador voiced dissatisfaction about the number and ranks of the people who Polish leaders expelled from the party. In his words they “limited [themselves] to impassioned speeches about vigilance” and kicked “a few irrelevant people” out of the party. He added that “[the Poles] have this ‘theory’ that people holding leading positions in the state administration need to be educated or knowledgeable about the law. Positions are held only by intellectuals, many of whom have suspicious backgrounds.”¹⁰⁸ As in their own country in the 1930s, the Soviets were convinced that it was necessary to completely remove experienced people from state positions.

As demanded at the Plenum, Polish party, state, and security officials began to scrutinize each other closely. They looked, among other things, for signs of religious tendencies. Religious tendencies included spending time with people who belonged to a church, wearing a cross, celebrating a church holiday, or getting married in the church. The Party Control Commission set out to find evidence of “clericalism” among state officials.¹⁰⁹ At a meeting of the Party Control Commission in 1950 Julia Brystiger noted that “a few comrades in the party continue to have relationships with clerics.” Others still took part in religious celebrations or intervened in secret police investigations on behalf of priests.¹¹⁰ Party and secret police reports recorded whether MBP officials had social ties with Catholic families. “The whole family is closely linked with the clergy,” one assessment commented disapprovingly.¹¹¹ Officials’ social and personal networks, such as peers and family members, were enlisted to enforce these norms in their private lives. As stated in a meeting of the party organization in the MBP in 1952: “Employees are required to help family members [including spouses, children, and extended family] rid themselves of the bad habit of religion.”¹¹² It became obligatory for party members to report any suspicious behavior they observed among fellow PZPR members. As Światło succinctly explained, “You can imagine what happens when 330,000 party members are required to report everything they deem suspicious.”¹¹³ The language of “requirements” and “obligations” meant that the issue was no longer a question of personal choice or conviction.

The requirement to renounce religion divided families and communities. A handwritten biography of a young person who joined the secret police explained that he had been kicked out of his home for declaring himself an unbeliever. This case hinted at the social and personal ties that were broken to pave these new officials’ road to the communist faith.¹¹⁴ The young people who entered the force in 1950 or 1951 had been influenced by the antireligious propaganda then widespread in schools and youth organizations. In the early 1950s the term “nonreligious” became an official category in personnel forms, which allowed state officials to explicitly identify themselves as being outside of the church.¹¹⁵ By 1951 the pressure to renounce religion, initiated from above and enforced from below, seemed to have met with some success, at least on paper. Whereas in 1945 90 percent of UB officials had identified as practicing Catholics, by 1951 9,249 officials declared themselves religious while 21,039 declared they were not.¹¹⁶ Given the fact that the MBP was actively persecuting members of the Catholic church from the early 1950s, it is remarkable that thousands of officials still identified as practicing Catholics in 1951.

A close inspection of the charges made during the Vigilance Campaign shows that the accusations of ideological deviations in the 1950s mapped with surprising frequency onto the disciplinary issues of the late 1940s. The unit to “uncover enemies in the party” (created in 1951), for example, linked religious transgressions with previous disciplinary infractions. For example, an MBP secretary charged in 1949 with stealing state funds, a corruption accusation typical of the time, was accused of the same crime in August 1951. But in 1951 she was also denounced for being a believer who raised her children in the church. She had reportedly worn a cross in the office.¹¹⁷ Disciplinary proceedings against UB officials were in part a response to genuine issues in the force such as alcoholism and corruption. But they also served to surreptitiously expel those who expressed moral scruples about the violence of the UB or the Soviets. In December 1949 a nineteen-year-old official who had worked for several months as an interrogator expressed qualms about having to interrogate members of a youth group who were of his own age. His superior’s inclination was to fire him and hide the reason for doing so under the charge of betraying state secrets. Różański commanded the officer to keep the boy in his position.¹¹⁸ Given how rare evidence of such cover-ups would have been, the question remains how many other officials punished under such charges were expelled for similar reasons.

As these cases show, it is impossible to understand these campaigns through the documents of the central authorities alone. Those expelled from their positions were often officially charged with ideological infractions such as “right nationalist deviations” or as “ideologically foreign elements.” But on a local level these charges were often concrete. In one party cell a UB official was deemed to be an “ideologically foreign element” since he had spoken out against collectivization, mentioned the aid that the Americans had given the USSR during the Second World War, and criticized the Soviet annexation of Poland’s eastern borderlands. He insisted that it was the Soviets, not the Nazis, who had murdered the Polish officers at Katyń.¹¹⁹ Such critical voices were gradually silenced out of fear, social pressure or simply by expelling those who expressed them from official positions. It is an open question whether criticism of party policies ceased to exist among PZPR members in the early 1950s, or whether it is simply impossible to find in the official documents from the time.

In early 1950 party organizations and the MBP personnel department began to encroach increasingly on officials’ private time as well as space. One former UB official wrote in his memoir that although he had barely had contact with party members before 1947, by 1950 he attended daily, weekly, and monthly party gatherings of the koło, or party cell, as well as meetings of clubs and civic organizations.¹²⁰ These meetings spread a common language and way of thinking. As one party member declared at the time, it was the job of the party organization to “teach [security] bosses the language of the party.”¹²¹ Officials were expected to spend their free time socializing with each another in reading groups, discussions, and outings; only rarely did they have contact with people outside of their institution. Communist organizations such as the Women’s League and sports groups became communities for security officials and their spouses and families.¹²² Officials were rewarded with vacations in special MBP resorts and sanatoriums.¹²³ This social isolation applied to living space as well as free time. The personnel department proposed finding apartments for secret police officials and their families that would isolate them from enemies and ensure that they had contact only with each other.¹²⁴ From 1950 the MBP had its own hospitals, shops (678 as of 1952), cafeterias, kindergartens, farms, and bakeries to service its officials.¹²⁵

THE FIRST SIX-YEAR PLAN AND MASS RECRUITMENT TO THE MBP

The central focus of the year 1950 was the First Six-Year Plan. The plan affected all areas of economic life. In the MBP it was accompanied by calls to reorganize the force on the basis of centralized planning and recruit thousands of new officials to the force. In the secret police, UB and PZPR offices were told to recruit members of the youth organization, trade union, lower-level party organizations, and the Women’s League into the MBP.¹²⁶ The years that saw the largest recruitment of new officials to the MBP were 1945, 1950, and 1951.¹²⁷ Mass recruitment was, as usual, followed by expulsions from the force, a pattern of ebb and flow that spanned the period between 1945 and 1954.

The MBP was not the only institution impacted by the First Six-Year Plan. Across Poland tens of thousands of workers were recruited into positions in the state and economy, a tendency that followed on, while sharply increasing, trends evident since 1945. Between 1945 and 1949 17,000 workers had entered the party and economic administration. Between 1950 and 1953, 115,000 workers took up employment in the state administration, many by expelling the specialists working there.¹²⁸ A new Soviet adviser, M. S. Bezborodov, was brought in to oversee this shift in March 1950. Born in 1901 into a family of carpenters, Bezborodov had served in the Red Army between 1918 and 1923 and joined the Soviet secret police in 1929, at the beginning of the First Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union.¹²⁹

These new recruits entered an institution fixated on campaigns of mass violence against alleged domestic enemies of the regime, including members of the church, young people, and kulaks. While older members of the force had been pressured to renounce religious practices in their own lives, younger members were required to actively repress members of the church. Important organizational changes in the MBP followed. New recruits were moved to areas where they had no personal connections, a sharp contrast with the postwar practice of recruiting many UB officials to serve in offices located in the area in which they lived.¹³⁰ A shock worker movement was introduced to the MBP in 1952 that awarded agents for demonstrating activism in service as assessed vis-à-vis their peers.¹³¹ The principle of class justice was introduced to the legal code on 20 July 1950.¹³² Punishments were increased for workplace transgressions such as tardiness or absences.¹³³ Between 1950 and 1953 military courts sentenced more than 9,500 people for belonging to social organizations that were now deemed illegal.¹³⁴ Arrests and house searches were initiated against Jehovah’s Witnesses.¹³⁵

Table 4.1. Changes in MBP personnel, 1949–51

Source: “Wykres porównawczy stanów osobowych Apar. BP” (A Comparative Chart of Personnel in the State Security Apparatus) IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1583/140.

A crime of particular significance was the spreading of enemy propaganda. According to one case, “On 27 May 1950 enemy writings against the Soviet Union reading ‘death to Stalin” were found. The person responsible was sentenced to six years in prison.” Another case involved a worker who had “[expressed] the opinion that there would be a third world war” and “described the Soviet Union as a poor country that oppresses its workers.” He received three years in prison.¹³⁶ Arrests were accompanied by attempts to make people aware of the new law by enforcing it widely and publicly. As a member of the Soviet consulate noted in October 1951, during the campaign to combat the spreading of enemy propaganda, members of the security force engaged in mass arrests of around thirty to fifty people a day in cities and the countryside.¹³⁷ When they arrested citizens in public places such as streets or trams, they were instructed to yell loudly, “You are arrested for antiregime propaganda!” Likewise, if a member of a factory or institution was arrested, the director and party organization were instructed to inform all workers there of what had happened. Not only show trials but also arrests had a didactic function intended to resonate with the public, spread fear in the population, and make apparent what the regime would no longer tolerate.

Another policy further enforced in the early 1950s was the requisition of grain from the countryside. As elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc, these measures were carried out by numerous institutions. In Poland these included the People’s Militia, UB, PZPR, and in some cases the military.¹³⁸ Between 1951 and 1952 decrees were passed requiring farmers to deliver certain quotas of produce, meat, and milk.¹³⁹ Although these demands were forcefully articulated from above, in many cases they encountered inaction or outright resistance on the part of local officials. Although data on such instances are incomplete, officials were not infrequently removed from their positions for failing to deliver their quotas of grain or to enforce the campaign. At least one effort to confiscate grain and potatoes in December 1951 resulted in the removal of around 6,521 people from the state administration for not complying with orders. In Poznań in 1953, 254 members of the regional party organization and 252 members of the state apparatus were expelled from service for their “tolerance of recalcitrant peasants” and “indulgence of the enemy.”¹⁴⁰ Of course not all officials resisted orders. At the height of this repression in 1953, around 254,000 people were punished.¹⁴¹ By the fall of 1954, 7,355 farmers had been imprisoned for not meeting production quotas.¹⁴² An estimated 121 had been subjected to show trials.¹⁴³

Repression in the countryside also took the form of prophylactic measures. In his memoir the former UB agent Tadeusz Wojtyniak explained how this concept worked in practice. In the early 1950s he was told to address the church’s influence over the countryside: “We made a few official visits to [local clerics] and their parishioners found out about them. It was sufficient to make them suspicious of the [cleric’s] ties to the UB.”¹⁴⁴ Wojtyniak spread mistrust and suspicion to break up the unity of local parishes and societies, a secret police tactic called disorganization. During the campaign to requisition grain, he engaged in prophylactic conversations with landowners, peasants, or others he believed may potentially engage in enemy propaganda.¹⁴⁵ He used the term “prophylactic” to describe tactics such as threating people, harming their reputations, and holding them in prison for up to forty-eight hours.¹⁴⁶ Tens of thousands of peasants were detained in the fall of 1952. Of these, five thousand were detained preventatively, that is, on the condition they fulfill their grain deliveries after their release.¹⁴⁷

Secret police officials served on the boards of state farms and the department of agriculture, committees that decided how to distribute farming equipment, furniture, and seed.¹⁴⁸ They were placed in charge of distributing loans and enforcing taxes in the countryside.¹⁴⁹ Wojtyniak characterized his participation on these boards as prophylactic since, as he explained, “the presence of a security official on the commission ensured that issues were resolved correctly and in the interests of the state.”¹⁵⁰ Citizens would of course have been afraid to speak out against policies or quotas while a secret police official sat on the board taking notes.

The concept of blanket surveillance began to enter Wojtyniak’s descriptions of his work in the early 1950s. This term captured the broadening of secret police jurisdiction into all areas of public and state life: “Operative agents were set up in industrial targets, social milieus, institutions, and organizations. They were everywhere except district communist party offices. These sources provided a constant influx of information. They led to, among other things, the belief in society that the UB was everywhere and aware of everything that was happening.”¹⁵¹ As this explanation implies, the secret police force sought to give the impression that its agents were everywhere and all-knowing. This reflected a change in the psychology as well as the reach of the institution. A similar principle was followed by the interrogation department, as Światło explained: “The first part of an interrogation was devoted to writing the prisoner’s biography. At this stage, the interrogator tries to extract as much information as possible from the person. . . . It is impossible [for the prisoner] to write his biography without mentioning other people. Other defendants and witnesses formulate testimonies on him as well. This is precisely what the interrogator wants. He selects facts from the testimonies that prisoners and witnesses write about each other and does not tell the arrested person where he got the information about his biography. In this way the defendant has the impression that the UB is all-knowing [UB jest wszechwiedzący].”¹⁵²

The desire to convince prisoners that interrogators were all-knowing appears to have been part of the reason for two of the more incomprehensible practices of the department: not telling a person why he had been arrested and creating “conspiratorial networks” from the cases of multiple defendants. In both cases prisoners were pressed to guess why they had been arrested and in the process recalled past connections with other defendants or compromising situations that the interrogator used to convince other defendants that the police knew “everything.”

During the 1946 referendum UB agents had engaged in intensive surveillance operations, that is, they collected intelligence on specific targets such as members of noncommunist political parties or former underground fighters. In the early 1950s, the service experienced a shift toward extensive surveillance operations, the building of informer networks that collected information on a continual basis in all areas of society and public life. As Andrzej Paczkowski summarized, “Through unofficial informers [the secret police] controlled not only opposition organizations such as the Catholic church but also factories, state administration, schools, universities, kolkhozes, and tractor stations. They controlled plans, productivity, production quality, the workload of employees, the quality of teaching, whether teaching plans had been carried out, and participation in ‘voluntary activities’ and demonstrations. They controlled the personnel in industry and entry into institutes of higher education.”¹⁵³ Such networks, which fished for chance remarks or suspicious behavior in the general population, required the participation of many state and social actors.

Trials and disciplinary proceedings continued to remove, and in some cases publicly humiliate, unpopular local UB officials. Citizens were occasionally asked to testify against their former tormenters. In one case a citizen provided evidence that an UB official had arrested him in order to take possession of part of his house, testimony that helped send the official to prison.¹⁵⁴ Such trials sent a message to the officials joining the force in the early 1950s: older officials were corrupt and undisciplined and must be replaced by new cadres who could do things correctly. As Wojtyniak noted in his memoir, in 1953, at the age of twenty-six, he replaced the head of an UB office who had been removed for abuse of power and sentenced to nine years in prison. Wojtyniak was convinced that “[this man] had engaged in some sort of criminal machinations such as illegally possessing a weapon.”¹⁵⁵ Given the conditions in Poland after the war, it was likely the man did carry a weapon. But in this context, the disciplinary proceedings served as a pretext to remove him from office and replace him with someone new. In the late 1940s secret police officials were also put on trial for not recruiting enough informers or telling friends, family members, or strangers the details of cases (officially: “neglecting conspiratorial practices”).¹⁵⁶ In a case from July 1950, an UB agent was on trial for not introducing his subordinates to operative work and encouraging them to drink at the office. The Soviets paid close attention to MBP policing methods. One Soviet report carefully noted the names and personal qualities of UB officials heading key departments and the number of informers they had recruited. It criticized the low quality of agent networks, the shortcomings of specific heads of departments, and the “inability of the majority of agents to penetrate the enemy milieu.”¹⁵⁷

Disciplinary proceedings did not focus only on professional standards. In a meeting of a party organization in the security force in May 1950, PZPR officials chastised an interrogator—referred to in the proceedings only as “comrade Popek”—for leaving a cigarette burning in the trash can of his office. The cigarette had set a couch and curtains on fire. The committee declared that comrade Popek’s first mistake was to try to hide his error by replacing the burned trash can with one from a neighboring room. This mistake was egregious because “there cannot be any transgression of which the party organization is not immediately informed.”¹⁵⁸ Another party member clarified that the concern was not the trash can per se but the fact that he had hidden the incident from the party. After reminding Comrade Popek that the party organization was his superior, the officials turned the discussion toward which punishment fit the crime. One party member recommended a reprimand. Another suggested a rebuke. Another said that since it was not the first time Comrade Popek tried to “cover up problems with his work,” it was necessary to respond with a harsh reprimand. Considering the weight of the crime, another added, a formal self-criticism session was desirable since “Popek needs to understand what he burned along with the trash can. He burned our trust in him.” Popek declared, “I realize now that I have done wrong” and requested the “most severe punishment as a warning to others.” After a vote, the party committee issued a reprimand. Such rituals served as a constant reminder that UB officials were required to inform the party of all issues and that the party organization had the authority to punish, transfer, or remove them from their positions. The new officials recruited in 1950 and 1951, seeing their predecessors ridiculed or arrested for arbitrary behavior, leniency toward the class enemy, or insufficient activism, were efficient and ruthless in arresting citizens in 1952.

The year 1952 saw the introduction of several new laws to the criminal code. A campaign to “analyze enemy activity in the economy” criminalized the nonfulfillment of production quotas and the delivery of bad products.¹⁵⁹ Between January and May 1952 around 6,400 people were arrested for these offenses. Less publicly, agents continued to build informer networks focused on economic targets. By 1952, 127 factory directors, 508 engineers, 1,722 department heads, 655 bookkeepers, 4,859 clerks, 1,046 engineers, and 1,948 foremen and brigade leaders had been enlisted as informers.¹⁶⁰ This disciplinary onslaught of trials, criticism/self-criticism sessions, purges, vigilance campaigns, battles against criminality in the force, and party disciplinary committees, spread fear and anxiety among party and state officials. It was impossible to predict who would fall under suspicion next. As reports from Szczecin commented in 1950 “regional, district, and village party officials fear constantly for their lives. Some district secretaries believe that it is better to do nothing than end up behind bars.”¹⁶¹ The question of whether Poland should pursue a national or Soviet road to socialism arose yet again in this context. In 1950 a Soviet report stated that Polish communists were threatening violence against pro-Soviet members of the PZPR.¹⁶² Party members refused to show up for meetings. In one district the party secretary insisted that secret police officials drag PZPR members to meetings by force.¹⁶³ Tensions inherent in any organization, whether criticisms of a colleague’s work ethic, mistakes, or disloyal comments, rose to the surface all at once and were endowed with unprecedented significance. Some lower-level officials committed suicide. The heads of district UB offices in Sanok and Koźl killed themselves in July 1949. The deputy head of the personnel department in an office in Wrocław killed himself in March 1950.¹⁶⁴ Terror in the party had spread years before the creation of Department X, the unit charged with seeking out enemies in the party, in December 1951. The PZPR took power not only by converting people to its ideology, but also by spreading fear and violence in its own elite as well as those outside it.

DEPARTMENT X AND THE ARREST OF WŁADYSŁAW GOMUŁKA

Władysław Gomułka was detained on 2 August 1951. By this time the conviction that enemies had infiltrated the ranks of the PZPR was widespread. Department X, the unit for uncovering enemies in the PZPR, was created in December. It began to establish branches in every regional office to collect information on party members, MBP officials, and others.¹⁶⁵ Certainly, such investigations had begun before the creation of Department X. One interrogator said he had worked in a unit dedicated to investigating party members even though that branch of the department did not officially exist.¹⁶⁶ In May 1952 the first six-week training course for Department X agents was held. The instructors included Anatol Fejgin, Józef Światło, Mikołaj Orechwa, and others. Although Department X worked independently of the MBP, the two had common personnel. Światło and Roman Romkowski worked in both. Fejgin, who headed the unit, was new to the force. New recruits were continually brought in and trained during the investigations.¹⁶⁷ As in Czechoslovakia, the search for enemies in the party trained a new generation of officials eager to prove themselves in the campaign.

The division between the Poles and the Jews in the PZPR and MBP was exploited to drive the party purges forward. As early as March 1948 the Soviets had observed a strained relationship between Polish and Jewish members of the communist party. The Soviet ambassador went so far as to report to Moscow that Polish leaders were divided into “two warring groups.” The one headed by Gomułka was “infected with Polish chauvinism,” he wrote, and “lies in wait for the moment to let the ‘dog hatred of the Jews’ off the chain.”¹⁶⁸ As Paczkowski has written of this report, “Although [the Soviet ambassador’s] fantasy carried him away, his opinion likely relied on intelligence or at least impressions.”¹⁶⁹ These impressions were not completely unfounded. A commander in the MBP school in Łódź noted the frequency with which UB recruits made anti-Semitic remarks. He attributed this to their exposure to Nazi propaganda during the occupation.¹⁷⁰ Tensions between Poles and Jews correlated with schisms between communists who had spent the war in occupied Poland, who were mostly Poles, and communists who had spent the war in exile in Moscow, many of whom were Jews. After the Second World War these groups had struggled for power over control of lower-level offices. In some cases Polish communist partisans refused to accept Jews for work in UB offices.¹⁷¹

Although conflicts between the “Poles” and the “Jews” ended in arrests only in the early 1950s, discussions of anti-Semitism in the MBP had been aired in party meetings as early as 1948. Mieczysław Moczar, the Polish partisan and secret police official, who, not coincidentally, went on to spearhead the anti-Semitic campaign in Poland in 1968, was recalled from his position as the head of the Łódź UB office in May 1948 after being accused of anti-Semitism at a Central Committee meeting.¹⁷² Another official had supposedly heard him say that “our party leaders don’t sense the problems of this nation because they have nothing in common with this nation.”¹⁷³

Around 30 percent of the leadership positions in Department X were held by agents of Jewish background, including Romkowski, Henryk Piasecki, Światło, and Fejgin. It is unclear whether Soviet or Polish leaders selected the personnel for Department X. In a later interview Jakub Berman differentiated between officials selected by “us” (the Poles) and “them” (the Soviets). He included the head of Department X, Fejgin, in the latter category.¹⁷⁴ As the files of these agents made clear, for them, combatting Polish nationalism was a personal as well as political crusade. Piasecki’s file, for example, described him as an “enemy of nationalism.”¹⁷⁵ In a meeting of district security officials in Olsztyn in December 1949 Fejgin demanded that UB officials “kill Polish pride and shoot patriotism dead.”¹⁷⁶

Many denunciations collected by Department X focused on the issue of anti-Semitism during or after the Second World War. In the Kraków secret police office a former partisan was accused of having an “enemy attitude toward Jews joining the [communist partisan movement].”¹⁷⁷ Another former partisan was accused of murdering three Jews during the war.¹⁷⁸ A third was tried for “collaborating with the occupier and murdering several dozen people of Jewish origin.”¹⁷⁹ In March 1951 an informer accused a party member of “taking part in anti-Jewish demonstrations before the war.” He accused another of helping the first cover up this participation.¹⁸⁰ As the references to the wartime era show, many issues mapped onto questions of collaboration as well as attitudes toward the postwar state. The reverse trend was evident in Czechoslovakia, where outspoken anti-Semites were selected to interrogate Jewish party members. In both cases, anti-Semitism was deployed as a political weapon. While in Czechoslovakia anti-Semitism fueled the violence, in Poland it was antinationalism. Either way the accusations fell, the politics of hatred that spurred them on were evident.

Interviews with former Department X agents collected by a party commission held in 1954 shed light on the instructions they received, often through oral directives, to arrest and investigate party and state officials. Włodzimierz Tychoniuek, an interrogator in the department between July 1950 and June 1951, explained that he was told to “pay attention to party members who had been in Poland under the occupation.”¹⁸¹ This applied to members of the communist partisan movement in particular, which had been headed by Gomułka. During interrogations, he questioned former partisans about the personnel and structure of their units.¹⁸² Indeed, many officials were arrested or removed from their positions simply for being partisans.¹⁸³

In 1956, Stanisław Radkiewicz was questioned by a party commission about whether the Soviets had created Department X or whether it had emerged from the MBP’s security practices at the time. He hesitated before saying, “Well, it was related to the activities of the security forces—collecting information and working out cases. If a party member wanted something on someone, they just asked—what do you have on him? That was all you needed to start a file. That was how it was. But if something like Department X arose, it must have been the idea of the advisers.”¹⁸⁴ In a sense, Radkiewicz was giving two answers to the question. Before blaming the Soviets, who obviously had a voice in such momentous matters as arrests in the highest ranks of the PZPR, he admitted that it also followed the logic of the MBP not to question the purpose, meaning, or origin of the information its agents collected.

THE DEFECTION OF DEPARTMENT X AGENT JÓZEF ŚWIATŁO

Department X agent Józef Światło defected to the West on 5 December 1953. His defection, which took place during a business trip to East Germany, sent shock waves through the ranks of the PZPR and MBP. Światło had, after all, spent years collecting compromising information on members of the PZPR and communist state administration. As he was the first to admit, “I personally arrested almost all of the highest party and state dignitaries who ended up in prison. Everyone in Warsaw and the regional offices knew me and the role I had played.”¹⁸⁵ Perhaps it was this realization that had pushed him to leave the country after the death of Stalin left him at the mercy of his many enemies. He gave a series of interviews to Radio Free Europe, later published as “Józef Światło Speaks: Behind the Scenes of Security and the Party,” in which he revealed the sordid details of the personal lives and foibles of the PZPR and MBP elite.¹⁸⁶ His account painted a picture of an out-of-touch world of power, greed, and privilege similar to Milovan Djilas’s depiction of the Yugoslav communist elite, The New Class.¹⁸⁷

Given its unprecedented nature, the Cold War context in which it took place, and the sensitivity of the information Światło had collected, his defection was met with alarm. In December 1953, the PZPR created a commission to analyze Światło and his work in the MBP.¹⁸⁸ Criticisms and self-criticisms followed one after the other to determine who was responsible for the defection and, almost incidentally, the work of Department X. Radkiewicz was criticized in March 1954 for “putting himself above the party.”¹⁸⁹ In December 1954 the MBP was dissolved and its functions divided between the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Committee for Public Security.¹⁹⁰ Of the thirty-three thousand officials serving in the institution in 1953, sixty-five hundred were dismissed between December 1954 and May 1955.¹⁹¹ Prominent officials such as Roman Romkowski and Józef Różański were removed from office.

In 1955 five officials from Department X were arrested. They received prison sentences ranging from two to five years.¹⁹² Measures to decrease the size of the force intensified from 1956 after Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech, the death of Bołesław Bierut, and the return of Gomułka to power during the Polish October, all of which shook Poland in 1956. At the end of April 1956 an amnesty affecting thirty thousand people was declared.¹⁹³ Between October 1956 and March 1957 nine thousand agents were released from service. The final figure of those remaining, seventeen thousand, remained constant in the years to follow.¹⁹⁴ Gomułka, recently released from prison, took an active role in prosecuting his former jailors.¹⁹⁵ After his return to political life in 1956 the party organized a commission to investigate the crimes of Stalinism. From 24 November 1956 a party commission to investigate the internal party terror interviewed prominent officials who had worked in the security forces, procuracy, military courts, and military intelligence services.¹⁹⁶ Its focus was to uncover the PZPR members who were responsible for the actions of the security force during the internal party terror.¹⁹⁷ Jakub Berman was accused of “mistakes and distortions.” In 1957 Różański, Romkowski, and Fejgin were convicted for their role in the internal party terror.¹⁹⁸ The Soviets appeared in the proceedings as shadowy, behind-the-scenes figures, identified as “the advisers” rather than by name. There was no mention of the brutal practices used against members of the underground or German civilians during the immediate postwar period or during the campaigns against class or social enemies in the late 1940s.

Radkiewicz was taken to task for condoning the use of violent interrogation methods in the MBP. He was questioned, among other things, about the beatings and torture used against prisoners, particularly communist prisoners, during his tenure as head of the MBP:

ATTORNEY GENERAL MARIAN RYBICKI: I examined the decrees of the Ministry of State Security. You said that the “conveyer belt method” of interrogations allowed for interrogations lasting up to eleven hours? I have a document from March 1954 in which three forms of interrogations are listed—normal, harsh, and severe. A “harsh” interrogation allowed interrogations of up to twelve hours. “Severe” allowed up to 48 hours without a break. . . . And this was sanctioned in 1954.

RADKIEWICZ: Such interrogations could only be carried out once.

ATTORNEY GENERAL: Well, yes, it would not be possible to survive more than one. The fact that these were even concepts—harsh and severe—means that they were considered normal. I can’t believe there were so many forms!

RADKIEWICZ: We actually had worse practices than that.¹⁹⁹

Many legacies of the Stalinist period went unmentioned by the commission: the blanket surveillance networks that the MBP had established in key areas of public and state life; the military tribunals that had summarily sentenced citizens and members of the underground to imprisonment or even executions and the PZPR organizations that ensured that MBP officials carried out repression and conformed to communist standards of social and moral behavior. Many of these practices were continued in the post-Stalinist era.

The PZPR commissions convened in 1956 also attest to the difficulties of documenting the violence of the Stalinist period. Although they took place only two years after the end of the Stalinist era in Poland, it was already difficult for them to trace the fates of the many individuals tortured or executed during the period. An investigation that took place on 12 May 1956 discussed the case of two people who had been sentenced by a military court and shot on 3 December 1952.²⁰⁰ To find the remains of these individuals, the commission searched the documentation of the prison where they had been held, spoke with employees of the prison, and visited the cemetery where they had been buried. During their investigations they met a gravedigger at the site where the executed prisoners had been buried. When the gravedigger first began to work in the prison yard in 1945, he had been helped by German prisoners and still worked there when the members of the commission arrived in 1956. He related that from the middle of 1948 he began to bury the bodies of executed prisoners in mass graves that measured twenty by thirty-nine meters. Most of those executed at the time were buried without coffins. A few were buried in boxes made of wooden boards that had been hastily thrown together. The testimony of the gravedigger, who buried prisoners in anonymous mass graves between 1945 and 1956, shows both the difficulties of documenting the violence of the era and the way such violence had, for some, become a job, a part of everyday life.

TRANSFORMING THE POLISH SECRET POLICE

Between 1948 and 1954 PZPR members, MBP officials, and Soviet advisers transformed the structure and personnel of the Polish secret police. They did so through trials, party organizations, and internal disciplinary campaigns that spread fear and violence in the force and threatened those officials who resisted change. From the perspective of lower-level offices, the process of training, expulsions, and turnover in the ranks of the MBP seemed chaotic and even arbitrary. Officials were continually brought into training courses, moved to new offices, or arrested in anticorruption campaigns spearheaded by those who took their places in the force. During the “war on criminality in the security forces,” hundreds of officials were charged with corruption, abuse of power, and failing to employ correct policing methods. During the purges from the ranks of the PZPR, young officials socialized in party education and the youth organization began to enter the force. They held more radical ideas on the social and political transformation of Poland and the conviction that it was necessary not only to renounce religion but also to arrest those who disagreed or continued to practice it. PZPR members, for their part, helped create the MBP by observing officials’ behavior, listening to their private conversations, forcing them to renounce noncommunist social ties and religion, and compelling them to dedicate their free time to the party. Many were actively involved in identifying and expelling their predecessors and pushing forward violence against those deemed enemies of the regime.

An increasing number of requirements to sacrifice one’s personal life, relationships, and time in the name of state service were heaped upon MBP officials over the course of several years. Few in 1945 would have understood what the demands of the service would be in 1950. Over that five-year period many left or proved insufficiently committed to the service, as the institution gravitated toward a focus on economic targets, social groups, and blanket surveillance networks. By 1953 Poland had the most far-reaching police state of the three countries analyzed in this book in terms of its reach, as well as its method and number of agents and informers. And this does not take into account the other armed institutions that remained after the civil conflict of 1945–47: the Internal Security Corps, the Reserve Internal Security Corps, the military tribunals, the People’s Militia, and the Reserve People’s Militia. And yet the defection of Światło—a trusted agent who had proven his loyalty for years, first, in the Polish military and later in the MBP and Department X—calls into question whether agents schooled in such practices truly were as loyal as was assumed.

5

A Revolution in a Revolution in Czechoslovakia

Just as there can be no factory without planning, there can be no state security without planning.

—Czech security agent, 1949

“I HAVE A strange feeling that doubtless applies to no other prisoner,” wrote Štěpán Plaček in a letter to Rudolf Slánský written from prison in 1950. “During interrogations I hear young comrades from the working class use the terms I invented as if they were completely self-evident. They direct themselves according to principles they do not understand. Principles that I fought to introduce to the system.”¹ Several years later, in January 1954, Plaček, one of the founding agents of the Czechoslovak secret police (StB), was put on trial in front of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court in Prague and sentenced to fifteen years in prison.² Although he had been removed from his position, it was difficult for him to detach himself from the world he had helped create: “In spite of the burden of solitary confinement and the fact that the investigators treat me like a prisoner, there are moments when I almost forget I am the one being investigated. It seems I am at my workplace among my colleagues, comrades, and friends from state security.” And yet much had changed in the StB since his time in the service. Secret police agents understood their work differently from the way he and his comrades had. They were no longer expected to debate rules, organizational principles, or professional terminology. They were expected to implement them. In Plaček’s words, “[My interrogators] act with reserve as their duties and service regulations demand. But I observe with joy their incomparable skill in carrying out investigations and the improvement in their work conditions.”

The StB was turned into a communist political police force in the years 1949–52, the subject of this chapter. In planning to reorganize the force, Czech and Slovak agents set off in 1949 for Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania to study the policing methods and training programs of services built under Soviet-led Allied Control Commissions. As the language of the class struggle and the search for enemies in the party engulfed domestic and international airwaves in 1949, the KSČ built a centralized party organization in the StB to pressure agents to engage more actively in political life and collect information on security employees. Together with leading StB agents, the Soviet advisers, who arrived in late 1949, began to implement major changes in the service’s structure, personnel, and methods. Within a few years they had centralized the secret police, built a foreign intelligence service, trained a new interrogation department, and introduced agents to different forms of arrest procedures, standards of evidence, and techniques for recruiting informers.

Between 1949 and 1954 StB officials put these practices to use in campaigns against party leaders, kulaks, church figures, military officers, and citizens with Western contacts. They helped spread these methods by organizing show trials in districts, regions, and villages across Czechoslovakia, the most prominent of which were the trials of the National Socialist politician Milada Horáková and other former parliamentary representatives in June 1950 and the trial of General Secretary Rudolf Slánský and his alleged co-conspirators in November 1952. In contrast to our image of the StB as a homogenous, static institution, in fact it experienced an internal revolution in its organization, personnel, and policing methods in these years in which the first generation of secret police officials—those who had shaped the institution’s training, debates, laws, and education after the Second World War—was destroyed. Through arrests, expulsions, and public trials, this era saw a revolution in policing methods and personnel, as well as in institutional memory, professional knowledge, and local networks, that brought a new StB elite trained in Soviet methods and domestic terror to power.

THE YEAR OF PARTY EDUCATION: PARTY ORGANIZATIONS IN THE STB

The year 1949 was celebrated as the Year of Party Education in Czechoslovakia.³ Party members rushed with enthusiasm to organize party organizations and political education courses in state institutions across the country, including the security force. Campaigns to train KSČ instructors in secret police methods overlapped with campaigns to teach secret police officials party doctrine. A priority was to build a centralized party organization in the security service to promote a unified political vision for the force and establish a permanent structure for party oversight over security agents.

To be sure, before and during the takeover of power in 1948 KSČ members had formed party organizations in the ranks of the security force. But such efforts hardly amounted to permanent, centralized structures. KSČ members complained constantly about the party’s lack of control over the security service and expressed skepticism of the political reliability of its employees. Jan Hora, who inspected the security force in October 1948, argued that it was imperative that the KSČ influence security employees’ political beliefs.⁴ In December 1948 three thousand party members were sent into the security force to set up political training schools. They received no instructions on how to do this or what to teach in them.⁵ One remembered thinking at the time, “It is entirely unclear what my function here is.”⁶ Security officials, for their part, did not know what to do with the party members who arrived in their offices. Some assigned them to work shifts no one else wanted to do. Others saddled them with busy work such as organizing or numbering interrogation protocols.⁷

In spite of this initial confusion, these KSČ members soon began to influence the political orientation of the force. From January 1949 they undertook verification campaigns to test security officials’ knowledge of party doctrine and ideological principles.⁸ They collected information on officials’ ages, previous political affiliations, and activism in party meetings. In their words, they sought to determine who was a “paper communist,” a pejorative term used to describe party members who were insufficiently committed to the cause.⁹ A report on the outcome of this campaign that was sent to Moscow related that it “has revealed that leading figures in the Ministry [of the Interior] are characterized by political ignorance (politicheskaya bezgramotnost’). There are people who cannot explain how a capitalist system differs from a socialist one, even in general terms.”¹⁰ The writer of the report, the head of the Soviet consulate in Prague, averred that it was essential to more aggressively introduce political education to the force. He also remarked that the verification campaign had spread fear in the ranks of the KSČ. In one case a leading member of the force committed suicide. By early 1949, 30,495 people had been expelled from the party and 76,638 demoted to candidate status (a total of 815,370 KSČ members had been verified).¹¹ Expulsions disproportionally affected those who had joined the KSČ after the takeover of power and were resented as latecomers to the revolution.¹²

During this verification campaign a new, Soviet-inspired vocabulary was introduced to Czechoslovakia. The party daily, Rudé právo, began to publish a column titled “Lessons from the Central Committee of the Soviet Union” that introduced the millions of KSČ members who had joined the party after 1945 to an unfamiliar lexicon to describe the state and its officials, including the terms “Democratic Centralism,” “cadres,” and “Bolshevik criticism/self-criticism sessions.” Party members were encouraged to initiate “Bolshevik criticism and self-criticism sessions” first in factories, where workers were prompted to find faults with unpopular bosses, and then in state institutions, where subordinates were asked to raise issues they had with their superiors in a public forum. Rudé právo riled these sentiments and stoked public anger against bosses and factory managers who refused to be criticized by their subordinates.¹³ A new term that was specific to Czechoslovakia to describe officials that emerged at this time was “dictatorial inclinations” (diktatorské sklony). On the face of it, the term was used to criticize superiors’ arrogance or tendency to act without consulting subordinates.¹⁴ But it also reflected the particular way the Czechoslovak communists had come to power by devolving authority to regional power bases and bosses—now under fire for their “dictatorial behavior”—by granting them largely unchecked power to confiscate property and send people to labor camps.

Initiatives like Bolshevik criticism and self-criticism sessions were hardly greeted with enthusiasm. One party member became so upset over another’s criticism that he hired a lawyer and threatened to sue for libel.¹⁵ Heads of security units became enraged at those who criticized their decisions. In some cases they fired them or dismissed the entire party organization.¹⁶ Self-criticism sessions spread resentment, broke social bonds, and pushed members to censor their words in public and private spaces. The former East German communist Wolfgang Leonhard described the way his mannerisms changed after his first self-criticism session, “I would think through every sentence and every word before I uttered it. . . . The first self-criticism was responsible for a change not only in myself but in all other students in our group.”¹⁷

Further efforts to introduce “Bolshevik methods” to the security force were undertaken in March. Karel Černý, a key figure in the security elite, explained what Bolshevik methods meant in practice. They involved introducing a greater division of labor to the force (particularly more specialized training for agents), creating more control authorities, centrally planning operations, staging socialist competitions between offices, and enforcing a class bias in policing. The latter principle meant that members of the working class would receive favored status before the law.¹⁸ These principles were initiated in training and education programs in the months to follow. In a speech made at the opening of a security school in March, Jindřich Veselý emphasized that StB agents should adopt a class bias in law enforcement.¹⁹ Agents were encouraged to adopt an uncompromising, even brutal, stance toward prisoners or defendants from intellectual or bourgeois backgrounds. According to a former StB secretary, the term “Bolshevik” was shorthand to describe a ruthless approach to investigations: “In 1949 or so,” she explained, “agents developed the mentality that it was necessary to act with ‘Bolshevik harshness’ (bolševická tvrdost) toward enemies. Anyone who disagreed was deemed incapable of the harsh struggle against the enemy.”²⁰ These standards, while introduced from above, were adopted and enforced by agents in their own offices.

A central party organization was created in the security force on 15 March 1949.²¹ Its top posts were staffed by those who already held prominent positions in the KSČ security leadership: Josef Pavel, Jindřich Veselý, Karel Šváb, Osvald Závodský, and Karel Černý. In this sense, it formally recognized the KSČ security committee from the National Front era. Branches of the party organization were soon established in regional and district offices.²² By the Ninth Party Congress in May 1949, 372 such organizations had been created.²³ Many were staffed by young partisans who had joined the KSČ in or after 1945.²⁴ For example, one political education officer was twenty-three years old and of working-class background. He had joined the party in 1946.²⁵ Another was twenty-five years old, had served in the border guards, and had joined the party in 1945. His personnel assessment specified that he had proven himself (osvědčil se) in campaigns against Ukrainian nationalists. For these young officials, loyalty to the party was linked not to the longevity of their membership but to their activism in postwar arrests and security operations.

THE INSTRUCTORS

One of the Bolshevik methods Černý had mentioned—more control authorities—informed the creation of an elite counterintelligence unit called the instructor group in the middle of 1948. In part, the instructors were tasked with controlling whether lower level offices were carrying out orders. From the end of 1948, they also began to intervene more actively to help transform the StB into a centralized political police. The instructors were selected from among the best operative workers in post-1945 communist secret police training courses.²⁶ They established the first regular channels of communication between Prague and regional and district StB offices. From mid-1948 they travelled to district and regional secret police offices to advise them on surveillance practices, agent work, and strategies to recruit informers.²⁷ They assisted party members in recruiting eight thousand workers from factories and other armed forces to the StB in December 1948.²⁸ While regional party secretaries selected the initial recruits on the basis of political loyalty, instructors verified their professional qualifications.²⁹

Most instructors had served in the ZOB II. Some had also worked in the first communist counterintelligence unit, the “regional residents” created in December 1947 to report instances of corruption in the communists’ own ranks to KSČ leaders.³⁰ The culture of counterintelligence impacted their understanding of loyalty to the state. While many communists thought in terms of “us” versus “them,” or communists versus non-communists, counterintelligence agents suspected everyone, including other communists, of potentially engaging in enemy activity. All of the instructors had been trained in security and intelligence work after the Second World War. Zdeněk Kupec, a former construction worker, joined the KSČ in May 1945, and received top marks in party and professional training programs.³¹ He joined the security force in 1946 after working in the ZOB II in the region of Mladá Boleslav.³² Milan Moučka joined the KSČ in 1945 and worked in the ZOB II office in Jihlava. Antonín Prchal, who joined the party through a partisan group, the Revolutionary Guards, was held up as a model for other agents for his talents in operative and surveillance work.³³ Kupec, Moučka, and Prchal all rose to prominent roles in the StB in the early Stalinist period, Kupec to the position of major in 1952, Moučka to head of the interrogation department in 1953, and Prchal to deputy minister of the interior in 1951.³⁴

StB agent Antonín Prchal. ABS Prague, fond Personální spisy příslušníků MV, personální spis evid. č . 6963/23 Antonín Prchal.

Since many instructors were young and had been trained in the postwar security force, their reports from 1948 and 1949 contained prejudices against older StB officials who had trained in the previous political system, many of whom had retained their positions in the StB by joining the communist party after the takeover of power in 1948. While the political profile of the force had changed after February 1948, then, it had not, in the view of the instructors, represented a radical enough break in terms of policing methods, training, and personnel. As one instructor stated in October 1948, “The [StB] has an overwhelming number of officials who were trained in a previous system. They are unreliable and have weak political consciousness. Some have no political consciousness . . . . The service should be filled with young blood and members of the working class.”³⁵ In the coming months the instructors sought to correct what they perceived of as the “mistakes” of lower-level offices. What they considered mistakes were frequently locally specific methods of policing or those that had been carried over from previous policing systems. While February 1948 has traditionally been depicted as a revolution, and in many ways it was, the instructors exerted considerable effort in the following two years to efficiently and quietly ensure that the revolution, or at least their vision of it, was carried out more completely on the ground.

Because instructors worked outside of the public eye, their reports contain surprisingly frank assessments on the limitations of communist power after the revolution and the internal problems that the party faced, including officials’ lack of compliance, interpersonal struggles, use of old policing methods, foot-dragging, or incompetence. Rather then celebrating the success of the revolution as many public pronouncements did at the time, they contain sober reflections on its messy aftermath.

TRANSFORMING REGIONAL STB OFFICES

From mid-1948 instructors began to visit lower-level StB offices, where they were granted full access to the offices’ internal reports, documents, and personnel files. As well as perusing these materials, they observed how agents carried out investigations and their compliance—or lack thereof—with orders to establish surveillance networks on particular targets. They conversed with StB officials to ascertain their knowledge of communist political language and texts.³⁶ They commented on whether agents were using the secret police lexicon in logical and standardized ways.³⁷ The issue of language was important, they believed, because only agents who spoke a common professional language could communicate properly during operations and integrate the force across different regions and districts. Finally, instructors studied whether the heads of departments were divided by personal disagreements. In Jihlava, for example, they explained that “the head of department I does not like the head of department IV. Their disagreements affect their work. Sometimes the head of department VI feels offended.”³⁸ Their notes give an unfamiliar picture of the earliest years of the StB that question the assumption that officials were radical, uncompromising pursuers of the party’s will. In fact, their observations show that many StB officials ignored or passively resisted orders from above. Orders from Prague, particularly those that involved the establishment of surveillance networks on completely new targets such as the church or factories, frequently met with incomprehension and inaction on the part of local offices. When viewed from this perspective, StB officials ranged from zealous followers of the party line to shirkers of official duties.

A central preoccupation was whether lower-level StB offices had built agent and informer networks.³⁹ The extent and usefulness of informer networks, the instructors found, differed widely depending on the region. Some StB offices had not recruited any informers. Others received little useful information from them. Still other StB officials did not know what informers were.⁴⁰ Some agents had recruited them in an overzealous way. An office in Slovakia had purportedly created a department to oversee “films and theater.”⁴¹ According to the instructors, this department was politically inappropriate since state security did not (as yet) have jurisdiction over culture.

The instructors also collected information on instances of corruption in lower-level offices. As in Poland, corruption stemmed in part from the way in which the communists had taken power, particularly the radical devolution of the authority to confiscate the apartments and property of those deemed enemies of the state to local governments. The instructors discussed a case in which the head of the StB office in České Budějovice stole the furniture from a local castle for use in his office. He was forced to return the furniture, plush carpets, and paintings to the state and promised office furniture in return.⁴² His actions were not a singular incident. In a sense, they reflected the language of class struggle from the time: the assertion that it was necessary to confiscate property from well-off members of society and distribute it to less wealthy ones. But the disorder and lack of accountability with which such confiscations had been undertaken prompted party leaders to initiate oversight on how property was commandeered and distributed.⁴³ StB agents were explicitly forbidden from taking objects from suspects’ houses without issuing documentation for them.⁴⁴

The instructors also played a central role in shifting the targets of operations from political enemies to social and economic targets. Under their direction, the StB took on a more active role in policing the socialist economy. StB agents were responsible for assessing the statistics that factory managers provided to the center, recording whether employees made antistate comments, and determining if factory managers were hiding information from the center. StB officers were given these tasks because party members were not considered reliable enough to do them: “State security must be a corrective to the party, which, for reasons of family, friendship, or old ties, did not repress capitalist elements actively enough.”⁴⁵ In spite of the urgency demanded by Prague, however, many offices chose not to station agents in economic targets. Some did not understand the need for close state oversight over factories, while others considered such targets unimportant.⁴⁶ After the instructors took the office of Karlovy Vary to task for not assigning agents to factories, local officials responded that such networks were unnecessary because nothing happened in factories.⁴⁷ It fell to the instructors to ensure that such changes were made. In Ústí nad Labem they were brought in to create a special department to investigate incidents of sabotage in a factory.⁴⁸

Another new focus of surveillance operations that was pushed forward by the instructors was the Catholic church. This particular target also involved international cooperation. In March 1949 Czechoslovak agents traveled to Warsaw to discuss joint operations to “fight the clerical reaction.”⁴⁹ Soon after, Veselý ordered StB agents to establish surveillance networks to infiltrate the church in Czechoslovakia.⁵⁰ He described these networks with the Soviet-inspired term rozpracování, which signaled that targets were to be observed continually over time through networks of covert informers. In the same meeting Ivo Milén, another leading StB official, argued that it was necessary for the StB to begin favoring agent networks over citizens’ denunciations as sources of information, a shift that required expanding the institutional capacity of the StB.⁵¹

The tactic of increasing surveillance operations that targeted the church was accompanied by attempts to encourage priests and religious figures to support the new regime through the creation of a procommunist progressive Catholic movement (hnutí pokrokových katolíků). This movement was signed onto by fifteen hundred church figures.⁵² When the Vatican threated to excommunicate supporters of the progressive Catholic movement, the KSČ responded in October 1949 by passing a series of repressive laws on church activity that severely limited religious publications and gatherings.⁵³ Internal reports on the outcomes of antichurch secret police operations showed that in many cases they were less than successful. Some StB agents ignored directives to establish surveillance on the church. Others assigned only a few agents to them. Yet again instructors sent from Prague were told to “get the campaign in motion.”⁵⁴

Although some agents refused to establish surveillance networks in the economy or church, both new areas of policing for the Czechoslovak security force, others carried them out with more fervor than expected. The instructors expressed concern with the cases of torture or provocations they had observed in lower-level StB offices. They were convinced that such practices were harming the reputation of the StB: “It is said in the public [mezi lidmi] that the StB is similar to the Gestapo,” one instructor commented. Another admitted that “regional offices torture suspects in an unreasonable manner given that the goal should be to obtain reliable testimonies.” Two others acknowledged that they had witnessed cases of torture against prisoners. One said that when he protested the use of torture in an office, the StB agents there accused him of being “soft on the class enemy.”⁵⁵

In the second half of 1949 the instructors began to take an even more active role in directing operations. They took part in interrogations and pushed forward campaigns handled with what they believed to be a lack of decisiveness. They began to remove officials whom they deemed unfit for service, whether because of their class background, training in a previous police force, or unwillingness to carry out the class struggle. The role of the instructors shows that the StB did not emerge wholesale from the revolution or ideology of 1948 but was created and trained over time by counterintelligence agents. Such training was influenced by foreign as well as domestic models of the secret police.

SECRET POLICE SCHOOLING IN HUNGARY, BULGARIA, AND ROMANIA

In 1949 KSČ leaders began to build a central training school for StB agents. As they had in 1948, they traveled abroad for inspiration. In April 1949 Veselý set off for Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary to observe the training programs of secret police forces that had been built under the oversight of Soviet-dominated Allied Control Commissions.⁵⁶ In Bulgaria and Hungary he observed that officers-in-training took courses in Soviet history, culture, military exercises, and the Russian language, signifiers of the cultural as well as linguistic Sovietization of the forces. In Bulgaria Veselý toured a six-week school for new recruits. Its purpose was to prepare agents for “practical work.”⁵⁷ New recruits learned how to build agent networks and enlist informers.⁵⁸ After a brief training period, they put what they had learned into practice: “The Bulgarians clearly consider practice [praxe] the best school and teacher,” Veselý summarized.⁵⁹ Promotions and advancement were determined on the basis of activism on the job.

The Czechoslovaks collected training materials in Hungary. The language that these materials employed—examples included a schedule of lectures on the “kulak question,” “dictatorship of the proletariat,” and the “task of building socialism in the village”—came to dominate the discourse of the StB and the KSČ in the months to follow.⁶⁰ The ease or difficulty with which these terms were translated from Hungarian into Czech depended on whether they had been imported straight from the Soviet lexicon or had distinct local meanings. It was challenging for the Czechoslovaks, for example, to translate the Hungarian terms to describe informers. Since the concept of informers had existed in Hungary before the arrival of the Soviets, such words had developed locally specific meanings that were difficult for outsiders to understand.⁶¹ An example that the Czechoslovaks puzzled over was the term “involuntary agent,” a phrase used to describe someone who gave information to the police without realizing it. The Czechoslovaks noted that Hungarians used the popular local word, besugo, which had the connotation of a “whisperer” or gossip. Because of the local nuances attached to the word, they concluded, it was virtually impossible to translate. As such discussions reveal, the vocabulary of policing could be impersonal and bureaucratic (what the Czechs referred to as “official language,” úřední jazyk), but it could also be infused with local meanings and national and cultural particularities.

Soon after these trips, the Czechoslovaks opened a six-month training school for security officials.⁶² “Work[ing] with people we train ourselves” was a priority, stated one of the reports written by the cadres’ department.⁶³ The school focused on training those who showed promise of political development (předpoklady politického růstu) rather than existing ideological beliefs, a criterion similar to that used in training programs in the GDR (Entwicklungsfähigkeit).⁶⁴ Agents did not have to be familiar with communist ideology since they were expected to learn it in official political education courses over time. And their progress in internalizing communist ideas and policing methods was assessed continually by instructors and teachers in classroom settings and private conversations.⁶⁵ A student’s placement in the force took into account his character and reputation with other students. One student was appointed to a midlevel position because he was “not self-critical” and “demonstrated dictatorial inclinations.” Another was placed in a lower position because other students considered him unctuous and malicious (details were not specified). A third student was judged to be “self-serving, a chatterbox, and a snob.” A student who refused to participate in a criticism/self-criticism session was deemed to be an “individualist.” The only student in the class who had been trained in a previous police force received an overwhelmingly negative assessment. The instructor believed that he “still used methods from the old gendarme,” was uninterested in the course, and displayed jealously at the success of others.

In 1949 officials were also criticized regularly in their personnel files for demonstrating dictatorial inclinations. The agent Kamil Pixa was criticized for his dictatorial inclinations, but he was expected “[to] improve with the correct [party] leadership,” that is, change under the guidance of the party organizations.⁶⁶ While 1948 assessments regarded KSČ membership as the central mark of loyalty—either with us or against us—from the late 1940s loyalty was tied to many things: the willingness to engage in criticism/self-criticism sessions, active participation in party meetings, and the ability to fit into the collective, issues judged through observations made in official training programs and institutional settings. Only later did class background become a central concern.

COLLECTIVIZATION, VIGILANCE, AND THE NINTH PARTY CONGRESS

Klement Gottwald made several important announcements at the Ninth Party Congress on 25 May 1949. Henceforth, the KSČ would close its ranks to new members apart from those who achieved the title of shock worker. Between the Congress and February 1951 only eight thousand new members were accepted into the party, a sharp contrast to the millions of new members who had joined in 1948.⁶⁷ Gottwald also instructed party organizations, which were now ubiquitous in state institutions, to spread the message of vigilance and class hatred in public life.⁶⁸ The collectivization of agriculture was set to begin later that year. These new policies became mandatory reading in StB training schools.⁶⁹

With respect to the StB, KSČ offices were tasked with recruiting “new blood” from the working class into its ranks.⁷⁰ The offices that fulfilled the quotas they were set were celebrated in party newspapers; those that did not were shamed.⁷¹ After KSČ offices nominated recruits, StB offices checked to ensure that the recruits were no older than thirty-five years of age and had joined the KSČ before February 1948. By June 1949, 2,087 workers had been granted employment in the force, a recruitment drive accompanied by a widespread propaganda campaign celebrating the new social composition of the force and the identity of its agents as members of the working class.

The men and women who entered the StB from various branches of industry often brought the culture of the factory with them into the force. Socialist competitions, which had previously been held in factories, were introduced to the StB in April 1949 at the initiative of former workers. One communist explained proudly how socialist competitions had streamlined the work of the StB: “At first, a specialist required five minutes to prepare a file. A year and a half later he could prepare it in two minutes.” He referred to this improvement as the “mechanization of work” and claimed that it cut down on red tape and bureaucracy in the service. The writings of Stalin also inspired socialist competitions. In July 1949 Veselý cited Stalin’s Questions of Leninism to suggest that the “creative initiative of the masses” should be harnessed to initiate competitions in the security force.⁷² A shock worker movement was likewise introduced to the StB to celebrate the achievements of individual agents or offices (údernické hnutí). Offices that fulfilled their yearly plans were held up as models for others.⁷³ Competitions were staged between regions, districts, and offices over the number of hours that prisoners were interrogated, the number of informers recruited, and the number of arrests made. Such competitions incentivized agents to conduct more arrests, to falsify information on the number of informers working for them, and to inflate arrest statistics.⁷⁴ According to a secretary in the StB, the institution’s focus on competitions and numerical outputs also discouraged agents from admitting they had made wrongful arrests: “The agent who wrote the most reports, recruited the most informers and carried out the most arrests was considered the best. . . . If someone suspected of enemy behavior had not committed the crime and the case was thrown out, it was not considered work, and the agent was assessed negatively for it.”⁷⁵ Instructors were often the ones who brought such issues to the attention of Prague. They reported that StB officials in Karlovy Vary were subdividing useless reports into multiple parts to count them several times in their statistics.⁷⁶ In Mariánské Lázně they described how competitions to achieve higher statistics had led to pointless arrests. The instructor released those who had been unjustly arrested and arrested the agents involved.⁷⁷ From the summer of 1949 officials already in the StB were subjected to a further verification campaign at the hands of party organizations. Political education was recommended for those judged to be insufficiently knowledgeable of party language and texts.⁷⁸

After the Congress, women were also brought into the force in greater numbers. A school to train two hundred women for security work was created in May 1949.⁷⁹ This measure was not unprecedented, since women had also worked in the ZOB II, frequently as typists and secretaries. After February 1948 women were enlisted to carry out cultural and social service tasks in the name of the revolution.⁸⁰ Others were assigned to teach political education courses, run telephone and radio stations, or administer health services. Although women in Czechoslovakia were generally tasked, as they were in Poland and East Germany, with auxiliary functions, from 1949 some also began to take on surveillance and operative work since women were considered to be more inconspicuous than men and less likely to be suspected of being spies.⁸¹ Some women who had formerly been typists in the ZOB II were also promoted rapidly in the StB during the generational revolution in the force between 1949 and 1951, during which, uniquely among the three countries, women began to occupy higher positions in the StB.

In advocating greater vigilance in the state administration, the Ninth Party Congress encouraged party members to scrutinize StB agents’ personal and professional lives more closely. Agents were criticized for shortcomings in their characters and professional conduct. Members of party organizations berated StB agents for their pride, their egos, and their so-called “bourgeois personal ambitions.”⁸² Although each term had a wide variety of meanings, the general criticism was that officials were making too many decisions on their own authority, a practice that had been widespread in lower-level offices after February 1948. The head of one district StB office, for example, was accused of egotism because he did not consult his subordinates before making decisions.⁸³

Some were disparaged for refusing to take part in the numerous party meetings and events considered essential to living a “communist lifestyle.” The head of the České Budějovice StB office was criticized for not participating in meetings or public celebrations and for making fun of agents who “carried copies of Questions of Leninism in their pockets and read passages out loud on random occasions.”⁸⁴ Another was expelled from the KSČ for “avoiding party and political work.”⁸⁵ He had apparently expressed a desire for more free time and to escape the growing number of party meetings, courses, reading circles, and other activities expected of StB officials. The desire for soukromí, a term designating private time and space, became grounds for criticism or even expulsion from the KSČ.

Party members pressured each other and security officials to give up private property as well as private time. An official who later became an StB interrogator, Jan Musil, was reprehended in June 1949 for owning a small bakery and store he had inherited from his family. He was taunted during a talk he gave on collective farms because “as a secretary he should be an example to others.”⁸⁶ Faced with this pressure, he gave up his store to be nationalized and become a “paid functionary of the communist party.” This incident was part of a larger trend as small business ownership was increasingly restricted, and those who continued to own small businesses were publicly berated. Of the 110,000 privately owned shops that remained in 1949, around 65,000, of which Musil’s was one, were closed.⁸⁷

Finally, Gottwald announced plans to begin the collectivization of agriculture. In his words, the KSČ needed to “win the village for socialism” and isolate kulaks from local communities (the term was translated from the Russian as vesnický boháč, or “wealthy villager”).⁸⁸ This was hardly a campaign Gottwald advocated with fervor. As the Soviet ambassador reported to Moscow in mid-May, Gottwald had repeatedly emphasized the difficulties of collectivizing agriculture in his country. In the ambassador’s view, “Gottwald and other KSČ leaders are afraid to take the steps necessary to transform the countryside. They are scared to speak the word ‘kolkhoz’ out loud.”⁸⁹ Certainly the policy of collectivizing agriculture came as a shock to many villagers who were members of the KSČ.⁹⁰ Such villagers regularly voted not to establish collective farms in their districts or resigned from the party in protest.⁹¹ In one village every inhabitant, including local communists, voted against the collectivization of local farms.⁹² As one villager put it, he believed that the KSČ was a group of thieves that was threatening to rob him of his livelihood. He branded the villagers who decided to join the collective farm “a bunch of rogues.”⁹³ A KSČ member who owned twelve acres of land wrote a letter of protest to leaders in Prague and gathered signatures from other farmers in the area. He was expelled from the party.⁹⁴ Far from the message of unity and consensus projected at the congress, forced collectivization created sharp divides among KSČ members, undermined the credibility of the party in its lowest ranks, and divided the loyalties of members between Prague and local communities.

Although the decision to collectivize agriculture was taken in 1949, efforts to put the policy into practice at that time were far less violent than they became in 1951 and 1952.⁹⁵ In many places no serious steps to collectivize agriculture were taken at all. The instructors hardly mentioned the issue in their discussions in 1949. The exception was a brief conversation in December on the region of Karlovy Vary in which they called attention to the fact that the policy was not being implemented: “The countryside has been given little attention. The head of the party organization said that Karlovy Vary does not have class conflict because it has different conditions than elsewhere.”⁹⁶ The conviction that certain regions had unique conditions, a variant of the KSČ’s own argument about its unique national road to socialism, was co-opted by lower-level officials to justify ignoring or only partly implementing central orders.

The Soviets paid close attention to the proceedings of the Ninth Party Congress. Prior to the congress, Cominform representatives had made it clear that the Soviets’ relatively hands-off policy toward Czechoslovakia was coming to an end: “The Congress will take place under the strict control of the Cominform and Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”⁹⁷ Such attention was merited, they believed, because the gathering would set the party line for class warfare and the construction of socialism in Czechoslovakia. Far from praising the Czechoslovaks’ adherence to the Soviet model, however, the Cominform issued a litany of criticisms of them. They noted what they believed to be the party’s lack of planning, failure to control its rank and file, and the absence of “serious critical discussions in its ranks.”⁹⁸ The Czechoslovaks, they wrote with disapproval, had failed to “unmask” cosmopolitan elements from among their intelligentsia.⁹⁹ The tone at the Ninth Party Congress was unenthusiastic on the Czechoslovak side as well, as the language of class struggle, discipline, and cadres overwhelmed the KSČ’s previous message of civic pluralism and a unique road to socialism. After all, as one Czech historian has pointed out, over two-thirds of the KSČ rank-and-file had joined the party between 1945 and 1948, when political life had been characterized by pluralism and the message of national revolution.¹⁰⁰ Soviet reports confirm the Czechoslovaks’ rather hostile reception to these new messages in 1949:

The attitude of the majority of Czechs toward the Soviet Union has cooled noticeably. This change is evident not only among bourgeois elements, but also among progressive parts of the population. In everyday interactions such as government settings and social organizations, Czechs act in a cold and unwelcoming manner toward Soviet citizens. Attitudes toward the USSR are characterized by insincerity. . . . In meetings and mass demonstrations, including those organized by the communist party, one does not hear stormy and enthusiastic ovations in honor of the USSR and Comrade Stalin as there were a year ago. Feelings of gratitude and loyalty to the Soviet Union and Comrade Stalin are restrained and of a more official character than before. At meetings and demonstrations, people are passive and show no emotions or feelings.¹⁰¹

While the Congress’s official proceedings celebrated the victory of socialism, then, KSČ members’ lack of enthusiasm betrayed their anxiety and disappointment about where the revolution was going and the new Soviet-inspired practices they were compelled to engage in. While KSČ leaders proclaimed the triumph of the Cominform line, popular excitement for the revolution waned as the Czechoslovak road to socialism was replaced by pressure to imitate the Soviet model more closely.

After the Ninth Party Congress an atmosphere of civil conflict hung over the country. On 25 July the regime curtailed legal process in cases involving class enemies and granted the StB the authority to “get rid of drawn-out, bureaucratic investigations” in political cases. Potential enemies were to be brought before courts as quickly as possible and transgressions were to be followed promptly by punishments.¹⁰² Mistrust and suspicion had shattered interpersonal relationships. In a June 1949 document, three months before KSČ leaders proclaimed the “search for enemies in the party and state,” the postal service issued an official statement complaining about the “unsustainable state of affairs” in which members of the intelligence service, Ministry of Defense, KSČ, and national committees were approaching postal workers with requests to read enemies’ mail and listen to their telephone conversations: “If party members are compelled to monitor the correspondence or telephone lines of suspicious individuals, they should not do so themselves or ask a postal employee to do it for them, but should turn to an StB agent with the request.”¹⁰³ Granting the StB authority over such cases was in a way an attempt to centralize and control the surveillance already taking place, a trend exacerbated by the fact that for years party members had been encouraged to collect information on enemies and each other.

In the spring of 1949 the Party Control Commission (KSK), headed by Jarmila Taussigová, opened investigations on leading members of regional KSČ offices.¹⁰⁴ The KSK initiated inquiries into the head of KSČ offices in Olomouc and Karlovy Vary.¹⁰⁵ The close scrutiny of regional KSČ party bosses who since 1948 had largely been granted autonomy over their own affairs, meant that it was hardly a coincidence that the first party official arrested in the internal party terror was Otto Šling, the prominent KSČ chief in the region of Brno. Under Šling’s leadership, activists in Brno had sent a notably large number of people to labor camps in 1949, a number second only to Prague. This unusually high incarceration rate may have been the reason the KSK had received so many complaints from Brno on party bosses’ abuse of power, corruption, and dictatorial behavior.¹⁰⁶ Such complaints were imbued with greater urgency when news of the trial of László Rajk struck in September.

THE RAJK TRIAL, THE SOVIET ADVISERS, AND THE T-43 CAMPAIGN

On 14 September 1949, two days before the start of the trial of László Rajk in Hungary, Jindřich Veselý announced that enemies had infiltrated the Czechoslovak party and state.¹⁰⁷ This declaration followed months of discussion of the class struggle, the vigilance campaign, and the need to bring “new blood” from the working class into the ranks of the StB. By the end of 1949 the anti-elite sentiments expressed in the Rajk trial, the claims that Rajk was an intellectual and a high-ranking party member turned traitor, had been propagated in domestic campaigns for years, first by the National Front government to dissolve the Protectorate and fascist Slovak regimes; then by Action Committees to overturn the National Front government; and finally by KSČ members who criticized factory managers and superiors for dictatorial inclinations. The campaign in 1949 was in some ways a departure from what had come before. The search for the “Czechoslovak Rajk” lowered the judicial protections for those designated as enemies and the requirements for the evidence needed to detain them.¹⁰⁸ In September the Soviets sent the two NKVD advisers who had helped organize the Rajk trial in Budapest to Prague.¹⁰⁹ For months their presence was kept secret from everyone except Gottwald, Slánský, Šváb, and Veselý.¹¹⁰

Karel Šváb and Ivo Milén, accompanied by members of the procuracy, Ministry of Justice, and state court, were sent to Budapest to observe preparations for the Rajk trial.¹¹¹ Upon returning from Budapest, Šváb created a new secret police unit in October 1949 to uncover enemies in the KSČ. It had the impossibly cumbersome name of “Department IIa of sector II of group BAa to uncover enemies in the party.”¹¹² Given the fact that since 1946 Šváb’s role in the party had been to collect compromising information on KSČ members and others, his willingness to under take this task was not entirely surprising. In fact, it was likely his knowledge of party members’ compromising pasts that made him perfect for the job. While some KSČ leaders, such as Šváb, threw themselves into the search for hidden enemies in the party, others expressed skepticism of the investigations. Gottwald was dubious of the assertions of the Hungarian communist leader Mátyás Rákosi that investigations in Budapest had uncovered evidence of enemy activity in the KSČ. He asked the Soviet advisers point blank whether it was possible to “organize the Rajk trial so that Czechoslovak names are not brought up and it remains a Hungarian and Yugoslav affair.”¹¹³ As the Soviet advisers reported to Moscow in March 1950: “In meetings with us, Gottwald has gone through lists of government officials and assessed them positively. He says that he has known everyone personally for many years and that there is no Rajk among them, although [he concedes that] there may be enemies in midlevel government and party positions. We believe strongly that comrades Gottwald and Slánský do not welcome our advisers because they will find things out and tell Moscow.”¹¹⁴

In spite of Gottwald’s hesitation and objections, the work of Šváb’s unit continued unabated. Branches of the unit were dedicated to specific categories of enemies including Trotskyites, Spanish Civil War veterans, Zionists, and bourgeois nationalists. These categories were inspired by the international and Soviet rhetoric of the time. Since they were imposed from abroad, they met in some cases with confusion and inaction in Czechoslovakia. As an instructor reported from Liberec, “Trotskyites: this target has not yet been developed. No list of Trotskyites had been drawn up in the region. Agents do not know how to understand this phrase.”¹¹⁵ The same applied to the “unit for uncovering enemies in the party” more generally: “Two agents have been assigned to this target. Two files have been drawn up. It is clear that instruction is necessary.”¹¹⁶ No one knew what to make of the concept of Zionism: “Zionists: this target has no agents and no files. Agents have no idea what to make of it. They lack basic theoretical knowledge of Zionists. It is necessary to provide instruction because nothing has been done with respect to this target.”¹¹⁷ Bourgeois nationalists were likewise met with puzzlement: “No agents are working on this target. There are no files. Agents have no idea what to do because they do not understand the issue of bourgeois nationalism. Instruction is needed.”¹¹⁸

Such instruction came in the form of a new school for midlevel StB functionaries, which opened on 1 October 1949, soon after the arrival of the Soviet advisers. It lasted for twelve weeks and coincided with the first months of the search for enemies in the party. The party terror suffused agents’ training, self-conceptions, and language. Students received materials from the Soviet Union from the late 1920s and 1930s, including Prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky’s opening speech at the Shakhty trial and the trial of engineers and industrial managers in the USSR in 1928. They studied the Moscow Trials, the show trials of old Bolsheviks between 1936 and 1938, for sixteen hours. They examined the trial of former NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda, who had been tried and executed during the Great Terror.¹¹⁹ Rank-and-file agents were taught the “language of the party” through the works of Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilych Lenin, Josef Stalin, Andrei Zhdanov, Vyacheslav Molotov, and the decrees of the Ninth Party Congress.¹²⁰ They read popular works on espionage, the Soviet Union, and the Second World War, including Michael Sayers and Albert Eugene Kahn, The Great Conspiracy against the Soviet Union; Alexander Bek, Moscow Is Behind Us!; Danil Kraminov, The Second Front; Boris Polevoi, The Story of a Real Man; and the Soviet film “The Meeting at the Elbe.”¹²¹ Such works spread the message that spies were everywhere and that the Soviet Union, the liberator in the Second World War, was now the target of a great conspiracy perpetrated by the West. They learned more brutal interrogation methods. A former StB driver related a conversation he had with a comrade who had attended a two-week training course. When he asked him what he had learned, the comrade punched him in the stomach, informing him that this was what he had learned in the course.¹²² All nationally specific issues that had been covered in the first intelligence course, including national committees, Germans, and Czech fascist groups, were removed.¹²³

The lecturers in this new course were members of the instructor group. None of the teachers from the ZOB II training program taught in it. One former instructor who taught in the course was Antonín Prchal. Prchal’s professional origins in the ZOB II, rapid rise in the StB in the early 1950s, and close connections with the Soviet advisers granted him a formidable reputation in the force.¹²⁴ When the historian Karel Kaplan interviewed him decades later, Prchal expressed the opinion that the Soviet advisers had introduced order to the StB at this time. As Kaplan explained, “[He] calmly described the administrative and organizational order that [the Soviet advisers], with all of their experience, had introduced to the security service. [He believed that] the advisers had helped overcome the disorder that had characterized the service before their arrival.”¹²⁵ When Kaplan asked whether such order did not come at too high a cost, he refused to answer. And yet, Prchal was not entirely wrong. The Soviets did not so much introduce violence to the force, which had been evident in lower-level offices since before their arrival, as institute a standardized system of violence based on battletested methods of interrogations, torture, and psychological pressure that they had internalized in the brutal world of the Stalinist 1930s.

In asserting that the advisers introduced order to the system, Prchal was echoing the message communicated by the Soviets themselves. Soviet documents from the time repeatedly claimed to be introducing order to Czechoslovak institutions. This concept was contrasted with the disorder and chaos the Soviets claimed had been unleashed in February 1948. A Russian language training manual from 1950, for example, was titled “on establishing order in arrests, investigations, and preventative detention.”¹²⁶ It criticized the Czechoslovak force for conducting arrests arbitrarily and specified areas in which order was being introduced: “order in arrests,” “order in investigations,” and “order in preventative detentions.” The Soviet conception of order was cemented in a new criminal code that had been introduced to Czechoslovakia earlier that year that granted more extensive powers to security agents: “The state security force has complete freedom to arrest those who are engaged in crimes against the state. This does, however, present a danger that agents will conduct arrests with little cause.” The manual therefore stressed the need for agents to conduct proper operative work before detaining a suspect. From this manual, it is evident that in the Soviet system secret police agents were responsible for far more aspects of legal procedure than their Czechoslovak counterparts had been. Their reports affirmed that “I determined that the material collected during the investigation demonstrates that [the suspect] undertook subversive and espionage activities against the Czechoslovak People’s Republic” (emphasis added). They were in charge of collecting and assessing evidence, determining guilt and innocence, and even influencing sentencing. In making these decisions, which the KSČ had not yet fully put into the hands of the StB, they answered only to their superiors, the party, and the administrative rules regulating arrests.¹²⁷

With respect to introducing order in the force, the Soviets also familiarized StB agents with methods of centralized planning. Beginning in 1949 the StB’s internal documents began to regularly employ the word systemisace to indicate that methods and institutional forms were to be standardized from Prague to the lowest level offices.¹²⁸ The October 1949 StB training course stressed the theme of long-term planning: “All lectures will focus on the issue of planning. We will look at how to plan targets, informer networks and operations.”¹²⁹ Agents were told that centralized planning had been “underestimated up to that point.” Older officials, the narrative went, used incorrect policing methods, methods inferior to those they were learning—a way of thinking that spread mistrust between older and younger members of the force. At the end of the course, graduates were expected to write a thesis. A list of topics included the organization of state security in other People’s Democracies, centralized planning in the secret police, and the shortcomings of the current administration of regional secret police offices.

Prchal was considered an expert on the topic of centralized planning. In the StB course he lectured on the Soviet-inspired system of objekty, or security targets.¹³⁰ The system divided security targets into three categories: individuals, groups, and material objects. Individuals were people who belonged to a suspect social category such as priests, diplomats, or émigrés. Groups were organizations such as foreign embassies, offices, or noncommunist political parties. Material targets included factories, transportation facilities, airports, press offices, hotels, and recreational areas.¹³¹ In the objekty method of policing, the StB office in Prague identified security targets across the country. When touring lower-level StB offices, the instructors identified the most important security targets in an area, which could be anything from a border region to a factory, labor camp, collective farm, industry, or the Jáchymov uranium mine. One instructor, for example, suggested increasing the number of StB agents in Ostrava because of the important industries there. Another mentioned placing more agents in the Škoda arms factory.¹³²

Whereas in the early communist period officials had often simply taken up whatever posts in their local communities were vacant, the objekty system made it possible for Prague to move them to where they were needed according to the plan. It created a “rootless” official who could be moved to an area where he had no personal or professional ties. This system was described as making efficient use of labor resources since more agents were assigned to higher priority targets. It also granted Prague a new lever of control over agents’ behavior since punishments could include transfer to an obscure area and incentives could involve the promise of a position or apartment in Prague.

In September 1949 yet another verification campaign was carried out. StB officials were assessed on the basis of class and political consciousness as well as their knowledge of party texts. The term “class conscious” was more than a question of class background. As elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc, used in the context of the secret police it indicated an agent’s activism in campaigns of violence against class enemies. An StB official assessed as being “class and politically conscious” in September 1949 was, when subject to reassessment in June 1950, considered to have a quick temper that led him to commit “brutalities during interrogations.”¹³³ Another was assessed as being a “diligent employee with a good attitude toward work,” to which the instructor added, “It is necessary that he improve his efforts to liquidate people of other classes.”¹³⁴

As these new criteria were introduced, StB offices gathered their employees to assess the lessons Czechoslovakia should take away from the Rajk trial. Agents were told that Rajk had been an intellectual and that intellectuals now posed a danger to communism.¹³⁵ They were told that high-ranking communist officials could be secretly undermining the party from within: “Rajk was a prominent functionary. He failed. We must watch prominent functionaries and unmask them so they will not cause damage.”¹³⁶ This anti-intellectual, anti-elite sentiment rang plausible for some StB officials, particularly those who had recently been recruited from the working class. One worker recruited to the StB in 1950 later described that he believed that some people in the service “gave the impression of being intellectuals. They looked down on those of us who came from factories as if we would never make it. They belittled and discouraged our success.”¹³⁷ Indeed because younger members of the force had entered the StB with little training or formal education, more experienced members of the force (now considered “intellectuals”) had often assigned them busy work, a tendency that the young workers resented.¹³⁸ These issues therefore mapped on to, and further stoked, real tensions from the first years of the regime.

Calls for vigilance required that KSČ members inform the party of any suspicious behavior they observed.¹³⁹ In the StB, subordinates were asked to spy on their superiors and report dubious activities to the authorities.¹⁴⁰ Listening devices were installed in lower-level StB offices where they had never been before. Instructors discussed the case of Liberec, where they had “installed listening devices in the [StB] office, which will doubtless not remain secret for long.”¹⁴¹ These measures culminated in the creation of a new position in the StB, that of the defense officer, which was responsible for reporting instances of enemy behavior in the force. When agents gathered in one office to assess the Rajk trial, one was appointed to serve as a defense officer (obranný referent).¹⁴² A description of this position is contained in an undated document from Slovakia.¹⁴³ The task of the defense officer was to assume that other communists were secretly working for the enemy: “We must self-critically ask ourselves: have we been vigilant and watchful enough in the state security apparatus to protect ourselves from infiltration by the enemy? Not in the least! Otherwise there would be no cases of dangerous traitors in our ranks.”¹⁴⁴

The defense officer was authorized to scrutinize the personal habits and social relations of StB officials to determine whether they had a “motive for treason” (pohnutka ku zradě). Motives for treason could include ideological disagreements with the regime, insufficient political education—concretely, whether the official had ever disagreed with a party policy or expressed moral qualms about the use of physical violence in the force—religious tendencies, alcoholism, character defects such as pride (ješitnost); or social relations with StB officials who had been expelled from the force in a previous campaign. Each regional office was to employ at least one defense officer. It was projected that this number would expand in the future. These officers, in a sense, were appointed to enforce communist values, or at least outward compliance with them, in StB officials’ everyday lives. Appeals for vigilance had therefore led to the institutionalization of a permanent system of internal surveillance inside the StB to police intimate aspects of agents’ lives, beliefs, and relationships.

The instructors, who had previously focused on professional issues, also began to pay closer attention to StB officials’ private lives and relationships. One noted with disapproval that a male and female StB official were in an intimate relationship.¹⁴⁵ He considered this demoralizing for other agents and proposed raising the issue at a meeting of the party organization. Instructors commented on another official’s tendency to drink. They believed that there were three possible explanations for his behavior: either he had problems in his private life, was politically unreliable, or worked for the enemy.¹⁴⁶ All were now the concern of the state.

Table 5.1. Personnel changes: Regional StB office in Prague

Source: “Situační zpráva” (Situation Report), 11 January 1952, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–12–2.

The atmosphere of doubting the loyalty of intellectuals or older StB officials informed how people made sense of why, from the end of 1949, instructors began to remove older StB officials from their positions. The head of the office in Karlovy Vary was dismissed in November 1949. All department heads in the region were removed soon after.¹⁴⁷ The head and deputy head of the office in Mariánské Lázně was replaced with a graduate from the new StB school for midlevel functionaries.¹⁴⁸ Twenty-three officials were expelled from the StB office in Ústí nad Labem.¹⁴⁹ In České Budějovice a critical situation arose when knowledgeable officials were ousted by ones with no experience.¹⁵⁰ Eighteen men were removed from the StB office in Liberec, after which it was headed by “a comrade who, although he has been in the service since 1945, still has no idea what he is doing.”¹⁵¹ Similar personnel changes continued into the 1950s. As statistics from the time implied, only a few old officials with experience in a pre-communist police force (příslušníci staré policie a četnictva) retained their positions up to 1952.

StB officials were demoralized by seeing their colleagues expelled from the force. When an instructor ordered the head of the office in Plzeň to fire his coworkers, the latter responded by asking whether he, perhaps, would be the next one removed. Updates from December 1949 noted uncertainty and discontent among StB officials.¹⁵² In Liberec, the expulsions created “strong divisions between older and newer StB officials.” Older members became indifferent to their work and bitter about the expulsions.¹⁵³ In Ústí nad Labem the removal of twenty-three security officials created a sense of despondency in the office.¹⁵⁴ The Slovak service undertook its own purges between June and August 1950.¹⁵⁵ When Rudolf Slánský was blamed for mistakes in personnel policy in a meeting of the Central Committee in September 1951, many would likely have read their own frustration and anger into the accusations.

The second half of the revolution from above was the rapid promotion of new officials in the service. On 23 November 1949 district and local party secretaries and members of factory work councils were ordered yet again to nominate new recruits for employment in the security force.¹⁵⁶ KSČ members descended on factories to sign up workers for the StB. One worker who entered the service in this period was Bohuslav Koubek, who had worked as a machine fitter until November 1949, when he was recruited into the StB. He became an interrogator after completing a course for security officials in March 1950.¹⁵⁷ Workers taking up positions in the state security force did not always adjust smoothly to the new demands placed on them. Some tended to drink on the job or leave work randomly. Others expressed the desire to return to the factory.¹⁵⁸ The fact that inexperienced officials had full run of the office resulted in erratic behavior. In an incident for which details are lacking, instructors arrested one agent for “threatening officials from the Secretariat with a pistol.”¹⁵⁹ By 1950 this campaign had transformed the social composition of the StB. In December 1949 Veselý announced that 55 percent of StB officials had been in the force for fewer than fourteen months. Ten percent had been in the service for only three months. As he summarized, “We are working with people of new blood, who are inexperienced, and only beginning their training.”¹⁶⁰

This new force carried out one of the most significant campaigns against class enemies to take place in the first years of communism in Czechoslovakia. The campaign, called T-43, was initiated in October 1949 in part to address the issue of labor shortages prior to the start of the First Five-Year Plan. Labor shortages were particularly evident in areas where work conditions were dangerous or unhealthy, such as the uranium mines.¹⁶¹ Communist leaders’ solution to this problem was to create more labor camps and send an estimated three thousand people to them each month. The T-43 campaign was also supposed to address the failures of the previous campaign against asocial elements in October 1948.¹⁶² As KSČ statistics emerging from this October campaign had shown, around 40 percent of the total number of people who had been arrested had been members of the working class.¹⁶³ According to the report, “The majority of people sent to camps were workers who had neglected their duties or committed minor crimes.”¹⁶⁴ This outcome was not entirely surprising as the campaign had been directed against those considered “work shirkers.” But as Pokorný succinctly explained, “The law that was supposed to be a weapon of class warfare was wielded against asocial elements and hardly affected the bourgeoisie at all.”¹⁶⁵ The T-43 campaign, in contrast, would “shake the economic and social basis of the country, terrify the capitalists and bourgeoisie, and remove the families of the arrested from their places of residence.”¹⁶⁶

Similar to the February Revolution and the October 1948 campaign, T-43 was to be carried out by police and security forces on the basis of information provided by members of the communist party and mass organizations.¹⁶⁷ The categories of the population targeted for arrest included industrialists, factory owners, large shareholders, former bankers, businessmen, and landowners. While class enemies were to be the main target, those targeted in previous campaigns were scrutinized once again, including political enemies, namely, those who had lost their positions after February, functionaries from the First Czechoslovak Republic, former members of noncommunist political parties, and those who “did not engage in productive work.”¹⁶⁸ Although the T-43 campaign ended with 778 people in labor camps, party leaders regarded it as a failure since this number was far from the projected estimate of three thousand people a month.¹⁶⁹ Part of the reason for this failure was that, unlike the February revolution and October 1948 campaign, reports suggest that participation from below had not been forthcoming. The authorities in Prague criticized local functionaries for being slow and slovenly in providing information.¹⁷⁰ Evidently people were not as invested in the arrests of class and ideological enemies as they had been in actions against political enemies and asocial elements. In spite of the many shortcomings of the operation, T-43 did contribute to the creation of a card catalogue in which citizens from enemy classes or political backgrounds were documented: “Above all, it is essential to create a list of businessmen, millionaires, landowners, etc.”¹⁷¹ This information was collected on around two hundred thousand people and proved vital for use in future operations.¹⁷²

The tempestuous year 1949 closed with an unambiguous statement on the future of the StB. On 7 December the heads of regional StB offices, many of whom had only recently been appointed, met to discuss the lessons learned that year. The opening speech of the meeting, by Vladislav Hamrla, set the tone for the proceedings. It was a masterfully crafted monologue that outlined the necessity of introducing centralized planning into the StB. How, asked Hamrla, the newly appointed head of the StB office in Plzeň, with a rhetorical flourish, could “all of the other countries of the socialist bloc,” which followed a system of centralized planning, be wrong? Did Czechoslovakia really want to be the only country in the Eastern Bloc to have an arbitrary, unplanned system?¹⁷³ Hamrla was a lecturer in the StB course for midlevel functionaries on planning secret police work, an issue in which he was apparently considered a specialist.¹⁷⁴ When he was promoted to the StB Secretariat in 1949, he was, at the age of forty-two, one of the oldest members on a board composed largely of people in their midtwenties.¹⁷⁵

The speeches that followed his made clear that it was no longer a question of whether to plan work, only how much to plan. Most regional StB officials, who had been trained in courses taught by Hamrla, simply repeated his words.¹⁷⁶ Even so, not everyone agreed. According to Hamrla, the operative agent Josef Čech met him in the courtyard after his speech and told him that his “plan is worth shit, and I want to tear it into a thousand pieces.”¹⁷⁷ According to Hamrla, regional offices had shifted to a system of central planning. It was now the center’s job to do the same. The attack on the 1940s party and secret police elite had begun.

THE CLASS STRUGGLE AND THE FIRST FIVE-YEAR PLAN

As the language of enemies in the party spread, the list of characteristics that defense agents were told to watch for expanded to include StB agents’ passion for the job, initiative, political maturity, class consciousness, relations inside the office, relations outside the office, financial situation, family situation, temper, alcohol use, gambling habits, bribe taking, debts, relatives at home and abroad, and correspondence from home and abroad.¹⁷⁸ Defense agents were advised to examine StB officials’ relations with party members, their manner of conducting investigations, whether thoroughly, benevolently, or superficially, and their willingness to familiarize subordinates with the principles of the class struggle.¹⁷⁹ They were to ensure that agents’ “love for the party and working class superseded any religious affiliation.”

The close scrutiny of agents’ work ethic, the rhetoric of the class struggle, the more violent interrogation methods, and the influence of the Soviet advisers, all contributed to the escalation of the brutality in the force. In February 1950, StB interrogators beat a Catholic priest, Father Troufar, to death during an interrogation.¹⁸⁰ Prague reacted with alarm to the incident. Veselý immediately issued a report banning the use of extreme violence during interrogations: “In the past weeks, there have been incidents in which interrogators have tortured prisoners even though such practices are prohibited.”¹⁸¹ He threatened to bring the perpetrators before a military court. Clearly alarmed by what was happening, Veselý approached the Soviet advisers in March 1950 to inform them that Czechoslovakia did not need a powerful security service because they already had a large working class to ensure the security of the party.¹⁸² But by this time he had already been sidelined from power. He attempted suicide soon after. ¹⁸³ In spite of these voices of protest, the Soviets could always find others willing to support the violence. A report from May 20 related a conversation between the Soviets and the deputy head of the Ministry of Information in Czechoslovakia in which the latter expressed the belief that it was necessary to strengthen state security due to the “increased activities of internal and external enemies.”¹⁸⁴

Throughout 1950 the jurisdiction of the state security force expanded considerably.¹⁸⁵ Agent networks were built in industries, construction sites, and factories. Secret police authority was extended into new areas of the public sector such as the Ministries of Food and Agriculture, Health, Information, Transportation, the Postal Service, and the Department for Foreign and Internal Commerce. Agents were tasked with overseeing the press and film industry to “ensure that [these industries] do not reveal state secrets.”¹⁸⁶ The state security service was renamed the Ministry for National Security in May 1950 (Ministerstvo národní bezpečnosti—MNB). The MNB integrated the secret police (StB) into the same institution as the civil police, border guards, and other domestic security forces.¹⁸⁷ It subordinated the Slovak security service increasingly to Prague, an effort that went hand in hand with expelling Slovak officials seen as nationalists from the force.¹⁸⁸

New laws, such as Article 88 of the May 1950 criminal code, set more draconian punishments for economic infractions such as the failure to fulfill agricultural quotas.¹⁸⁹ In the context of the class struggle, agents could be accused of enemy behavior if they failed to enforce laws according to the principle of class justice.¹⁹⁰As the new criminal code was introduced to the country, the StB, judiciary, and KSČ began to publicize its key principles in show trials organized in Prague as well as regions, districts, and villages across the country. The show trial of the former parliamentary representative Milada Horáková and thirteen other members of the National Socialist, Social Democratic, and People’s Parties was staged in June 1950. The Horáková trial, as it became known, ended with the sentencing of four defendants to death, four to life imprisonment, and the rest to between fifteen and twenty years in prison.¹⁹¹

During the preparations for the trial, Soviet advisers introduced new interrogation practices to the StB. The training materials for the Czechoslovak interrogation department for years to come were based on methods introduced to the force during the investigations for the Horáková trial.¹⁹² These methods included uninterrupted interrogations, in which interrogators worked in shifts for up to twelve hours; confrontations between prisoners in which they were compelled to face and testify against each another; and “question protocols,” in which interrogators determined both the questions asked of prisoners and the answers they were likely to receive.¹⁹³ For new officials entering the StB in 1950 or 1951 these methods were neither new nor old—they just “were” the system. Every StB office in the country was required to replicate the Horáková trial on a local scale.

More Soviet advisers arrived in Prague in the early 1950s. It is uncertain whether these officials were completely new to the service. Although one prominent NKVD officer, General Filipov, took on the position of official adviser in June 1950, his NKVD file lists him as being “on official business” in Czechoslovakia between March 1945 and August 1949 (v komandirovke v chekhoslovakii).¹⁹⁴ By December 1950 Czechoslovakia had 27 advisers.¹⁹⁵ Their arrival coincided with greater efforts to enforce collectivization and organize show trials against priests and church dignitaries. In 1950, 354 farmers were sentenced for “antistate activity.”¹⁹⁶ Show trials of religious figures were staged in November and December.¹⁹⁷ Akce K, a campaign to remove the families of convicted kulaks from their homes, was undertaken in October 1951. The campaign was brought to a close on 22 April 1952 due to the lack of local participation in enforcing it.¹⁹⁸ The fact that it ended in failure showed that in spite of the harsh rhetoric, new laws, and ruthless enforcement requirements, which doubtless influenced the behavior of StB agents, the image of unquestioning obedience to party directives is still misleading, even at the height of the Stalinist era.

As these new methods were introduced to the force, StB officials were subject to criticism/self-criticism sessions in which they apologized for their mistakes and affirmed the correctness of the new party line. Prominent figures battered the authority of their comrades in such sessions. On 26 August 1950 Ivo Milén was criticized by his colleagues for not taking a more active role in party organizations.¹⁹⁹ Šváb demanded that Milén explain where his knowledge of the party had come from, since he did not attend party meetings or the countless other official celebrations held at the time. Milén responded, “Well, I would say that I know the basics of Marxism–Leninism. And I spend every free moment educating myself. . . . When I go to these [party] schools I hear things I already know. Only I know the gaps in my knowledge.”

As was true of other older communists, Milén’s knowledge of party ideology was linked to self-study and personal reflection rather than the memorization of standardized texts in political education courses. Josef Pavel added his own comments to further undermine Milén’s authority: “Many comrades are still living in the years 1945–46. They have no party esprit de corps and go around playing detective and having adventures.” The next sentence in the document was crossed out in pencil (it is unclear by whom): “The political level of the most prominent officials is worst of all.” At the end of the meeting Milén, who spoke Slovak, Czech, Hungarian, French, and English, was told to “study Russian to master the practical experiences of our comrade advisers without a translator.”²⁰⁰ Starting in November 1950 Russian language classes were required of the heads of StB departments. This cultural and linguistic Russification of the force brings to mind the training the Czechs had observed in Bulgaria and Hungary that increasingly made the translation of Soviet operative vocabulary into local languages unnecessary.²⁰¹

On 6 October 1950 Otto Šling, the head of the KSČ office in the region of Brno, was arrested. He was the first high-ranking party official detained in the internal party terror in Czechoslovakia.²⁰² The operative agent and former instructor Antonín Prchal planned Šling’s arrest as well as the arrests of other prominent party and security leaders.²⁰³ This and the subsequent arrests were almost all carried out by people who had recently joined the StB. Almost all of the officials who served on the StB Secretariat in 1950 were promoted in 1949 or 1950.²⁰⁴ Uniquely among the three countries analyzed here, this included many women, who attained officer rank and candidacy status in the service, including 6 of 17 seats on the Secretariat.²⁰⁵ Božena Štastná was nineteen when she became a candidate member of the party, Eva Němečková was twenty-one when she became a candidate, and Věra Podzemská was twenty-two when she attained the rank of sergeant.²⁰⁶ Women were increasingly visible in certain branches of the intelligence service. In Sector I, foreign intelligence, 10 of 84 officials were women.²⁰⁷ In Sector II, political intelligence, 21 of 117 officials were women.²⁰⁸ In Sector III, economic intelligence, 19 of 92 officials were women.²⁰⁹ The Stalinist revolution enabled underrepresented social groups, both women and workers, to rise in the service.

Those who joined the StB in or after 1950, from whatever social background, were steeped in the language of operative work, centralized planning, and vigilance from their first day on the job. Socialist competitions were organized with greater frequency, now assessed according to official quotas collected from across the service.²¹⁰ A plan from 1951 included quotas on the number of informers to be recruited, listening devices to be installed, arrests to be made, investigations to be opened, and interrogations to be conducted.²¹¹ Young officials no longer debated policies: they implemented them. And their willingness to do so was checked by defense agents, instructors, teachers, superiors, subordinates, and party members.

Table 5.2. StB personnel in the force, breakdown by gender, 1945–50

Source: “Informace pro soudruha velitele státní bezpečnosti.” 24 November 1950, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–52–3, l. 92.

Table 5.3. StB personnel, 1949–52

Source: Data from “Czechoslovakia,” in A Handbook of the Communist Security Apparatus in East Central Europe, 1944–1989, ed. Krzysztof Persak and Łukasz Kamiński, 104 (Warsaw: Institute for National Remembrance, 2005).

With district and regional StB and party officials under investigation, it was only a matter of time before suspicion fell on those for whom they were working in Prague. It was Jarmila Taussigová who began to open cases on higher ranking security officials. She explicitly cited the Rajk trial as the justification for such high-level investigations: “the Rajk trial, the veracity of which I did not doubt, taught me to be vigilant against such people” she wrote.²¹² As she explained in a letter to Slánský in November 1950: “[certain facts] have raised doubts about our [security commanders’] ability and willingness to conclude the Šling case. The head of state security, Osvald Závodský, his deputy Ivo Milén, the head of foreign intelligence Oskar Valeš, and others represent an ‘exclusive group’ that cooperated with Šling in Spain, England, and after 1945. They are all loyal to one another.”²¹³ She approached a Soviet adviser, Vladimir Boyarski, to suggest either dismissing the security elite or sending a party spy into the StB to collect information on them. The adviser approved the second option.

Jan Hora, the party spy, was sent into the StB in December 1950 to collect information on its leaders for the Party Control Commission. He was told to report everything he saw, heard, and observed and “become familiar with the work of individual sectors and the heads of security departments.” As he explained in later testimony, he believed that it was his personal crusade to cleanse the party of people with unclean backgrounds.²¹⁴ Three years after the Slánský trial, he continued to claim that “among employees of the Secretariat, there were a lot from bourgeois families who were weighed down by some dark past.” He noted apropos of nothing that a man he liked in the party had been replaced by “the son of a private businessman who in his free time worked in the company of his father drafting legal documents.” Why he knew about the man’s class background or what he did in his spare time is open to question. But it obviously filled him with rage that men like him, from “bourgeois families,” were in the party.

As these changes were taking place, the Soviets helped create a department for foreign intelligence. “According to General [Anatoly] Filipov,” read a report from 12 July 1950 referencing the Soviet adviser in charge of the task, “the organizational and professional realities of foreign intelligence demand that personnel, schools, finances, and so on, be created specifically for foreign intelligence.”²¹⁵ The foreign intelligence department was created against the backdrop of the so-called isolation campaign (akce isolace) aimed at eliminating Western influences in the country through arrests, intimidation, and threats against groups affiliated with the West.²¹⁶ It took several forms. In 1950 and 1951 the StB began to establish systematic checks on citizens’ correspondence abroad. By 15 January 1951 seventy-seven agents checked around three thousand letters per day.²¹⁷ But, similar to several initiatives that preceded it, StB offices were criticized for failing to fully implement the isolation campaign. In spite of the original intentions of the organizers, it was never extended to areas outside of Prague.²¹⁸ Two years later, in August 1952, a department for disinformation was created to supply false information to foreign intelligence agencies like the CIA and West German intelligence service (desinformacní odděleni). The goal was to disorient (desorientovat) these services by distributing false information on the economy and politics of the Eastern Bloc.²¹⁹

The most prominent members of the security elite, including Osvald Závodský, Ivo Milén, Bedřich Pokorný, Josef Pavel, and others were arrested in a single operation between the end of January and beginning of February 1951. Surprise was necessary in making arrests, a Soviet adviser once explained, so that the suspects would not “commit suicide or burn documents.”²²⁰ When Pavel was kidnapped on the street by operative agents, he assumed he had been arrested by a foreign intelligence service. Outlandish as this assumption may seem, it was perhaps more reasonable than the idea that he had been arrested by a rogue branch of his own intelligence service.²²¹ He was put in a secret holding cell for three to four days. The arrest of the security elite was followed by the arrest of fifty officials from the military, regional party offices, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The operation ended with the detention of Karel Šváb on 16 February 1951.²²² Memoirist Heda Kovály captured the mood in the party at the time: “By 1951, the atmosphere in Prague was almost as bad as it had been during the war. No one dared to speak out loud. Hardly a week passed without news of someone’s arrest. The worst days were Thursday and Friday—my recollection is that the Central Committee met on Thursdays—and wherever a doorbell rang on those evenings, everyone turned pale. . . . There were a number of suicides, some quite mysterious, some entirely understandable.”²²³

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE SECURITY ELITE

On 2 March 1951, when three officials from the KSČ personnel department visited the interrogation unit responsible for investigating enemies in the party, the Ruzyně prison in Prague was filled with prominent communists.²²⁴ This was the year that the interrogation department of the StB was created. Prior to 1951, Czechoslovak agents from various departments had simply conducted interrogations after they made arrests. In 1951, interrogations became the purview of a specialized department created and trained under the guidance of the Soviet advisors. The creation of an independent interrogation department—its ethos, personnel, and organization structure—is impossible to separate from the internal party terror in Czechoslovakia.

The Party Control Commission recruited citizens from the People’s Militia who had never worked in the StB to interrogate prominent members of the party and security service.²²⁵ These men were summoned to Prague without being told why. Some, reported Milan Moučka, who headed a group of interrogators, “proved themselves in service” and adjusted to the demands of the position. Others did not. Bohumil Doubek, who headed the other group of interrogators, recounted that most expressed the desire to leave because “the atmosphere in which they found themselves was unusual.”²²⁶ Many interrogators were brought in from jobs in factories or industry. One example was Alois Jistebnický, a factory worker who entered the force in 1949. Jistebnický was fired in January 1950 for having a relationship with a prisoner. He was disappointed by this because “I really liked serving in the state security corps and had a good time there.”²²⁷ To him, service as an interrogator was a way to make up for past sins: “My expulsion from the party upset me. I tried, through my work and behavior, to prove myself worthy of being accepted into it again.” He was assigned to interrogate former communists and prisoners who would not cooperate so he could “break” them.

Another interrogator, Josef Kubinec, was recruited from the People’s Militia in 1951.²²⁸ He proved himself in service by conducting interrogations on members of the former security elite. Kubinec’s description of his work routine had the tone of a person simply going about his day. From morning until six at night, he related, he interrogated Závodský about his biography. When the next shift came in at six, they too questioned Závodský about his biography. What Kubinec was describing was the method of “uninterrupted interrogations,” in which interrogators worked in shifts, one after another. When Kubinec returned in the morning, he reflected that “it would have been stupid to ask [Závodský] about his biography again, so I asked him why he had been arrested.” When he returned for the next shift, “Závodský was in terrible physical and mental shape. He was leaning on the wall and saying that he was an CIA agent, that he helped the Ukrainian nationalists, and that he informed on other Spanish volunteers to the Gestapo in France during the war.” When Kubinec was assigned to interrogate Závodský again in February 1952, he mentioned that “I apologized that his testimony from before was all lies since he gave it out of fear that if he didn’t [confess] he would be tied up and beaten.” Závodský’s testimony in 1952, however, “was based on operative materials, so it was accurate.” Kubinec had internalized the assumption—the official line at the time already—that the operative division only arrested suspects whose guilt had been proven.

Artur London, the former deputy head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who was arrested in connection with the Slánský trial, noticed that the men interrogating him were new to communism: “Many interrogators were new recruits. Some had been picked from factories and were the products of rapid and summary training in ‘their department.’ How could men who were not basically evil become such blind and docile instruments? I realized that for them the Party was an abstract idea, not a vital organization for which they felt responsible. It was represented by their superiors, the Soviet advisers, or anyone who stood above them. Orders were sacred and unquestionable.”²²⁹ Members of the party elite had helped recruit men like them to the StB. Marian Šlingová, who was arrested after her husband, Otto Šling, reflected in her memoir that during her work in a party organization in Brno she had recruited workers from factories similar to the person interrogating her to serve in the secret police: “The man, evidently an interrogator, was youngish looking, in his thirties, perhaps, strongly built, with the hands of a manual worker. . . . Sometimes, when he was in the mood, he would talk about himself—how he had been a skilled craftsman in an engineering work until, in 1948, his party branch persuaded him to volunteer for service in the security force. This I could well believe, because as a member of the party committee in our Brno suburb, I helped convince good, loyal, working-class comrades to go into the force to safeguard the great, humane achievements of the revolution. My inquisitor was probably initially no different from those I had known personally.”²³⁰ While some newly recruited workers proved themselves in service, others could not handle its brutality. A woman hired as a stenographer to record the interrogation of Závodský had a nervous breakdown and was moved to a different sector the next day.²³¹ The investigations generated such an atmosphere of anxiety that one interrogator killed himself. Others criticized what was happening and were transferred to another department or released from service.²³²

Although many recruits were brought into the StB at the time, not all were new to the service. An interrogator with exceptional career longevity was Vladimír Kohoutek. Given the number of regime changes that took place in the span of his career, Kohoutek’s dossier was remarkable. He had trained as an interrogator in the First Czechoslovak Republic. He continued to work as one under the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the National Front government, and the early communist state. His file contained the remarkably frank assessment by his coworkers that he was a “person capable of adjusting to and serving any regime.”²³³ Under each regime he was rewarded for outstanding service. During the Second World War he was rewarded for arresting gamblers who subsequently died in a concentration camp. In 1946 the National Front government recognized his success in interrogating former Gestapo and Nazi officials. In 1952 he received the Order of Work for interrogating his former superiors in the Slánský trial.²³⁴ Artur London, who was interrogated by him, wrote that he was disturbed by Kohoutek’s “crude cynicism” about politics.²³⁵ This combination of cynicism and proximity to power seemed tied to the position of interrogator, which required little more than torturing prisoners to achieve confessions. And the fact that his services were in high demand speaks to disturbing continuities between the political orders of the twentieth century.

StB interrogator Vladimír Kohoutek. ABS Prague, fond Personální spisy příslušníků MV, personální spis evid. č. 4049/12 Vladimír Kohoutek.

Many workers who were trained as interrogators or operative agents in the early 1950s remained in their positions or were promoted after the Slánský trial. Jan Musil had held only minor roles in the party since 1945. He joined the security service on the basis of a two-year candidacy period that started in January 1950.²³⁶ He had attained an officer’s rank by June (whether in connection with the Horáková trial is unclear but likely). He was rewarded for his “effort and extraordinary devotion” to unmasking the antistate conspiratorial group. Antonín Prchal was promoted after leading the operations in which the former members of the security elite were arrested. He became deputy head of the StB and the head of its operative department on 5 February 1951.²³⁷ In February 1952 he was promoted yet again to the position of deputy minister of the interior, a post traditionally reserved for an operative agent. He was granted one of the highest honors in the state, the Order of the Republic, on 24 April 1953 for his work in preparing the Slánský trial.²³⁸ As Karel Kaplan wrote, he quickly became a celebrated figure in the StB: “Between 1950 and 1955 [Prchal] was a great authority in security. His connections with the Soviet advisers and influence at the Ministry were well known. He was a legend in the security force. His power and influence exaggerated these fantastic tales and lived on, passed from generation to generation in security years after his fall from power. For security employees, he embodied the time of absolute power.”²³⁹

Not only the interrogation department, but also the operative branch of the service—which focused on surveillance and collecting intelligence on suspects—internalized new methods during the Slánský trial. Part of this training was to kidnap and plan surprise arrests of party members in their houses or on the street. It included confiscating information from the filing cabinets of the former elite, including the compromising materials the communists had collected on one another as well as on the church, wealthy citizens, and noncommunists. These materials became the basis for operations in the 1950s.²⁴⁰ As one agent recalled, when he entered the security force “new employees were sorting through the information safes [they had confiscated from those who had been arrested].”²⁴¹

On 1 May 1952, seven months before the Slánský trial, the State Security School in Prague, Veleslavín, the first central StB school, was opened with great fanfare.²⁴² The course, designated for two hundred officials, lasted one year. Even those already enrolled in the service took a six-month training course to retrain them in new policing methods. Three hundred operative workers, sixty military intelligence officers, and a hundred interrogators attended the school. The language of class struggle dominated the training materials. As a 1952 lecture on interrogations began, “The prerequisites to being a good interrogator are an uncompromising class stance toward the person being interrogated, perseverance, harshness, patience, thoroughness, and personal initiative.”²⁴³ The interrogator would prove himself, his class consciousness, loyalty to the party, and mastery of communist language in the confrontation with the enemy: “Our strength lies in the fact we are correct. Our struggle is just. The working class and all respectable citizens are behind us. This strength must appear in our argumentation, with which we should influence the defendant to confess his criminal behavior.”

The purpose of the interrogation, declared the manual issued in this school, was not to ascertain whether a crime had been committed since only guilty people were arrested: “A person is not arrested or interrogated because he did something good, but because he engaged in enemy activity. The good things he did may be mitigating circumstances in the eyes of a court but cannot be the subject of an interrogation. The interrogator should be vigilant against attempts by the defendant to defend himself or subtly sneak a defense into the protocol.” Since the defendant, the manual explained, would try to hide his enemy activity, minimize his crimes, and present himself in the best possible light it was incorrect to write down the words that he said. The interrogator should instead transform the defendant’s words into “politically charged language” (zapisovat politicky ostrou formou). The interrogation protocols from the party trials were subject to such reformulations.

The instructions began by quoting the defendant’s reason for trying to escape abroad:

The communists expelled members of our party. I was forced to leave my position at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and take up a lower position as a lawyer. By escaping abroad, I wanted to avoid being terrorized by the communists.

According to the interrogators’ instructions:

This formulation is false. It is incorrect, inconcise, and untrue. The defendant does not say which people were expelled after February. He describes his expulsion as the outcome of a struggle between two parties. He does not mention that, in going abroad, he wanted to commit treason because those who escaped abroad no longer belong to our people.

The testimony was to be rewritten in the following manner:

I admit that the main reason I wanted to escape abroad was my enemy attitude to the People’s Democratic Republic, the regime, the politics that it represents, and the communist party. My earlier enemy position was increased when I was released from my position for being a reactionary and enemy element so I would not harm the People’s Democratic Republic. In deciding to flee, I placed myself openly in the ranks of the enemies of the republic and its people.

This interpretation was the “only correct formulation of the defendants’ actions and intentions.” Interrogators were told to base the testimony on some facts—“reliance on facts is a basic principle”—so that it seemed plausible. The verbal acrobatics that characterized the party trials, in which confessions were formulated and reformulated to fit new conspiracies, were beginning.

The testimony of Bedřich Pokorný, who was arrested in January 1951, was contrived in this way. He was interrogated for over a year about his background, acquaintances, and relations with other members of the security force. Interrogation protocols from July 1952, after he had been in prison for a year and a half, reflected a confrontation between two generations of secret police officials:

INTERROGATOR: What is your education?

POKORNÝ: From 1924 to 1926 I studied at the military academy in Hranice. In 1926 I entered the school in Milovice for the education of infantry troops that lasted until 1927.

INTERROGATOR: To whom did the capitalist society of the time provide higher education?

POKORNÝ: Of course, the capitalist society of the time provided education to children of the middle class and bourgeoisie. As is well known, the bourgeoisie had an interest in educating the sons of manufacturers, bankers, businessmen, and tradesmen and never made schooling accessible to members of the working class.

INTERROGATOR: So, the capitalist regime made possible your study based on the fact that your father was a tradesman. Is that right?

POKORNÝ: Yes. It is likely that my father’s position as a tradesman influenced the fact that I could study in bourgeois schools. Yes, definitely. The fact that I could study further, at the military academy, was certainly because my father was a tradesman.

. . .

INTERROGATOR: So, you conformed to the capitalist system that used you as part of an instrument against the working class and it conformed to you. Explain!

POKORNÝ: I acted that way so I would not lose my job and my entire existence.

Applying class language to interrogation protocols was not the only way defendants’ lives were shaped to fit interrogators’ preconceptions of guilt. In the Soviet system of question protocols, questions were to be “to the point” and answers were never to deviate from the question.²⁴⁴ The interrogator could use leading phrases such as “So you meant to say . . . ,” for example, or put words in the mouths of defendants that suggested guilt such as “our subversive organization . . . ,” “my enemy attitude . . . ,” or “my enemy activity. . . .” Such protocols were depicted as shortening bureaucratic process since they contained only the information that was needed and nothing more. In reality, they led interrogators first to assume, then prove, guilt. The Soviets not only introduced new ways of policing but also new ways of conceiving of guilt, evidence, and legal process.

In the wake of the arrest of the security elite, the surveillance networks inside the StB to spy on agents or those training to become agents expanded once again. Instructors in secret police training schools were told to observe students’ interests, behavior, personal difficulties, social milieu, perseverance, organizational abilities, attitude toward the collective, obedience, and attitude toward work.²⁴⁵ They were told to inform the personnel department about their private and domestic lives and collect information on them from lecturers, assistants, school doctors, and the youth organization.²⁴⁶ Party instructors were tasked with knowing students’ interests, behavior, personal characters, acumen, organizational and reasoning abilities, ideological inclinations, attitude to the collective, attitude to work, precision, earnestness, and dedication on the basis of how they approached educational material, answered questions, and prepared for discussion.²⁴⁷ They examined the “behavior and conduct of recruits not only in prepared speeches but also in real life situations.” Those conducting surveillance on future members of the secret police assumed that the latter’s true beliefs were expressed in private and spontaneous conversations rather than in public speeches.

Party instructors also issued grades to assess students’ mastery of political language. A top grade in a political education course indicated that a participant had “mastered the material with confidence and certainty” and was “able to approach issues logically and employ correct language in tests and written work.”²⁴⁸ A lower grade was issued for students who spoke incoherently or in overly vague ways.²⁴⁹ Such assessments influenced agents’ career prospects. Those who mastered the language of communism were held up as examples for others. And over time younger communists began to criticize older ones for insufficiently mastering ideological language. In their words, for not fully “digesting” it, a criticism that implied that StB officials were expected to make communist language an integral part of their lives and ways of thinking and communicating in private and public settings.

The language of communism was also propagated in the show trials staged at the time. Show trials projected a clear message about who was included in and who was excluded from the political and social life of the new revolutionary state. Between January and March 1951, 391 show trials were organized in district courts in the Czech lands and 89 in Slovakia.²⁵⁰ The judiciary, procuracy, party, and StB all helped stage them. As the official instructions described, public trials should hold “class enemies” up as examples for the community. The audiences for the trials were as carefully staged as the proceedings. A landlord who had been arrested for hoarding grain and potatoes was put on trial in front of a group of farmers. The trial combined the language of class with the message that it was illegal to hoard grain. Other trials focused on class enemies like kulaks who had not fulfilled delivery quotas or those who had hidden grain from the government; former business owners; and workers who had stolen state property or caused accidents. The political and class background of the defendants was described in detail during the proceedings.²⁵¹

In 1951, the powers of the StB were expanded further in the countryside. Pressure was increased on StB officials to enforce high fines and issue prison sentences against farmers who failed to deliver their quotas. StB agents confiscated grain from local farmers, conducted house searches, and arrested those who failed to comply with the new economic laws.²⁵² Between 1951 and 1952 StB officials arrested 894 farmers.²⁵³ On 6 September 1951 Prchal outlined a plan to build a system of “resident networks” in villages. He referenced the “experiences of the Great Soviet Union” as the model for these networks. This system, called residentura, proposed creating a system of long-term, covert informer networks in every village in the country.²⁵⁴ One network of informers, or “residents,” was to be selected from among those with the most contact with the population, including mailmen, chimney sweeps, newsstand workers, and doctors. A second was to be recruited from among those who had the most mobility in the district, such as party secretaries, doctors, distributors, and local government officials. All worked covertly. These networks blurred the lines between the state and society by distancing secret police agents from surveillance operations and drawing nonstate actors with access to citizens’ private lives into the act of covert surveillance.

THE SELF-CRITICISM AND ARREST OF RUDOLF SLÁNSKÝ

On 8 September 1951 Rudolf Slánský held a self-criticism session before the Central Committee in which he took blame for the arrests of regional party bosses, the security elite, and the military figures that had taken place earlier that year and apologized for placing “wreckers, enemies, and conspirators” in high positions in the party.²⁵⁵ He also apologized for party members’ tendency to intervene randomly in state affairs: “Although the state and economic apparatus are in [communist] hands, our comrades have not changed their behavior and continue to intervene in the state apparatus.” The speech undermined Slánský’s credibility, a humiliation followed by his arrest, fall, and execution the following year. In a speech that followed, Klement Gottwald held Slánský accountable for the economic problems the KSČ had faced since February 1948 and the start of the First Five-Year Plan as well as for party members’ reluctance to subordinate themselves to the center: “The practices of our [party] apparatus have caused many to ask—who exactly is in charge? Who is the leading voice in this country on political, economic, and personnel questions? Who rules the republic? . . . In the Soviet Union, it is absolutely clear—the Kremlin is the head of the state and party.”²⁵⁶

While couched in the formula of communist self-criticism rituals, Slánský’s and Gottwald’s speeches said a great deal that was specific to Czechoslovakia. Personnel politics had been carried out under Slánský’s direction since 1945. The KSČ had no cadres’ department until the spring of 1948 and no functioning one until at least a year later. In Poland, by contrast, a personnel department had been created in the MBP as early as 1945. Under Slánský’s direction the KSČ had drawn on personal networks to staff its highest ranks: Spanish Civil War veterans, prewar communists, and groups of acquaintances. After February official and personal networks overlapped in the highest and lowest levels of the party and state administration. Complaints to this effect had been aired since the National Front era. Instructors’ reports had also pointed to the bitterness many felt when old officials were removed in late 1949, suggesting that blame for purported personnel mistakes would fall on receptive ears. Finally, the tendency of Action Committees, regional KSČ offices, and even ZOB II agents to intervene randomly in the decisions of state institutions had not been shaken after the takeover of power. Slánský’s self-criticism sent a clear message to regional party bosses and members of Action Committees that the center of the party now rested in Prague. After his self-criticism Slánský continued to attend party meetings, albeit in a defeated, depressed spirit. When other Central Committee members blamed him in one meeting for not having adopted the precise structure of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1945, he refused to answer.²⁵⁷ Finally, as Karel Kaplan has succinctly written, “On the night of 24 November 1951, the former General Secretary of the KSČ and Deputy Head of State became prisoner number 2359/865.”²⁵⁸

The new general secretary, Antonín Novotný, who clearly had a personal stake in the matter, informed the Soviets that “the country is submitting resolutions expressing approval of Slánský’s arrest. Such resolutions are pouring in from meetings of the party aktiv in districts and factories.”²⁵⁹ During Slánský’s trial, held between 20 November and 5 December 1952, party leaders and the state court received 8,520 letters supporting the proceeding. Some condemned the “band of traitors” for their actions. Others demanded the death penalty for the defendants.²⁶⁰ The picture of popular support for a merciless reckoning with former party bosses stands in contrast to Soviet intelligence reports on the public reaction to the expulsion of Gomułka from the PZPR in Poland. Although it is impossible to know for sure, the different public reactions to the arrests of the two men may have influenced the widely divergent punishments they received: while Slánský was executed in 1952, Gomułka remained under house arrest until 1956. Certainly as the two figures were sidelined from power—first forced to issue self-criticisms, then removed from office, then expelled from the party, and finally arrested—the Soviets received updates on the reactions of the public and local party members to these measures.

Paranoia that enemies were influencing state institutions from inside made its way into the tactics of the secret police. One innovation was the increasingly elaborate background checks initiated on secret police informers to ensure that they were not “agents of the enemy.”²⁶¹ There had been cases, according to a November 1951 report, in which kulaks who had been recruited as informers gave information on the activity of collective farm bosses but refused to give information on other kulaks. In the future, agents were required to ascertain informers’ political backgrounds, connections, character traits, relatives, and acquaintances. In important cases they were told to conduct surveillance on them through telephone bugs, listening devices, and postal censorship or to collect compromising information on them to, in their words, convince them that their “entire existence is dependent on [their] cooperation with state security.” These practices created an insular system of information gathering in which agents ignored testimonies like those made by farmers against collective farm bosses that undermined their preconceived notions of the enemy and only paid attention to intelligence that implicated kulaks or other “enemies.”

THE SLÁNSKÝ TRIAL AND THE TRIAL OF THE SECURITY GROUP

The trial of Rudolf Slánský and his alleged co-conspirators opened on 20 November 1952. Men who had formerly held positions in the Foreign Ministry, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of National Security, Ministry of Foreign Trade, and KSČ were accused of engaging in high treason, sabotage, espionage, and forming “an antistate, conspiratorial center” to “undermine the People’s Democratic Regime, hinder the building of socialism, damage the national economy, carry out espionage activities, and weaken the unity of the Czechoslovak people and defensive capacity of the Republic.”²⁶² Eleven defendants were sentenced to death and three to life imprisonment.

The Slánský trial was followed by other trials of high-ranking officials from the KSČ, military, ministry of trade, foreign affairs office, and secret police. The Soviet advisers took a leading role in organizing the trials. They helped select the judges, procurators, and other court officials who would preside over them. They set up listening devices in the apartments where the judges and procurators were staying in the days before the trial to listen to their private discussions in order to ascertain their attitudes toward the proceedings and ensure that they did not deviate from the script.²⁶³ They relied on StB officials to run security operations and interrogations. Within the StB, they granted marginal people power over those who had recently been their superiors.

StB agent Štěpán Plaček following his arrest. ABS Prague, sbírka Zvláštní vyšetřovací spisy (ZV), arch. č. ZV-45 MV.

One such person was Andrej Keppert, who had joined the KSČ in 1945 after working as a translator for the Red Army.²⁶⁴ After the war Keppert had been a journalist for communist military publications.²⁶⁵ Soon after the arrest of the security elite, the Soviet advisers brought him into the StB to “uncover the enemy activities of former Spanish Civil War veterans.” In an interview in 1954 Keppert expressed the conviction that these veterans had created cliques to prevent others from rising in the system (including himself, one must presume). He and other party members, he explained, were bothered by the fact that there were officials in the service who had “backgrounds that could not be trusted,” that is, who were of Jewish background. Keppert was such an outspoken anti-Semite that a fellow StB colleague once told him that his views bordered on fascism.²⁶⁶ The Soviet advisers put him in charge of the group assigned to uncover Zionists in the KSČ.

The Soviet advisers had first introduced the anti-Semitic rhetoric to the internal party terror in Czechoslovakia.²⁶⁷ They were doubtless influenced by the “anticosmopolitan” campaign in the USSR at the time in which leading Jewish cultural and literary figures were persecuted.²⁶⁸ By staffing the unit for uncovering Zionism in the party with anti-Semites, the advisers ensured that the search for enemies in the party would be carried out with ferocity. In another case, the defendant Artur London, who was of Jewish background, recalled that “Major Smola [an interrogator] seized me by the throat and shouted with hatred: ‘We’ll get rid of you and your filthy race! You’re all the same! Not everything Hitler did was right, but he destroyed the Jews, and he was right about that. Too many of you escaped the gas chamber. We’ll finish what he started.’”²⁶⁹ Another defendant testified that Kohoutek said that Jews were dirty, and he did not want to look at their “ugly mugs.”²⁷⁰

The Soviets also appointed Jaroslav Janoušek to serve as an interrogator. Janoušek had been dismissed from the StB in May 1949 after being accused of torturing prisoners, abusing alcohol on the job, and terrifying and threatening his colleagues and their families.²⁷¹ He was hired by a Soviet adviser in October 1950 to interrogate those who had fired him, including his former superiors and members of the party organization who had approved the dismissal.²⁷² Janoušek was pensioned off in 1953 with the assessment that “in view of his maniacal condition, it is possible that Janoušek is not entirely sane.”²⁷³ Keppert and Janoušek are studies in how the Soviets exploited personal hatreds that, when externally encouraged, blended into their mission to destroy the Czechoslovak elite. During the trials they took advantage of such enmities to gather denunciations from the acquaintances of former party officials. When investigating Karel Šváb in May 1951 agents interviewed his neighbor about his behavior. She testified that he referred to people with the formal mode of address (vy), which was unbefitting of a communist, and acted like he was better than everyone else because he had been in a concentration camp.²⁷⁴

The Soviet advisers directing these campaigns had great authority among new StB agents. According to Doubek, the interrogator Bohuslav Brůha expressed doubt about the veracity of the charges against former communists. He told Doubek that “if the advisers weren’t behind this, I would consider it a dirty trick.”²⁷⁵ Some of the arrested refused to lose faith in the party even after they were sentenced to death. Šváb wrote a letter to his interrogators in which he called his arrest the “only politically correct option,” thanked them for their “patience and perseverance,” and wished them personal and professional success: “My wish is that the security apparatus will be an honorable and merciless instrument in the hands of the working class.²⁷⁶

On 6 December 1952 the Central School for State Security in Veleslavín was renamed the Felix Dzerzhinsky School. The change was greeted with much ceremony. Party leaders, military officials, and Soviet diplomats were present.²⁷⁷ Those who attended the reopening of the school sang the hymn of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the hymn of the USSR. A celebratory parade of StB agents marched in military formation past a tribunal of party officials to the sound of trumpets.

On 23 December 1953, a year after Slánský was executed, seven former secret police officials, Osvald Závodský, Ivo Milén, Oskar Valeš, Vladimír Šmolka, Karel Černý, Bedřich Pokorný, and Miroslav Pich-Tůma stood on trial before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court in Prague. Another was held in Slovakia.²⁷⁸ The issue of the legal basis for the trial was raised during the proceedings. Černý proclaimed that after reading the works of the Soviet jurist Andrei Vyshinsky he began to ask himself “whether I am truly guilty,” continuing, “I am a lawyer after all! I have to know whether this is correct. . . . I am convinced mistakes are being made and want to call attention to this.”²⁷⁹ The class backgrounds of the defendants were stated clearly in the trial transcript. Závodský and Pokorný were listed as the sons of businessmen. Pich-Tůma was the only one of the group from a working-class background. The verdict made clear that his class background had justified a lighter sentence: “In the case of the accused, Pich-Tůma, we are dealing with a person of working-class background who became a victim of these traitors. . . . With respect to the charge of murder, the new criminal law should be applied, which results in a more favorable verdict for the accused.”²⁸⁰ The trials of high-ranking officials thereby disseminated the new criminal code and principle of class justice. Three other trials of leading secret police officials, including Štěpán Plaček, Josef Pavel, and others, were held between December 1953 and January 1954.

The trials destroyed the lives, mental health, and legacy of the former elite. Závodský was executed in March 1954. Pokorný was sentenced in 1953 and released in 1956. He committed suicide in 1968. In a suicide letter he cursed the adage that “the ends justify the means” and the outcome of the revolution: “Platitudinous circular ideology repeated without end in place of the living word, allegedly hyperpoliticized but in fact without politics, unconvincing to any genuine freshness of heart and conviction of mind. A deadening, dry desert.”²⁸¹ Others did not lose faith quite as quickly. After he was released from prison in 1955, Josef Pavel was appointed to head the StB during the Prague Spring. He advocated major reforms to the institution such as shifting its focus from domestic to foreign surveillance.²⁸² This agenda was promulgated in the press, television, and radio to break the silence on the institution and the fear associated with its name.²⁸³ After the Soviet invasion in August 1968, Pavel was removed as head of the StB and expelled from the party, bringing an end to the brief experiment to reform the institution. Few fates capture the oscillations of the age better than that of Miroslav Pich-Tůma. Pich-Tůma was sentenced to fifteen years in prison in December 1953. He was released several years later, rearrested in 1968, and put on trial in 1969 for the same murder he had been charged with in the 1950s. In 1990 his case was reopened by the Institute for Documenting the Crimes of Communism. He committed suicide before he could be brought in for questioning.²⁸⁴

The security agents who had triumphed in the battle for power hardly emerged with revered legacies. Interrogators Bohumil Doubek and Vladimír Kohoutek were arrested in 1955.²⁸⁵ Antonín Prchal was removed from service in 1956 and arrested a few years later. After his release he began to write spy and detective novels. He repurposed his former secret police moniker, Ivan Gariš, as a literary pseudonym.²⁸⁶ Jindřich Veselý was pushed out of the leadership after a failed suicide attempt in 1950. He was placed at the head of the KSČ’s historical institute, where he relived the triumphs of the 1920s and 1948 through his historical writings: A Chronicle of the February Days, The Origins and Foundation of the KSČ, Czechs and Slovaks in Revolutionary Russia, and The First Battles of the KSČ. In 1964 Veselý wrote a letter to the Central Committee cursing his time in the security forces. He called his decision to join the security force fateful, “even though we—as Marxists—do not believe in fate.”²⁸⁷ He described the differences he perceived between his own generation and the younger generation of communists: “Today it is difficult for an old comrade who lived through 1948 to imagine himself back in the days of revolutionary fervor. What, then, can be expected of young comrades, who see events only through today’s stringent laws and principles of socialist legality?” He committed suicide soon after.

THE END OF THE REVOLUTION?

In September 1949 the search for enemies in the party and state had unleashed a revolution in a revolution. The StB was both perpetrator and victim in this campaign. Although there is little reason to believe that communist leaders expected to be kidnapped, arrested, or executed, their replacement by a younger generation did not come out of nowhere. The communist party rank and file had urged young members of the working class to join the security service and instilled in them the conviction that they were the privileged, new blood of the communist era. Starting in 1949 party members declared free time and private property anathema and taught workers to report on the behavior of their colleagues and superiors. The party trials were a period of institution-building as well as repression. With respect to the departments for interrogations, operative work, and foreign intelligence, agents were trained, selected, and promoted in conditions of high pressure, discipline, and ruthless brutality. Police states were expanded as hysteria was incited in communist movements across the region. The jurisdiction of the secret police was extended to new areas of state administration, culture, and public life. It also reached into the StB itself, where agents were watched closely for evidence of enemy behavior. In the case of Karel Šváb, older officials even spearheaded the earliest investigations in the search for enemies in the party and state.

The lines on a Czechoslovak secret police organizational chart from October 1950 were straight, orderly, and reflect clear hierarchies.²⁸⁸ The contrast with the wavy, loopy ZOB II organizational chart could not have been more evident. And yet the official chart from 1950 left out many individuals who had made the transition to the Stalinist secret police possible. It left out Jan Hora, the party spy. It left out the members of the People’s Militia who left the interrogation department rather than participate in the violence. It underestimated the role of the “midlevel functionaries” in attacking the central elite through words, arrests, trials, and self-criticism sessions. A glaring oversight is the absence of the instructor group, dissolved when its members were placed in high positions in the service. Even the post-Stalinist party commissions dedicated to investigating the activities of the secret police in these years barely mention the instructors who made sure the revolution was brought to every single regional and district StB office.²⁸⁹ The communists of the 1950s whitewashed, papered over and denied their origin story in favor of a more teleological one. In the show trials, they blackened and erased from history the people and events most fundamental to the earliest years of communism in Czechoslovakia.

6

Building the Stasi in the German Democratic Republic

AT ONE O’CLOCK in the afternoon on 17 June 1953 the Soviets declared martial law in Berlin. Workers had started protesting the day before, when construction laborers began to demonstrate against the Socialist Unity Party’s (SED) decision to raise industrial outputs. The demonstrations set off strikes that spread rapidly across the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the days that followed. Close to half a million people in 560 cities in East Germany took part in the uprising.¹ East German leaders, fearing for their lives and the future of their regime, took up residence in Karlshorst, the seat of the Soviet occupation authorities. Within a few days tanks filled the streets. “Soviet forces, with 600 tanks, have restored order in the Soviet sector of Berlin,” noted a situation report at the time.²

Following the uprising, MfS officials recorded the public reaction to the event. As they observed, some citizens were frustrated that Russian rather than German forces had repressed the strikes: “The Germans can establish order themselves and don’t need the Soviet authorities.”³ Others interpreted the uprising as proof that the SED was collapsing and its institutions, including the Stasi, would soon be dissolved. An official in the People’s Police said that those who joined the MfS would be punished because the “regime is coming to an end.”⁴ Still others expressed the desire to leave for the West, to join the hundreds of thousands of refugees who had fled eastern Germany since 1945: “I want nothing to do with this. I am leaving for West Germany. My things are already packed.”⁵. Anger with Soviet policies and “the Russians” were expressed. “I regret joining the party,” said one SED member, “since I am against the Asiatic culture [of the Russians] and the collective farm economy.”⁶ In the words of another, “We are German and remain German. The influence of Moscow is wrong and unsustainable.”⁷ Several citizens expressed the hope that the SED’s change in policy after Stalin’s death might eventually lead to German reunification.⁸

As the East German regime’s paralysis during the uprising made clear, it had not shaken off its legacy of dependence on the Soviets and its origins in the Soviet Zone of Occupation. In many ways the response to the crisis showed that little had changed since the immediate postwar period. As in the SBZ, the Soviets were in charge of arrests and security operations. In only two days their security and military forces arrested 3,361 people.⁹ The East German Ministry for State Security (MfS) assisted the Soviets with investigations and interrogations.¹⁰ But some things had changed since the time of the SBZ. East German communist party members had been subject to purges, expulsions, and multiple verifications campaigns to transform the SED into an elite “party of a new type.” There had also been a shift, not completed before Stalin’s death, from Soviet to East German policing authority in the spheres of domestic and international security. The workers’ uprising in June 1953, which said a great deal about the popular views of the regime’s initiatives, raised further questions about the future of the SED, MfS, and Soviet–East German relations. As the public responses to the uprising showed, the GDR’s complex past—its connections with the Russians, its Western counterpart, and the taboo topic of German unification—continued to haunt it during periods of crisis. The MfS was created in the midst of this radical change and uncertain future. Founded in February 1950, its rank and file were recruited as the SED became a ruling elite and its officials trained in the Campaign to Build Socialism in 1952 when they, together with SED members and officials from People’s Police, sought to introduce a distinctly communist economy, politics, and culture to the eastern half of Germany.

FROM SOVIET TO EAST GERMAN?

The GDR was founded on 7 October 1949. At this time the Soviet Occupation Administration (SMAD) was replaced by a Soviet Control Commission (SKK).¹¹ The largest number of MGB officials to date arrived in Germany to ensure a smooth transition to the new administration (the NKGB became the MGB in 1946).¹² In April 1949 the MGB had around four thousand men in the Zone, including auxiliary forces such as drivers and translators.¹³ While in theory the SKK was supposed to issue recommendations rather than orders to the East German administration, SED leaders were still required to receive SKK approval before passing important laws, policies, and Politburo decisions.¹⁴ Decisions in the SED were still taken by the Politburo members Wilhelm Pieck, Walter Ulbricht, and Otto Grotewohl in consultation with Soviet leaders and military personnel. As K5 had in the SBZ, the MfS continued to answer to German and Soviet authorities well into 1953. In some ways it was the form rather than the extent of Soviet influence that changed in eastern Germany. Official exchange programs began between the security forces of the GDR and USSR and between the GDR and other states of the Eastern Bloc starting in 1948.¹⁵

The transfer from Soviet to East German control over security operations was gradual and piecemeal. The Special Camps that had been run by the NKVD in the Zone were shut down on 30 December 1949. While many prisoners were placed under GDR jurisdiction at this time, those perceived of as representing a threat to the USSR remained under the control of Soviet security forces.¹⁶ As authority was handed from Soviet military tribunals to GDR courts, some prisoners were released. In early 1950, 5,504 people who had been sentenced by Soviet military tribunals were granted freedom.¹⁷ Hundreds of prisoners, mostly young people who had been accused of Werewolf activity in the first months of the occupation, returned home in the fall of 1950 and in March of 1951.¹⁸

The Soviet security forces did, however, keep the most important cases firmly in their own hands. They, not local forces, arrested prominent East Germans in 1952 in preparation for a show trial on the model of the Rajk trial in Hungary and the Slánský trial in Czechoslovakia. In East Germany the communists and social democrats arrested in the 1950s were tried in front of Soviet military tribunals under paragraph 58 of the Soviet criminal code. Between 1950 and 1952 Soviet military tribunals issued 1,087 death sentences, most of which were carried out.¹⁹ In December 1952 they sentenced two prominent communists, Leo Bauer and Erica Wallach, to death and four others to terms of twenty-five years.²⁰ Several were later released from the Gulag, again, on Soviet orders, under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev in October 1955.

From the middle of 1950, several months after the MfS was founded, the Soviets began to hand over the card catalogues in which they had collected information on enemies and arrests in the SBZ.²¹ Efforts to transfer cases to East German authorities, including courts and the People’s Police as well as the MfS, preceded a major recruitment campaign to the ranks of the MfS in 1952. During this year the Soviets pushed East German agents toward becoming more independent in conducting operations. In February 1952 the head of the MGB in Berlin reported that he was expanding the authority of MfS officials. This decision followed complaints by MGB officers in Berlin that German agents were hardly involved in agent work and were granted only sporadic access to files.²² Soviet advisers still assisted MfS offices with all stages of operations, including recruiting and training agents, opening files, and handling agent networks.²³ As Mikhail Kaverznev, who headed the MGB in Germany until May 1953, reported in 1952, “At our direction, the MfS is preparing to intensify the fight against espionage, diversion, terror, and underground formations.”²⁴ From 1952 the MfS regional administration, which had previously answered to Soviet instructors, began to report to the MfS office in Berlin.²⁵ The Soviets made fewer arrests as the MfS took over operations.²⁶ From March 1952 the East German Politburo began to deal more closely with security issues.²⁷

Parallel to this formal handover of power, the Soviets retained considerable informal influence over the institution. Such influence is difficult to detect in the sources because it was hidden from Germans at the time and reflected the obsessive secrecy of the MGB. According to the historian Nikita Petrov, “MGB chiefs in Germany undertook titanic efforts to mask their activities and isolate their units and the information they gathered from German civilians.”²⁸ He gave the example of a circular issued in July 1951 that banned MGB agents from appearing in the photographs of German civilians.²⁹ It is possible to spot traces of such influence. Although from 1950 MfS personnel decisions were officially under the purview of the cadres’ department, materials written between 1953 and 1955 were marked in ways indicating that Soviet advisers had approved the appointments.³⁰ As they had been in the SBZ, East German officials were assessed on the basis of positive attitudes toward the USSR. As a personnel assessment from October 1949 made clear, the K5 official Gerhard Franke, a former blacksmith who had spent time in a Soviet POW camp, had been a “great friend of the Soviets” (ein groβer Sowjetfreund) since 1942.³¹ As in the Zone, Soviet interference and the GDR’s uncertain international status—the country was not recognized by West Germany or its allies until 1972—continued to undermine the legitimacy of the new regime. In 1953 Ulbricht commented that even MfS officials were overheard denying that East Germany was a state: “And those who deny that the German Democratic Republic is a state deny the administration and the Ministry itself.”³²

Voices of criticism against the Soviet occupation authorities had not been uncommon in the earliest years of the SBZ. In the 1950s those who expressed discontent about Soviet or SED policies met with harsh repressive measures. And yet, during moments of crisis, such as the June uprising, censorious voices quickly reappeared. Criticism of the regime became possible after the death of Stalin, as the legitimacy of the Soviet model was brought into question by the SED leadership and even the Soviet Politburo itself. A fundamental change in the nature of Soviet influence in the GDR was evident only after the death of Stalin.³³ With respect to the secret police, Lavrentiy Beria criticized the “unsatisfactory work” of the MGB on 19 May 1953 and suggested reducing the number of its officials stationed in the GDR. He shifted the authority of the MGB to an advisory role since he believed that GDR security forces should lead their own operations.³⁴

THE SED: THE PARTY OF A NEW TYPE, 1948–1951

The transfer from Soviet to East German authority was preceded by the transformation of the SED into a “party of a new type” starting in May 1948. Between 1948 and 1951 the SED went from being a mass party with low barriers to entry to being a ruling elite with considerable administrative and control functions over the new state administration. The role of SED members in appointing state officials became more pronounced at the end of 1948, when Stalin told SED leaders that political loyalty was more important than professional qualifications in the selection of officials.³⁵ In his self-criticism in 1948 Anton Ackermann renounced the theory of a “special German path” to socialism, a move that set in motion a greater focus on Soviet practices and institutional structures.³⁶ With respect to the MfS, SED party secretaries helped the Soviet MGB to recruit and assess the many new officials who joined the rank and file between 1950 and 1952, years after Ackermann’s speech, when the concept of a German national road to socialism was no longer up for discussion. Officials from the party of a new type staffed the party organizations that were stationed in the MfS on a full-time basis to watch agents for ideological and moral transgressions.³⁷ These party members ran political education courses in which MfS officials studied a Stalinist canon that included the Short Course on the CPSU, writings on the German communist party, and Questions of Leninism.³⁸ These texts and the Cominform rhetoric at the time introduced a new, intensely polarizing political vocabulary to the SED. The term “alien class element” (Klassenfremd) (1949–53) was used to describe those who did not belong to the working class.³⁹ The term “enemy of the party” (Parteifeind), translated from the Soviet party terror in the late 1930s, was first used in 1948 to deepen divisions between “us” and “them,” those inside and outside the party.⁴⁰

As these everyday changes were implemented in the SED, the Soviets scaled back their direct interference in the workings of the party. In April the SMAD Political Information Department chastised MGB agents for “enmeshing” themselves in the SED’s internal affairs. “In the district of Plauen, the Information branch [of the MGB] has become a place where [German] Party members are called in for conversations and interrogations. . . . These [MGB] moralizers keep the employees of special sectors for hours without even listening to the opinion of the head of the SED office for the district.” The notice mentioned that the head of the district SED office had been called into the MGB office seven times between January and March of that year.⁴¹ This document suggests the frequency of contact between the MGB and SED into 1948.

In May 1948 the SED created a Party Control Commission (ZPKK) to enforce new standards of discipline, order, and behavior in its ranks.⁴² Through bellicose rhetoric, verification campaigns, and self-criticism sessions it introduced a militant, uncompromising stance on the question of who was allowed to join the SED.⁴³ Soon after it was created, a “search for Schumacher enemies” in the SED was proclaimed. The term referred to Kurt Schumacher, the leader of the social democratic party in West Germany.⁴⁴ Schumacher headed the Ostbüro which was based in the former British Zone of Occupation. It aided refugees from the East, served as a contact between SPD members in East and West, and coordinated resistance to SED rule, such as the distribution of anticommunist fliers.⁴⁵ Many SED members who were arrested as Schumacher enemies had been identified through party intelligence networks.⁴⁶

The ZPKK further aimed to uncover the “ideological enemies” that lower-level party organizations were purportedly hesitant to reveal.⁴⁷ From the perspective of lower-level offices, the ZPKK’s call to identify Schumacher enemies met with mixed results. Reports noted that members of party organizations avoided accusing each other of ideological crimes: “In proceedings against illegal Schumacher nests one often receives the answer, ‘we don’t have any Schumacher people’ or ‘it is impossible to prove the existence of membership in an illegal Schumacher organization.’ It requires extensive clarification to convince comrades that members of the Schumacher organization do not run through the area with signs hanging around their necks. Enemy attitudes toward the Party must be identified by behavior toward the Party, views of the Soviet Union, and in their daily work.”⁴⁸ In other words, through surveillance of SED members’ public and private behavior. Although some SED offices avoided using the category of Schumacher enemies, they ruthlessly condemned members who failed to show up for meetings. Those considered insufficiently dedicated to the cause were accused of being enemies of the working class. In some cases they received threatening letters. The call to identify enemies on the basis of class background met in some cases with inaction: “Only pressure from the head of the district convinced the party committee that small businessmen should not be in charge of the committee and do not even belong in the party,” mentioned one report.⁴⁹ Since the issue of who an enemy was was rarely clear, it became necessary “to enlighten our functionaries about what a class enemy is and explain the concept of a ‘kulak.’”⁵⁰

Such inaction brings party members’ comprehension of the campaign into question. One SED member, Paul Fiedler, complained in his memoir that many party members and nonparty members disagreed with the SED’s policies at the time: “The majority of the population had succumbed to anti-communist and anti-Soviet agitation. They, particularly the refugees and resettlers, considered the Soviets—whom they refer to as the ‘Russians’—responsible for their hardships, suffering, and poverty. It was necessary to carry out a massive campaign of persuasion inside and outside the Party. Many did not yet understand the heroic actions that the Soviet army had achieved by destroying fascism and why the Soviet Union had a right to demand reparations.”⁵¹ The SED went to great lengths to convince its members that its policies were correct and to expel those who disagreed.

Herta Geffke, a member of the Party Control Commission between March 1949 and October 1958, was one of several ZPKK members who criticized lower-level offices for failing to uncover enemies in their ranks. In her memoir she explained the informal criteria that directed expulsions from the SED: “Members’ moral and political condition, discipline, attitude toward the party, and attitude toward the Soviet Union.”⁵² Geffke began her career working as a maid in a printing house before joining the KPD in 1919. She was imprisoned twice during the Nazi era. The end of the Second World War found her in an antifascist school in Stettin Krekow.⁵³ In February 1949, under her direction, the Party Control Commission began to introduce new terms and procedures to discipline the SED rank and file. A candidacy period was announced that required applicants to prove activism and service in a youth or party organizations before being accepted as full members.⁵⁴ As elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc, SED members could be punished through warnings, reprimands, and strong reprimands. The ZPKK and its regional and district branches had considerable discretion in how and when to employ such punishments and the authority to expel SED members or demote them to candidacy status.⁵⁵

Many SED members also chose to leave the party of their own accord at this time, likely because of the atmosphere of denunciations, fear, mistrust, and hatred the ZPKK’s campaign had unleashed in the party. Whereas twelve thousand party members were expelled between the end of 1948 and early 1949, eighty-one thousand left on their own initiative (although it is possible many of these decisions had been forced).⁵⁶ The message of suspicion of party members was—as elsewhere—substantiated by news from abroad of the trial of László Rajk. After the start of the trial in Budapest, the NKVD general Ivan Serov created a committee inside the Party Control Commission to investigate links between German communists and Noel Field, an American arrested in Prague whose case served as a pretext to arrest prominent East European communists.⁵⁷ Serov demanded that the SED remove certain categories of officials from their posts, including those with ties to Yugoslavia and those who had lived in the West.⁵⁸

These changes in membership standards preceded the SED’s Year of Party Education in 1950. Throughout the year newly recruited party members spent their days repeating and internalizing the party line in a flurry of meetings and campaigns. As one SED member, Rudolf Bühring, remembered, in 1950 he finally learned the “language of the party.” At first, such language seemed abstract and clunky to him: “Every word I uttered made me blush. I had the feeling I was saying something wrong. I forced myself to learn all of these concepts, all of the ‘isms.’ I had trouble with ‘expropriation’ and ‘expropriator’ as well as other concepts from the Communist Manifesto I had never heard in my life, but which were necessary to know when I wanted to speak to people or understand the speeches being made.”⁵⁹ But after listening to numerous speeches and attending meetings, he found that such concepts became second nature: “[I was] steeled by the many talks and meetings and grew more confident by contributing to discussions in Party meetings where I had initially seemed ignorant.”⁶⁰

The word the younger generation of SED members used to describe mastery of communist language was, as in Czechoslovakia, “to digest” it (verdauen): “[It was necessary] to get people to digest the material and use it in practice, which was an extraordinarily difficult task.” Those who had trouble with the SED’s abstract terminology could consult the Kleines Politisches Wörterbuch, or little political dictionary, which defined terms such as “sabotage” and “self-criticism.” The concept of self-criticism was one of many from the period that reiterated the message of discipline in the SED: “Self-criticism: an important means of party education that reveals the shortcomings and mistakes in the work of comrades and party groups and leads one to understand, recognize, and overcome such mistakes and shortcomings.”⁶¹ As the concept of digesting the language of the party implied, party members were expected to internalize communist language on an everyday basis or, if something was unclear, consult the little political dictionary for guidance.

The official reasons members were expelled were often subsumed under broad charges like political unreliability, giving false information in paperwork, taking bribes, being unfit for service, and committing dereliction of duty.⁶² In practice SED members were expelled for a variety of reasons. As a party member who served on a screening committee in 1951 related in his memoir, screenings supposedly revealed the SED members who had joined the party for the wrong reasons. He discussed the case of a man who had joined the party because he was afraid to lose his property: “I remember that the owner of a shipyard stood before our screening committee. He had joined the party because he was under the false impression that the Soviet occupation authorities would take his property away. He was hardly interested in Party work and had barely participated in it up to that point.”⁶³ Officials on screening committees evidently had a low opinion of those who had joined the party for nonideological reasons, whether out of fear or the desire to retain their positions or property.

Instructions from 1950 explicitly told SED members to bring any and all issues they observed straight to the party: “When something happens that you do not understand, or you make an error or have a bad feeling about something you did: go to the party.” Nothing should be hidden from the party: “If you hide something from the party, refuse to explain something, or cover up your weaknesses, you do not deserve to call yourself a comrade.”⁶⁴ SED members were told to inspect the behavior of others as well. Many reacted harshly when other party members did not follow orders or implement the party line. “Some leading party comrades ignored party decrees,” wrote an SED official in his memoir. “It was necessary to relieve them of their positions. . . .”⁶⁵ The example he gave of disobedience was a case in which officials stepped in to protect the interests of alleged kulaks and their families. Unintentionally, this official revealed a dilemma faced by party members serving in lower-level offices who were caught between local interests and the pledge to carry out central directives without question. Another such incident was evident in early collectivization campaigns, in which lower-level SED members were criticized for the “frequency with which our comrades are becoming spokesmen for farms who have not fulfilled their quotas.”⁶⁶ It mentioned a case in which the head of the local party organization helped write a letter of protest for farmers “who would not fulfill their quotas” and even took part in a delegation of farmers to take the resolution to Berlin.

SED members who criticized others for insufficient discipline were echoing a topic widespread in SED training materials. Pamphlets focused single-mindedly on the themes of discipline and compliance with central directives, as in the following: “Controlling the Implementation of Directives”; “Every Communist: An Active Combatant to Implement Party Directives”; “About the Control of the Implementation of Party Directives”; “It is the Correct Decision to Implement Party Directives”; “Control of Party Directives—the Indispensable Requirement for the Implementation of the Politics of the Party”; and “On the Responsibility of Every Party Member to Carry Out Party Directives.”⁶⁷ The language of discipline went hand in hand with the new methods of centralized planning. In June 1950 SED members were directed to organize work according to a centralized plan.⁶⁸ The plan involved ascertaining the social composition of the SED, preparing for elections, and carrying out propaganda work in factories. It established quotas for the creation of party organizations in state institutions, including the MfS. From 1950, MfS officials were bombarded with such SED messages and campaigns.

At the end of 1950 Ulbricht announced that it was necessary to bring more workers into the SED and expel those deemed to be “class enemy elements” from its ranks.⁶⁹ SED members who proved their activism in the Year of Party Education made up many of the 63,564 members advanced from candidacy to full party membership between 1950 and 1952. They took the places of the 18,180 SED members demoted and 150,696 expelled in the same period.⁷⁰ SED members were also arrested and sentenced by Soviet military tribunals. It is difficult to discern the reasons for these arrests because there is little documentation on them. It is possible to isolate a few cases on the basis of rehabilitations carried out in 1956. In one case an SED member was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison in May 1950 for writing a letter to a relative in which he “stirred up hatred against the politics of the Soviet occupation authorities, the SED, and its functionaries” and “glorified the politics of West Germany.”⁷¹ Through expulsions, resignations, arrests, and demotions to candidate status, membership in the SED decreased from 1,573,000 in December 1950 to 1,256,000 in December 1951.⁷² The reasons for expulsions suggested continuities with SBZ practices. Thousands of former Nazis, those judged in the postwar period to have been “minor Nazis” who had joined the SED were expelled, pointing to continuities with the denazification campaign.⁷³ The purge also reinforced a generational change evident across the Eastern Bloc by favoring younger SED members, those born after 1920 and who had joined the party in or after 1945.⁷⁴

In his memoir an East German communist described the creation of the SED as a party of a new type as a process of “changing the mentality” of party members (Prozess des Umdenkens).⁷⁵ This was true. Communists willing to denounce others for ideological deviations, many from the younger generation that had entered the KPD or SED after 1945, took up more prestigious positions and functions in this period. This was a campaign driven by party leaders in Berlin, the ZPKK, and the Soviets, but for SED members at all levels it was also a process of self-selection since it was possible to leave or resign from the party rather than participate or push forward the repression. But a critical stance vis-à-vis the SED’s own narrative is also warranted. For one thing, there were few changes in the highest echelons of the party. In Czechoslovakia and Poland high figures in the party, including General Secretaries Rudolf Slánský and Władysław Gomułka, were imprisoned or executed, whereas in the GDR Ulbricht and other members of the East German Politburo remained in their positions.

It is also questionable whether the new SED members promoted in the campaign were truly more disciplined or loyal than those who had been expelled. For one, thousands of SED members continued to flee to the West throughout 1953. In the first months of that year 2,718 SED and candidate members and 2,610 members of the communist youth organization crossed the border into West Germany.⁷⁶ Given the centrality of the principle of Democratic Centralism, the strict subordination of the lower ranks of the party to superior offices, in the SED’s training materials, it was remarkable how quickly party discipline fell apart during the uprising in June 1953.⁷⁷ SED members, while steeled in the internal battles for power and positions during the creation of the party of a new type, were evidently unprepared to defend or fight for these beliefs in the street. As one report noted, “The SED displayed complete ignorance of the mood of the masses, a lack of connection with the working class, and an inability to speak to the people. The behavior of the party members during the unrest cannot be described as anything but cowardly.”⁷⁸ According to a correspondent for the Soviet newspaper Pravda, “I witnessed an argument between a Western agitator and a person who was probably a member of the SED. It was a deplorable sight. The SED member stammered and sputtered trite phrases. He could not answer any concrete questions whatsoever (perhaps he did not know the situation). Then he fell silent, as if he agreed with his enemy. People laughed at him and he quickly disappeared.”⁷⁹ Other SED members openly supported the antigovernment strikes and demonstrations. Soviet reports observed that “not only backwards workers participated in the strikes and demonstrations, but also activists and new workers, including SED members.”⁸⁰ It did not go unnoticed, of course, that it was members of the working class, which the SED claimed to represent, who organized the antiregime strikes. A report from June 19 noted, “The interrogations of arrested SED members have established that many of them were dissatisfied with the worsening living standards among the working people and justified their conclusions by referring to the SED Politburo’s published admission of its mistakes. The fact that about one hundred people have quit their SED membership in the Cottbus district in the last two days is evidence of considerable dissatisfaction among party members.”⁸¹

The disorganization and confusion in the SED was at least in part owing to the fact that the party rank and file was reeling from Ulbricht’s announcement in June 1953 that the GDR would henceforth follow a set of policies called the New Course. In doing so he renounced many SED policies that had only recently been carried out with single-minded fervor and violence. “Mistakes were made,” he admitted tersely.⁸² A Soviet report from July 1953 stated, “Many party functionaries are baffled by the statements of the SED Central Committee since they do not clarify what the new course of the party actually is.”⁸³ Party agitators and rank-and-file members who had been told for years to follow orders without question were impossibly confused when these orders were declared to be mistakes and no clear instruction followed on what, exactly, the new party line was.

FEBRUARY 1950: ENTER THE MINISTRY FOR STATE SECURITY

The Ministry for State Security was founded on 8 February 1950. It was founded, in other words, as thousands of SED members were being berated, expelled from the party, or arrested. The message was clear: those who refused to recognize the authority of the Soviet Union or who deviated from the party line, whether to the left or right did not appear to matter, would be humiliated, expelled, demoted, or arrested. The anti-elite, anti-intellectual lessons from the trial of László Rajk soon hit national airwaves. Though a core of top officials had already been trained and promoted through the K5 unit in the SBZ, the MfS rank and file was forged, as the Czechoslovak StB had been, during the search for enemies in the party.

It is little wonder, given this context, that personnel files of MfS officers contain meticulous reports written by SED members on whether officials in the civil police, including the K5 unit, committed ideological deviations in public settings and private conversations. As a party secretary observed of a K5 official in April 1948, “[He] is a consistent advocate of our party line [and] exhibits no deviation to the right or left.”⁸⁴ The agent was accepted into the MfS. A letter to the regional party cadres’ department in January 1949 suggested the importance of the assessments compiled during political education courses: “Dear Comrades! We ask you, at your earliest convenience, to let us know whether this person takes part in political life.”⁸⁵ Another K5 official was accepted into the MfS after this assessment: “Comrade Werner Grünert is one of the most active young comrades in our party cell. He is familiar with the lessons of Marxism–Leninism and speaks positively about the party line in discussions.”⁸⁶ Grünert went on to build a successful career in the MfS, retiring from the force in 1983.⁸⁷

The Soviets chose Wilhelm Zaisser as the first head of the MfS. Zaisser had been born in the German Empire in 1893.⁸⁸ He joined the KPD in 1919 after witnessing the Russian Revolution while serving as an officer in the Imperial German Army during the First World War. At the time he joined, the KPD was dedicated to fomenting strikes and workers’ uprisings and spreading world revolution. Zaisser led a communist paramilitary unit during the Ruhr uprising in 1920, a leftist revolt that followed an attempted right-wing overthrow of the Weimar Republic. Like other secret police officials in postwar Eastern Europe, Zaisser gained experience in communist military and intelligence services as a member of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.⁸⁹ After the Second World War he was appointed head of the police in Saxony. From June 1949 he was vice president of the Ministry of the Interior in eastern Germany. According to Jens Gieseke, who documented the backgrounds of the founding generation of the MfS, Zaisser’s background was typical of high-ranking East German MfS officials at the time. The majority were born between 1902 and 1917 and grew up during the Weimar Republic or First World War. A third were trained in military or intelligence service in the Soviet Union before 1945. Most had been members of the KPD during the Weimar era.⁹⁰

East German Ministry for State Security plaque. Der Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (BStU Berlin), MfS ZA16/Fo/Nr. 61.

To form the officer core of the MfS the Soviets drew on one thousand officials who had been trained in the denazification campaigns (order 201) or K5 investigations into sabotage or political crimes. Most higher-ranking officials were recruited directly from the Main Department for the Protection of the Economy, the office created at the end of 1948 by communists who had risen in the K5 unit.⁹¹ Around 70 percent of officials in the Main Department for the Protection of the Economy had been recruited from the ranks of the criminal police. Around 10 percent of the MfS were brought in from border guard regiments or rapid response units.⁹² Professional assessments of MfS officers differed little from those of K5 officials. The file of Walter Heinitz, a former K5 agent, asserted in July 1950 that he was able to run many cases at the same time, a skill that had also been tested in the overburdened K5 unit. He was commended for his “perseverance in interrogations, which he conducts with little regard for the time. To achieve his goals in an interrogation, he takes account of neither time nor days off.”⁹³ Heinitz had been trained as an orchestra musician. He joined the MfS soon after it was founded and served in counterintelligence and investigative units until his retirement in 1973.⁹⁴ Although attempts had been made after the Second World War to increase the number of women in the People’s Police, these efforts do not seem to have translated into greater influence for women in the MfS.⁹⁵ Although the number decreased in subsequent years, as of 1954 women made up 25 percent of MfS employees, most filling gender-specific roles such as gardeners, cleaning women, cooks, and nurses. Around a third worked as secretaries or stenographers.⁹⁶

The career of Erich Bär was typical of that of an MfS officer in the early 1950s. Bär was born in 1916 and trained as a plumber. He had been a member of the communist youth group between 1931 and 1935 and spent the Second World War in prison and Buchenwald concentration camp.⁹⁷ In 1949 he worked in a special unit for sensitive political tasks. He was assigned to this unit, his personnel file specified, because of his “innate sense of mistrust (angeborenes Mißtrauen), secretiveness, outspoken class consciousness, and high level of political consciousness, which made him perfect for delicate tasks.”⁹⁸ He was appointed to the MfS in February 1950 and placed at the head of the personnel department two years later. As his file showed, in 1951 MfS officials were still assessed according to dual standards of loyalty: “His attitude toward the GDR and Soviet Union is positive.”⁹⁹ He served the MfS in various operative functions, including border and passport control units, until his retirement in 1972.¹⁰⁰

Although the face of the enemy had changed, the regime continued to use agents’ personal hatreds to further the aims of the state as the K5 unit had during the denazification campaigns. An assessment of one East German official noted approvingly in 1950 that he displayed “a sound hatred of the enemies of our democratic order.”¹⁰¹ The denazification campaigns also blended into the earliest campaigns of violence against class enemies in the GDR. An April 1950 appraisal linked agent Rudolf Mittag’s efforts in denazification order 201 investigations to his “class consciousness:” “As an investigator for order 201 he proved his class consciousness by punishing Nazis and war criminals.”¹⁰² His dedication to the cause was also demonstrated in his private life: “His party and class loyalty are evident in personal conversations.”¹⁰³

In July 1950, the Central Committee set SED members the task of recruiting new employees into the MfS.¹⁰⁴ As the Czechoslovak communists had in 1949, rank-and-file SED members recruited agents from factories, the communist youth organization, and party schools. MfS agents were required to have attended a district party school. Attendance in these schools gave the SED information on candidates’ social and political backgrounds and the chance to observe them over time in various settings. Personnel files show how closely recruits were observed by party and police administrators and evaluated on their work ethic, political loyalty, and willingness to carry out assignments. As one assessment read, “The party committee considers Grünert one of its most active members. He is determined to raise his political level and eagerly pursues self-study. He is a conscientious policeman with considerable professional skills.”¹⁰⁵ Another party organization affirmed that “in discussions in evening courses he always expressed a positive view of the party line.”¹⁰⁶

Candidates were also expected to have proper social relationships and no personal or professional ties with Yugoslavia or the West.¹⁰⁷ The majority of those selected for service had been born and raised on the territory of the GDR.¹⁰⁸ Their immediate families, including parents, siblings, and spouses, were subject to the same criteria, although the criteria were not always enforced. In a letter from March 1950 an MfS official explained that the uncle of his fiancée lived in the West. “I know that members of the Ministry of State Security are not allowed to have relatives in the West,” he wrote, “but I feel obligated to marry my fiancée, who is with child and otherwise satisfies all political demands.”¹⁰⁹ He was accepted into the MfS. The few MfS officials who had relatives or acquaintances in the West or affiliations with the church were pressured to break off such relations. In 1953, 19 percent of MfS officials reported that they belonged to a church, mostly the Protestant church. This number decreased as they were persuaded to either sever ties with the church or abandon their career in the MfS. By 1957, 40 had left the church while 10 had left the MfS.¹¹⁰ Officials’ decisions were undoubtedly influenced by the fact that a major target of MfS repression and surveillance operations in 1952 were the Protestant church and its youth group, the Junge Gemeinde.¹¹¹ The officials who entered the service in the early 1950s were compelled to repress religious beliefs and practices as the secret police was granted broad powers to arrest church figures and confiscate church lands.¹¹²

Most MfS agents were already members of the SED when they joined the force. By 1953, 92 percent of MfS agents were members of the SED.¹¹³ Unlike in Poland, where mass recruitment to the PPR took place a year after the MBP was founded, in the GDR, the order was reversed. Mass recruitment into the SED had taken place years before the MfS was created, making it easier to find young party members who were willing to join the security force. In March 1952 party organizations in the MfS took on a more central role in educating officials as the Politburo called for an extended propaganda campaign to “raise the ideological level of the comrades in the force.”¹¹⁴ This campaign, as elsewhere across the Eastern Bloc, was not met with enthusiasm. Throughout, SED members complained that MfS officials did not show up for meetings or take the study of Marxism–Leninism seriously.¹¹⁵

The first tasks of the MfS mapped closely onto those previously carried out by K5. Department V was responsible for repressing political enemies, particularly members of rival political parties like the CDU and SPD, the church, and the political underground.¹¹⁶ Department VII, headed by the former K5 agent Rudolf Gutsche, carried out arrests, surveillance, investigations, and house searches.¹¹⁷ From the beginning, the service was divided into separate branches to cover East and West Germany. Strict rules were applied to agents working in the West. They were required to report each informer they recruited to the central office in Berlin and were not permitted to recruit KPD members in West Germany.¹¹⁸ The Western branch of Department V conducted surveillance on members of the CDU and SPD in the West.¹¹⁹ Department VII conducted surveillance on the anticommunist groups funded by the CIA and based in West Berlin, such as the Fighting Group Against Inhumanity (KgU) and the Investigative Committee of Free Jurists (UfJ).¹²⁰ The KgU carried out sabotage activities in the GDR such as blowing up bridges and damaging factories.¹²¹ These operations, similar to those in the SBZ, were planned under the guidance of Soviet advisers.¹²²

Another area of concern was the economy. According to the first GDR interior minister, Karl Steinhoff, the MfS was expected to “protect the People’s economy from attacks, fight enemy agents and saboteurs, and ensure that the economic plan of the SED is implemented without interruption.”¹²³ Department III, which was responsible for the protection of the socialist economy and industry, was tasked with ensuring that economic plans were carried out and with fighting espionage, sabotage, and crimes in industries and factories.¹²⁴ Soon after the start of the First Five-Year Plan in 1951 security agents began to identify key targets in factories and industries (objekty). While few documents are available on these early years, the focus was likely similar to that of the analogous department in the Polish MBP: to oversee personnel decisions, investigate accidents in factories, and check the accuracy of the production statistics managers provided to the central government.

From the beginning MfS officials were trained in Soviet interrogation methods. A former interrogator who fled to the West in 1953 described the practices in this branch of the institution, including “uninterrupted interrogations” (Dauervernehmungen) and question protocols.¹²⁵ This description corresponds to the interrogation practices in Czechoslovakia adopted during the preparations for the trial of Milada Horáková in 1950.¹²⁶ To prepare materials for court, the GDR interrogator explained, he removed any material contradicting the assumption that the defendant was guilty.

Between 1950 and 1953 the MfS built its own informer networks, although this period never saw the creation of the vast networks of informers that later became synonymous with the Stasi.¹²⁷ On 21 October 1950 the German term for informers, Vertrauensmann (trusted person), was replaced with the Soviet terms “agent,” “informer,” and “person in possession of a conspiratorial apartment.”¹²⁸ The MfS had around 10,000 informants by the end of 1950.¹²⁹ Statistics, while patchy, indicate that numbers differed across MfS offices and branches, implying that recruitment depended on local initiative and prerogatives rather than a centralized plan. While the Saxony office recruited between 2,267 and 2,428 informers in 1950, the Berlin office recruited only 368. Reports from the time encouraged agents to recruit more informers. A 1951 report criticized the frequency with which prisoners were released between January and September because of a lack of evidence.¹³⁰ The problem, the report affirmed, was that officers had not “sufficiently studied the person who had been arrested.” The operative department did not “work through the case in an intensive way” and carried out investigations in a “superficial manner.” The lesson was to increase attention to operative work.

There were also wide discrepancies between regions with respect to the reasons prisoners were arrested and the sentences they received. Statistics from 1951 show that in the region of Saxony 12 percent of prisoners were accused of espionage, while in Brandenburg 55 percent of prisoners were tried under this change.¹³¹ From a study of the sentences issued by the MfS in Saxony and Sachsen-Anhalt in 1951 Roger Engelmann has concluded that most resulted in sentences of fewer than five years and some in sentences of only a few months.¹³² He posits that one possibility for the apparent leniency of the sentences was the continued division of labor between GDR courts and Soviet military tribunals. SMTs were active until 1955. They issued 1,629 sentences in 1951, rarely of fewer than twenty-five years in prison.¹³³ In this view, MfS offices were given the less important cases to process.

The first MfS school opened on 16 June 1951 in Potsdam-Eiche. The initial course lasted nine months and enrolled five hundred students.¹³⁴ As elsewhere, training focused on operative work.¹³⁵ Both heads of the school, Erwin Koletzki (1952–53) and Gerhard Harnish (1953–59), were old communists from working-class backgrounds.¹³⁶ Harnish had trained in a Soviet POW camp. Although the school was central in training MfS agents in future years—it was open until 1989—its influence on early MfS agents should not be overstated.¹³⁷ Several officials who headed MfS branches or departments attended the school long after they had begun to work in the force. Rudolf Gutsche, who had entered the MfS in 1950, attended the school in 1961. Rudolf Mittag, who had joined the service in 1950, attended in 1954.¹³⁸ The concept of learning through practice, proving oneself in operations rather than through formal education, thus applied to the MfS as well as to the other services in the Eastern Bloc.

In October 1951, several months after the creation of the MfS school, the first GDR foreign intelligence service was founded. The department was endowed with the intentionally obscure name, “The Institute for Economic and Scientific Research.”¹³⁹ It secured its first intelligence from SED informers and networks in the SPD, CDU, and other political parties in West Germany.¹⁴⁰ It was divided into sectors for collecting information on the government in Bonn, West German ministries, and West German political parties as well as economic and technical enterprises, the church, and other social organizations.¹⁴¹ Between April and October 1952, that is, during the frenzied Campaign to Build Socialism, thirty specially chosen SED members were trained, under the guidance of the Soviet advisers, as the first East German foreign intelligence agents.¹⁴²

THE MFS AND THE BUILDING OF SOCIALISM

At the Second Party Conference in July 1952 Walter Ulbricht announced the SED’s program to Build Socialism in the GDR (Aufbau des Sozialismus). The program was nothing less than a manifesto to remake the social and economic foundations of the country. The year that followed changed the face of law, policing, and the economy in the GDR for decades to come. In his speech Ulbricht drew lessons from the other countries of the Eastern Bloc on the pitfalls and internal enemies the SED needed to overcome to reach its goal. He referred to “Tito’s treasonous clique” and “the wrecking activity of the Slánský group in Czechoslovakia, the Gomułka group in Poland, and the cases of Luca, Georgescu and Ana Pauker in Romania.”¹⁴³

The year 1952 was also, as Jan Behrends has pointed out, exceptional in the history of the GDR. While the Stalinist period in the USSR saw decades of mass violence from above, starting with the earliest collectivization campaigns in 1928 and ending only with Stalin’s death in 1953, this form of militarized violence characterized the SED’s policies in the GDR for only about a year, between the summers of 1952 and 1953.¹⁴⁴ In spite of the short duration of this campaign and the fact that many of its key policies were overturned soon after Stalin’s death, the year of Building of Socialism had significant consequences for the East German state and the structure and personnel of the MfS in particular. As Engelmann has argued, “The year 1952 marked—with all the contradictions of Soviet politics at the time—a decisive turning point in the history of the MfS as an institution of law enforcement.”¹⁴⁵

Following a pattern evident across the Eastern Bloc in the early 1950s, thousands of new recruits entered the MfS in 1952. Many were young, from underprivileged backgrounds, and came to the force with little formal education. More than 80 percent had been workers or tradesmen who had previously served in the People’s Police.¹⁴⁶ As these recruitment drives were carried out, the language and internal culture of the institution filled with the imagery of war, battles, fronts, and class enemies, a message reinforced by the military drills recruits were required to take part in at the MfS school at Potsdam-Eiche.¹⁴⁷ In October 1952 the MfS shifted from a system of promotion based on civil police ranks to one based on military ranks.¹⁴⁸

Regional offices and departments were told to organize work according to a centralized plan. The role of the central office was to control whether regional and district offices had fulfilled their quotas. In the language of the time: “The Ministry for State Security must get rid of the practice of letting things come to it randomly. Work must be planned systematically. Each office must create a quarterly plan to be approved by its superior office.”¹⁴⁹ This culture of planning and quotas informed several MfS campaigns during this transformative year, including the militarization of the border between East and West, the collectivization of agriculture, the repression of the church, and the enforcement of the Law on the Protection of National Property, which raised penalties for economic crimes and the theft of state property.

Table 6.1. MfS personnel, 1950–53

Source: Table reproduced from Jens Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit, 552–53 (Berlin: BstU Abteilung Bildung und Forschung, 1996).

The year 1952 was a landmark in demarcating the border between East and West Germany, and, by extension, East and West Europe. MfS officers actively carried out and enforced this separation of East and West. On 13 May 1952 the East German Politburo created a “special border regime” with West Germany.¹⁵⁰ With the help of the Soviet advisers, the border was militarized. A five-kilometer restricted Zone (Sperrzone), a five-hundred-meter protection strip, and a ten-meter control strip were established. Border guards were authorized to shoot those who attempted to flee.¹⁵¹ This border regime remained virtually unchanged until 1989. MfS officials helped remove citizens who were living on the border between East and West from their homes to enable the creation of these restricted zones. There were 8,331 people forcibly evacuated from these regions between the end of May and the middle of June 1952.¹⁵² The MfS also gained control over surveillance on the border. MfS officers were placed in the department for border intelligence, which was officially part of the border police, or Grenzpolizei.¹⁵³ Between May and September 1952 the border police increased from 15,987 to 20,396 officials.¹⁵⁴

One of the most difficult tasks in the earliest years of the GDR was to extend the regime’s influence into the countryside. Efforts to do so began with a series of propaganda campaigns carried out soon after the country was founded. From 1949 the SED began to widely promote the idea that kulaks should be persecuted and socially isolated from their communities.¹⁵⁵ But it was not until April 1952 that the Politburo announced that the collectivization of agriculture would begin.¹⁵⁶ According to recent scholarship, the People’s Police, not the MfS, was the institution most central in enforcing this early campaign.¹⁵⁷ Members of the People’s Police were assisted by units of volunteer citizens, or “helpers of the People’s Police.” According to official statistics, by the end of 1952 the GDR had established nineteen hundred farm cooperatives with thirty-seven thousand members. These initial efforts did not succeed in many cases. A microstudy of collectivization in one village has shown that few concrete actions accompanied the SED’s call to collectivize agriculture. When SED instructors set out in the summer of 1952 to spread the word about collectivization, farmers refused to listen to them.¹⁵⁸ As one recalled of the early 1950s, “They largely left us alone. No one really came. There was propaganda and such, but little else.”¹⁵⁹ As the historian Thomas Lindenberger has pointed out, reports by the People’s Police frequently remarked that calls to collectivize agriculture went unheeded due to the “lack of initiative” on the part of local officials. The people sent to enforce the campaign and the “kulak elements” they were supposed to arrest were often linked through personal ties, business relations, or friendships.¹⁶⁰ It seemed that local relations were in these cases more important than commands from above, whether the latter came from Moscow or Berlin. Second, the SED sincerely believed at this time that the decision to join a collective farm should be voluntary. This position changed only during the second collectivization campaign in the GDR in 1959–60. From a practical perspective, many villages had little access to the news or decrees proclaimed in Berlin. Few offices had telephones. Streets were still made of sand and difficult to traverse. In contrast to the picture of 1952 as a year of unmitigated police violence, then, recent research has shown that key SED campaigns either failed or never really began due to a lack of initiative, state capacity, and infrastructure.

GDR citizens in villages, particularly those deemed kulaks, were, however, subject to considerable administrative and economic pressures. The SED limited raw materials, electric power, and fuel to particular villagers.¹⁶¹ Heavy taxes were imposed on enterprises with more than five workers. Farmers who did not meet their delivery quotas were subject to criminal indictments or risked having their property confiscated. The policy of handing confiscated property to newly established collective farms incentivized local farmers to denounce local kulaks.¹⁶² Kulaks were excluded from serving on community decision-making boards such as trade cooperatives.

For the MfS, attempts to collectivize agriculture presented opportunities to extend surveillance networks into villages and farms. In 1952 the MfS doubled its number of agents in district and town offices.¹⁶³ The machine tractor stations through which the state provided machinery and combines to collective farms became a seat of MfS surveillance and informer networks.¹⁶⁴ All large machine tractor stations were to be staffed by officials from Department III.¹⁶⁵ From April 1953 machine tractor stations also created political departments in which the deputy head was an undercover MfS agent.¹⁶⁶ It is unclear how effective these stations were in collecting information because there is little documentation of their activities. What is certain is that many of the collective farms created at this time proved to be short-lived. Soon after the death of Stalin, twenty-three thousand people abandoned them. Around 11 percent, or 564 farms, were dissolved, a process that continued apace in the months to follow.¹⁶⁷ During the uprising in June 1953 farmers reacted to the strikes and demonstrations in Berlin by leaving or threatening to leave collective farms.¹⁶⁸ Collectivization was taken up by the SED again, this time with more energy and zeal than in the Stalinist period, in 1959 and the early 1960s.

On 23 October 1952 the MfS issued instructions demanding more violent persecution of religious targets.¹⁶⁹ This was not an entirely new development. The term “clericalism” was introduced to the GDR in 1950 to brand members of the church who tried to engage in politics.¹⁷⁰ On 17 September 1952 Erich Mielke outlined the structure of the MfS department in charge of conducting surveillance on the church. It included sectors dedicated to the evangelical church, Junge Gemeinde, Catholic church, and the religious press.¹⁷¹ These sectors were to draw on material collected through informers in all of these groups and institutions as well as information provided by regional and district SED branches, members of the communist youth organization, and the office of the People’s Police.¹⁷² But as with the collectivization campaign, these measures were not always carried out in practice.¹⁷³ The SED was more successful in pressuring these groups through propaganda, social isolation, and administrative pressures. For example it was made difficult for members of the Protestant Youth Group to hold religious events or gatherings. Also similar to the case of collectivization, the death of Stalin reversed these policies dramatically. On 10 June 1953 Mielke issued a notice telling all offices that “no measures are to be taken against church establishments.”¹⁷⁴

The Law on the Protection of National Property, passed in October 1952, raised penalties for theft of state property to a maximum of twenty-five years in prison.¹⁷⁵ In the first three months of 1953, 7,775 people were tried under this law, which granted the MfS greater authority to arrest those accused of economic crimes.¹⁷⁶ During the workers’ uprising in June citizens referred to the hardships caused by these draconian measures as a reason for the protests. As a Soviet report issued after the uprising noted: “Workers resent the cruel measures undertaken by the punitive organs and judicial administration. In May a worker in Brandenburg was sentenced to two years in jail for taking two kilograms of cement from a plant. The cow belonging to the shipyard worker Gustav Rinke died a month ago, but the district council still demands milk deliveries from him.”¹⁷⁷ The law also nationalized new industries, a move that placed them under the purview of MfS surveillance networks.¹⁷⁸ One of the largest incidents of property confiscation in the late Stalinist period was the nationalization of 440 hotels and 181 restaurants on the Baltic Coast in February 1953.¹⁷⁹

During these campaigns the Stasi was instructed in new professional standards. MfS reports from the time focused obsessively on the idea that it was necessary to enforce principles of socialist legality (Gesetzlichkeit). These principles were centered on increasing the paperwork and administrative procedure that surrounded arrests rather than establishing legal check on agents’ authority. But they were meaningful nonetheless. They increased the predictability of the institution and standardized policing procedures across the country. Agents were held to stricter rules than before.¹⁸⁰ Reports from the time detailed the documentation required to arrest prisoners, the types of evidence necessary to prosecute someone who had been arrested, and the limits on how long prisoners could be held without being charged.¹⁸¹ Cases of beatings and excessive violence during interrogations, called “illegalities,” were flagged for internal investigations.¹⁸² There were some, albeit mild, consequences for agents who had engaged in illegalities in previous years and were subject to disciplinary proceedings for pressuring witnesses, committing violence against prisoners, or mistreating detainees.¹⁸³

The language of legality also mattered since agents were being trained in new legal codes. In 1952 the SED issued new criminal codes, a new constitution, and a new law defining the powers of the state prosecutor.¹⁸⁴ These new codes and laws were promulgated at the same time as the GDR judiciary was restructured and purged and legal authority shifted from Soviet military tribunals to East German courts.¹⁸⁵ SED members, studying the example of the Shakhty trial in the Soviet Union in 1928, also began to stage show trials of officials from the Ministry of Trade and Supply and Economic Ministry in the fall of 1952.¹⁸⁶ Trials of citizens accused of sabotaging industries were held in early 1953.¹⁸⁷ It was not a coincidence, Engelmann has pointed out, that GDR courts began to stage show trials at the same time as these new laws were passed since it was necessary to make people aware of them as well as promote the authority of the GDR courts.¹⁸⁸ Show trials also served to deflect criticism about the economic crisis caused by the First Five-Year Plan away from the regime.

The campaign to Build Socialism began to wind down in October and November of 1952. At this time, MfS officials were punished with official rebukes or demotions for committing excessive violence. One employee was accused of “acting against democratic legality” and “harming the reputation of the Ministry by treating detainees poorly during interrogations.”¹⁸⁹ He was issued a strict warning and demoted. Instructions specified that all MfS employees be informed of the rules of “democratic legality.” Cases of demoted employees were to be publicized to all operative workers in the ministry to send an explicit message about what was no longer acceptable in the force. While in Poland secret police officials were charged with drunkenness, the improper use of weapons, and arbitrary behavior, in East Germany MfS officials were punished for not exhibiting “model behavior,” for failing to strive to improve their professional knowledge, or for not being “in control.”¹⁹⁰

At the same time that MfS officials were subject to disciplinary measures, SED party organizations criticized MfS officials for shortcomings in their private lives and relationships. Married officials were criticized for drunkenness or extramarital affairs (the latter called, rather cumbersomely, “demoralization in the area of sexual relations”). Such issues were referred to as “moral crimes” (sittliche Verbrechen).¹⁹¹ Party organizations held criticism and self-criticism sessions concerned with officials’ private lives in 1952. They believed that alcoholism, debt, or love affairs could in theory expose agents to potential blackmail by other security services.¹⁹² As Walter Süβ has argued, party organizations had both a preventative function, serving to warn MfS officials against improper behavior, and a surveillance function, since they were expected to watch MfS officers in their daily lives.¹⁹³

The SED Campaign to Build Socialism and the violence, expropriations, displacement, and militant rhetoric that accompanied it further exacerbated a refugee crisis that had been evident in the GDR since the beginning of the postwar era. In 1952, 182,000 GDR citizens left the country. In the first months of 1953, 122,000 people headed West.¹⁹⁴ A Soviet memorandum from May 1953 titled “On the Question of Preventing the Defection of Inhabitants from the GDR to West Germany” admitted that this loss of citizens, including workers, young people, and specialists (144 engineers, 13 scientists, and 52 teachers) had severely damaged the economy.¹⁹⁵ After Stalin’s death Soviet leaders came up with a solution. They suggested that the SED alleviate the crisis by “abandoning the practice of mass arrests and repression of large groups” and “reversing the policy of confiscating property from peasants.”¹⁹⁶ They demanded that the SED ease measures to repress the church because “the church still has a strong influence on the inhabitants of the republic.”¹⁹⁷

The dramatic about-face in policy that accompanied the SED’s declaration of a New Course in June 1953 was met with a range of emotions by party members and the East German population.¹⁹⁸ As MfS reports on popular reactions show, some citizens predicted the downfall of the GDR and celebrated that “a people enslaved for eight years” would finally be free.¹⁹⁹ Others were baffled by the reversal of the SED’s policies. “It is impossible to know how to act” muttered one citizen. “Something decided and praised today could be declared incorrect and raked over the coals tomorrow. The people up top are probably on their last legs.”²⁰⁰ This is what it seemed like to many when Berlin exploded into protests, strikes, and demonstrations in June 1953.

THE JUNE 1953 UPRISING AND ITS AFTERMATH

Soon after the workers’ uprising began on 17 June 1953, the protests against high work norms and economic conditions turned political. According to a Soviet situation report at the time, “Demonstrators shouted antigovernment slogans. They demanded the immediate resignation of the GDR government, a price decrease of 40 percent, the abolition of the [East] German armed forces and People’s Police, the return of the German territories given to Poland, and other anti-Soviet slogans.”²⁰¹ While the central MfS office in Berlin was left untouched, protesters stormed district MfS offices and destroyed files.²⁰² They occupied prisons and released 1,327 political prisoners from holding cells.²⁰³ Soviet operational groups and MfS agents carried out interrogations and agent work to uncover the identities of protesters.²⁰⁴ Although the uprising only lasted a few days, it had important consequences for the GDR and the MfS. As Jens Gieseke had noted, the obvious lesson MfS and SED leaders alike took away from the revolt was that East German leaders lacked the capacity to defend the regime without Soviet assistance: “The feeling of omnipotence and Chekist struggle dissolved in only a few hours. The limits of the MfS were painfully clear.”²⁰⁵ This realization was profoundly disorienting, given the image of strength, discipline, and omnipotence projected by MfS and SED leaders in the previous years. Soviet interference had resulted in a weak regime in which the MfS had developed little independent capacity to carry out investigations, discern popular disillusionment with SED policies, or foresee serious challenges to the regime’s security.

SED leaders met at the 15th Party Plenum on 16–24 June to discuss the uprising and its aftermath. Ulbricht accused the MfS head Zaisser and the chief editor of the party daily Neues Deutschland Rudolf Herrnstadt for failing to foresee the uprising. They were removed from their positions and expelled from the party. Ulbricht criticized the lack of party control over the MfS, its insufficient number of informers, and the lack of centralized planning in the force. Questions of combating sabotage and industrial accidents were given a central place on the agenda, given the origin of the uprising in the party’s economic policies. The solution was to build an MfS core with more specialized training in economic matters to identify such issues in the future.

To distinguish sabotage from economic difficulties, Ulbricht explained, it was necessary for MfS agents to combine professional training—training in an industry or branch of industry—with a detailed knowledge of everything happening in an area: “[An MfS agent should know] the people who distribute toothpaste and which clergymen from West Berlin travel to engage in agent work there.” In essence, the solution was to expand the reach of the MfS. Most of these criticisms were hardly new.²⁰⁶ All had been topics of discussion since the year the institution was founded, as Ulbricht was the first to admit: “We have been speaking for years about building our agent networks.”²⁰⁷ In fact, most of Ulbricht’s speech consisted of blocks of text taken directly from previous speeches. One example was his repetition of a Politburo decree from March 18, 1953, criticizing the work of the ministry for being arbitrary (zufällig) and lacking a plan.

A month later, on 18 July 1953, the MfS was subsumed under the Ministry of the Interior.²⁰⁸ Even so, as Gieseke has pointed out, “From an organizational perspective, the security force remained independent and largely untouched.”²⁰⁹ It did change some of its previous methods of policing in response to the uprising. A system of information groups was created to collect intelligence on the moods of workers in factories.²¹⁰ More informers were enlisted. The number of informers was increased by ten thousand by the end of the year.²¹¹

Workers’ demonstrations, 17 June 1953. BStU Berlin, BU Eft. AU 160/53.

Ernst Wollweber was appointed as Zaisser’s successor. He had been born in 1898 and, like Zaisser, had been involved in the German communist movement from early on. He took part in street battles against fascist paramilitary groups and joined the KPD’s military intelligence branch in 1923.²¹² He had trained in a military school in Moscow and worked briefly in the Red Army before fighting in the Spanish Civil War. He emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1944. As Roger Engelmann and Karl Wilhelm Fricke have explored, under Wollweber the SED and MfS began a mass propaganda campaign to fuel fear of domestic and foreign enemies. This campaign flooded newspapers and press conferences and spread the message that it was desirable and necessary to have a strong domestic security service in the GDR. The struggle against domestic enemies was linked to the struggle against the West .²¹³ Between 1953 and 1955 Wollweber instigated a campaign of “concentrated blows” (konzentrierte Schläge) against those perceived as being enemies of the regime or those accused of contact with the West.²¹⁴

This campaign, coming as it did after years of instability and as the MfS was only beginning to extend its networks over the territory of the GDR, seemed to attest to the regime’s weakness rather than its strength. As Soviet Politburo member Georgi Malenkov commented in July 1953 while observing the workers’ demonstrations and mass flight from East to West Germany, “We were obliged to admit that without the presence of Soviet troops the existing regime in the GDR is unstable.” In a remarkable understatement of the situation, he said, “The political and economic situation in the GDR is extremely unfavorable at the present time.”²¹⁵

WAS EAST GERMANY EXCEPTIONAL?

When the MfS was founded in February 1950 it had fewer agents than any other secret police force in communist Eastern Europe. As late as 1956, after Khrushchev had denounced the crimes of Stalin, the size of the MfS was still not unusual compared to other Eastern Bloc secret police forces.²¹⁶ In fact, in 1953 the Polish MBP was larger and in control of more sophisticated policing methods than the Stasi. Only in the 1970s, in the context of détente and Ostpolitik pursued by the West German leader Willy Brandt, and after Ulbricht had been replaced by Erich Honecker, did the Stasi expand in terms of its number of agents and informers.²¹⁷ Between 1967 and 1982 the number of full-time agents in the service grew from 32,912 to 81,495.²¹⁸ But the 1940s and 1950s had set the groundwork for this expansion. The MfS was created, as were its first agent and informer networks. An MfS training school in Potsdam-Eiche was established. Thousands of agents were recruited to the force’s rank and file. And yet, although more research needs to be done on how the MfS developed during the Campaign to Build Socialism, studies of early collectivization campaigns in suggest that key assumptions about this period—particularly the emphasis on the secret police as the main implementer of Stalinist policies—need to be reexamined.

While the Stasi was similar to the services in Poland and Czechoslovakia in many ways, there were also important differences. While party leaders in East Germany, as elsewhere, renounced the “German road to socialism,” doing so influenced decision-making far less than elsewhere, particularly in Czechoslovakia. East German leaders never had a truly decisive voice in local policy decisions. Of course the creation of the SBZ and later the GDR was inextricably linked to Germany’s loss in the Second World War and recent history of Nazism. Its contentious road to statehood and the fact that the Soviets frequently pushed aside local leaders and took over key operations meant that GDR institutions were weaker than those built in the other countries. For the same reason it began later than other East European countries to develop its own structures. While the Czechoslovak secret police began adopting blanket surveillance methods in 1950 and the Polish forces as early as 1948, the East Germans had barely established such networks by the middle of 1953. And of course many such networks were built in East Germany’s Western counterpart, whether to conduct surveillance on the border, to engage in intelligence operations against the West, or to address the refugee crisis. These issues proved fluid and ever-changing. Many aspects of SED and MfS policy that had been celebrated as strengths in the early 1950s, attributes like unquestioning discipline and the willingness to carry out orders, became weaknesses after the death of Stalin. At that point the New Course made it unclear what exactly these militant officials were fighting for and what Berlin—or Moscow—was striving toward. SED and MfS officials would struggle to determine who to be and what to do in the post-Stalinist era.

7

The Secret Police: History and Legacy

AFTER HIS DEFECTION to the West in December 1953 the former Polish secret police agent Józef Światło held a series of interviews with Radio Free Europe. He titled one “‘The Fiction’ of a Monolith,” explaining that “the Polish United Workers’ Party is neither Polish nor united nor a workers’ party. The PZPR is not a monolith.”¹ That the Polish communist party was riven with rivalries, battles for power, and mistrust seems obvious in retrospect. Such issues apply to any institution. Światło, who had spent years amassing information on members of the Polish communist party and state, understood that such divisions were glaring indeed. But at the time, his interview undercut the image widespread in the West that East European communists were unified, disciplined, and unconditionally loyal to the state. It undercut, in other words, the myth that communist regimes had spent years propagating about themselves.

While Światło discussed the schisms he believed would interest a Western audience—fights over property, privileges, mistresses, and inter personal rivalries—his observations about disunity in the PZPR can be extended to more substantial issues and to communist parties in Czechoslovakia and East Germany. European communists held different views on the form their institutions would take after they came to power; on how to define loyalty to the state, whether by class background, years of service to the party, or dedication to Marxist principles; and on the role of the USSR and the Soviet model at various stages of the state-building process. Along the way Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, and Germans joined the secret police, left it, were expelled, expelled others, deserted from its ranks, pressured each other to greater radicalism, or switched sides as violence escalated and was turned on the communists themselves.

This book has placed the early history of communist secret police institutions back into the entangled and violent history of Europe and Russia in the twentieth century. The Eastern Bloc was more than an appendage to Soviet history. It was something new and distinct, a mixture of Soviet and local decisions, political cultures, and institutional forms as well as improvised ideas and actions. For the secret police officer corps, the motivation to organize these institutions can be traced back to the 1920s and 1930s, to a continent shattered by the First World War, the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, and the Spanish Civil War. Those who joined communist parties in this era were part of a multilingual, multinational European movement with adherents determined to foment social upheaval, organize militant workers’ movements, and spread world revolution. The institutions they built were infused with the radical political ideas that emerged from the social context and intellectual convictions of the age. Communists from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, and the rest of Europe trained in Moscow, fought in paramilitary forces, and sought the answers to social and political questions in the revolutionary experiment in the Soviet Union. Although the secret police institutions of the 1950s were hardly foreseeable in the 1920s, the convictions on which they depended did not emerge in 1945.

The myth that East European secret police institutions represented a revolutionary break from the past was a fundamental part of the communists’ own narratives. The anticommunists agreed, depicting these institutions as Soviet transplants that deviated from Europe’s normal path of development. Such myths assume that the Soviet model, the lodestar of the era, was not itself the product of history, that is, of decades of decisions made, paths taken, and policing methods perfected in conditions of civil conflict, terror, and war. Many NKVD agents learned the methods they brought with them to Europe in 1945 during the Great Terror in the Soviet Union in 1937 and 1938, when the institution arrested around 1,575,000 people and executed an estimated 681,693.² NKVD agents mastered ruthless interrogation practices and staged show trials in which alleged enemies of socialism were reviled, humiliated, and tormented. NKVD agents and advisers arrived in Eastern Europe suspicious of intellectuals and former elites and burdened with the trauma of the Second World War. And yet, none of the services examined in this book reproduced the decades of terror the Soviet Union had experienced under Stalin: the ruthless and breakneck collectivization campaigns, mass famine, or the repression of national minorities, recidivist criminals, and others.³ Because secret police institutions and their agents were shaped by history, they could never be exactly alike; not to each other, not to the Soviets.

History also mattered because the communists took over states and societies that had been decimated by war, occupation, and civil conflict. The Second World War and its aftermath were key experiences for the secret police officer corps and rank and file. Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, and Soviets stepped into 1945 dazed by the ruins of war, some thousands of miles from their homes, which in some cases were located in different countries or had been destroyed. Many East Europeans entered the postwar period armed with weapons left behind by the Nazi occupiers or acquired in a military or partisan unit. Others left Nazi prisons, POW camps, and forced labor traumatized by what they had seen. The communists understood the significance of the militaries, militias, partisan groups, and POW camps in the shaping of the postwar era. They were aware of the strong emotions that swept across Europe after the retreat of the Nazi forces: the longing to remake states and societies and the desire for revenge against those responsible for the horrors of war.

Although these institutions in many ways did represent a break from previous political orders, more continuities are evident from the perspective of social and personal networks. Many of the earliest communist institutions, particularly in Poland and Czechoslovakia, emerged from such networks. Friends recruited each other to communist parties. Close-knit partisan groups joined secret police offices. Families took over the local branch of the secret police. Party and secret police officials’ behavior, personal lives, and social relationships were critiqued by their friends, family, colleagues, superiors, and subordinates. Families and coworkers pressured each other to forego marriage in the church or give up private property. Wives brought marital disputes or complaints about their husbands’ drinking problems to party organizations for mediation. Children were sent to special summer camps to socialize with the children of other security officers. These ties were not abstract or ideological. They were deeply personal. Agents spoke “Bolshevik” not only because they believed in its message but also because they were compelled to do so in public and private by instructors, relatives, friends, party members, counterintelligence agents, colleagues, superiors, and subordinates. As the shift in all three countries to a system based on collecting information inside targets’ social and professional milieus suggests, the Soviets put a high value on intelligence gathered in private and intimate settings.

It is worth asking whether party and state officials were as compliant with central orders as historians have frequently assumed. In fact, reports from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany present a checkered picture of state officials’ participation in campaigns of violence. Party, state, and even secret police employees in all three countries resorted to foot-dragging to avoid completing a task, ignored orders that did not make sense, failed to fulfill quotas, or did not staff units—such as those created in Czechoslovakia to uncover ‘Trotskyites’ or ‘Zionists’—that did not conform to local conceptions of security. Such observations suggest why some of the most significant voices advocating reform and change after the death of Stalin in 1953 came from within the party-state, particularly in Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union in 1956, and in Czechoslovakia in 1968.

But of course some officials did carry out orders in radical and uncompromising ways. The history of the secret police rank and file was inseparable from the domestic violence of the age and the internal party terror in particular. Agents were trained in widely propagated campaigns to unmask hidden enemies in local communist parties. Those who carried out arrests or interrogations with the most fervor were promoted or rewarded. While such campaigns have frequently been thought of as ideological, in fact there were many instances of officials acting out of personal vengeance and rivalries. Interrogators were assigned to torture those with whom they had personal conflicts, others to interrogate groups they hated: anti-Semites to interrogate Jews, Jews to interrogate Polish nationalists, and Poles to interrogate Ukrainian nationalists. These experiences, together with violence against kulaks, the church, citizens with Western contacts, and others, shed light on the links between violence, personal vengeance, and institution building in early communist states. Force, compulsion, and fear forged these institutions, a fragile, bitter power that required continual monitoring and internal violence to maintain.

The long history of relations between Russia and the countries of Eastern Europe has yet to enter into the discussion of the formative years of communist states in the region. And yet history was evident at every step as Polish, Czechoslovak, and East German agents forged new bonds between their countries and Russia that were unprecedented in their extent and pervasiveness. The long history these countries had with Russia peeked out, sometimes quietly and unobtrusively, sometimes in speeches thundered from the podium. Each country’s history influenced interactions between the Soviets and local citizens, issues such as trust, mutual understandings, and popular support for communism. It influenced the room each country was given to make its own decisions, local perceptions of what the Soviet model was, and the question of which aspects of Soviet policy should be replicated (or not) in Europe.

Poland’s relations with Russia were characterized by conflict and terror. The Soviets carried out forced deportations of Polish citizens in 1939–41, executed twenty-one thousand Polish officers in 1940, and masterminded the destruction of the Polish underground. The PPR was haunted by the legacy of the arrests and executions of leading Polish communists during the Great Terror, a topic stifled by fear and silence in the postwar period. This is not to say that relations between Russians and Poles were entirely conflictual. Marxism had its own following among Polish intellectuals in the 1920s.⁴ Many Poles had been born and educated in the Russian Empire. And for those groups or minorities that had been marginalized or repressed in interwar Poland, including Jews, Belarussians, Ukrainians, and peasants, the postwar communist state offered new avenues for education and social and political mobility.

In Czechoslovakia relations reflected positive, and in some cases even idealized, views of Russia. Many Czechoslovak leftists came of age reading Marx, Gorky, and Lenin and avidly perusing the Soviet newspapers that arrived in Prague in the interwar period. News of the Soviet experiment traveled by word of mouth from those who visited the USSR. The KSČ was one of the few communist parties in Europe that operated legally in the 1930s, up to the Nazi invasion in 1938. The party had broad support in a country with a strong Slavophile tradition, a large working class, and left-leaning intellectuals and students. Not that these relations were conflict free. The Red Army had a reputation for considerable violence in the territories it occupied at the end of the war. And Czechoslovak laws appropriated by the KSČ during the revolution had to be amended since they punished citizens who made statements considered openly loyal to the Soviet Union.⁵

In East Germany relations with Russia were complex and contradictory. During the era of the Weimar Republic the German communist party had been one of the largest, most influential communist movements in Europe. German communists had the support of a large working class, and the movement was dominated by such towering figures as Rosa Luxemburg and Ernst Thälmann. When members of the KPD were persecuted after the rise of Hitler in 1933, the Soviet Union offered asylum to those suffering racial or political persecution. But from the perspective of 1945, it was the recent past of war, deprivation, persecution, starvation, and mass murder that was on the minds of the Soviet advisers, Red Army officers, and security officials who arrived in Berlin first to destroy, then to rebuild, Germany. The contradictory legacy of Russia in Europe in the twentieth century enabled East Europeans to pick and choose which of these many histories spoke to their individual convictions, experiences, and beliefs.

For all three secret police forces the years 1945–54 left behind a considerable institutional legacy. Professional training schools were founded that remained active until 1989: the Polish Central School in Legionów, opened in 1947 and renamed the Felix Dzerzhinsky School in 1972; the Czechoslovak Central School for State Security in Prague, Veleslavín, opened in 1952 and renamed the Felix Dzerzhinsky School soon after; and the East German MfS school in Potsdam-Eiche, opened in 1951. Materials from cases investigated in these years formed the basis of the training manuals that were consulted in planning operations for decades to come. Polish secret police officials revisited campaigns against the Polish underground.⁶ East German agents were trained using materials gathered during denazification campaigns. Czechoslovak interrogators studied techniques mastered in the show trials of the 1950s.⁷ An operational vocabulary introduced to the forces in this period, including terms like “disinformation,” “disorganization,” and “prophylactic conversations,” shaped how agents thought about surveillance operations and domestic policing. Criminal charges like “counterrevolutionary crimes,” “antistate agitation,” and “sabotage” were cemented in legal codes that were consulted long after the death of Stalin.⁸ The agent, informer, and party intelligence networks that had been established in economic, state, and civic life continued to collect information, influence personnel appointments, and police ideological conformity. The favored status of members of the working class before the law remained part of criminal codes, judicial processes, and law enforcement until the fall of communism in the region, although what this meant in practice depended on local circumstances and the judgement of local policemen, prosecutors, and courts.⁹

These years also left behind immense card catalogues in which members of local communities were divided into categories of friends and enemies, workers and bourgeoisie, communists and anticommunists. One legacy, then, was the mapping of local populations according to communist criteria such as class background and loyalty to the new state. The material informing these card catalogues was gathered for well over a decade by the Soviets and local agents and informers. In all three countries, it contained information on the general population collected during mass operations and through covert blanket surveillance networks. In Poland it included detailed intelligence on former underground fighters that had been collected through informer networks and during the false amnesties in 1945 and 1947. In Czechoslovakia such lists included citizens who had been expelled from their positions after February 1948. This group of people were alternately described by the Czech term vyakčnění (those expelled by Action Committees) or the Soviet term byvaly lidi (former peoples). The T-43 campaign in October 1949 saw the most systematic effort to collect information for the StB’s card catalogue on citizens who belonged to enemy classes or social groups.¹⁰ In East Germany information on the local population had been collected during denazification investigations, through KPD/SED informer networks, and by the NKVD in the Special Camps and mass operations during the immediate postwar period. In all three countries information contained in the regime’s card catalogue was used in preventative policing measures or as compromising information to compel citizens to work as informers in the post-Stalinist era. Black marks placed on individuals or groups in this era affected employment, opportunities for education, and access to apartments for citizens and their families for many years to come.

Another legacy was the creation of secret police officials themselves: their self-perceptions, paths to power, social ties, public image, and ways of thinking about policing and communism. These self-perceptions were evident in the narratives that secret police agents told about themselves in speeches, newspapers, show trials, official discourse, and even interrogation protocols: the message that they had informers everywhere and that a large security apparatus was the only way to protect citizens from domestic and foreign enemies. To justify expanding the secret police, the regime had constructed foreign and domestic threats, like the searches for enemies in East European communist parties, or reacted to genuine threats, such as the workers’ uprising in East Germany in 1953. These threats, whether constructed or genuine, were accompanied by campaigns to expand the power and reach of the secret police in state institutions, the economy, and society.

In the 1940s and 1950s the countries of the Eastern Bloc had made advances in coordinating and standardizing their security forces on an international scale. By 1954 officials in Warsaw, Prague, Berlin, and Moscow spoke a similar operational language and practiced common policing and surveillance methods. Agents from Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, and, before the split in 1948, Yugoslavia helped push these connections forward. East European agents and party officials pressured each other to adopt Soviet practices, manipulate elections, and adopt the newest surveillance technologies. Connections between the security forces of the Eastern Bloc peaked in 1949 as secret police agents from across the region traveled to Budapest to learn how to construct show trials and to internalize new methods of interrogations and investigations. Show trials, whether of communist party leaders, political enemies, or members of enemy social groups, were an integral part of communist state building. They introduced a new language to the force, propagated new criminal codes, and standardized investigative practices from top to bottom. The transnational connections already evident in this period were routinized after the death of Stalin, as intelligence agents continued to coordinate operations across borders and participate in common training programs through the official structures of the Warsaw Pact.¹¹

Although sources remain incomplete, it is clear that during key moments such as the communist takeover of power in Czechoslovakia, the June 1946 referendum in Poland, or the June 1953 uprising in East Germany, local and Soviet agents did not make sense of events in the same way. Interpretations varied even between local leaders over what was important, relevant, threatening, or nonthreatening about these events and how to respond to them. Though the means of intelligence gathering grew increasingly uniform, then, the ends to which such intelligence was used remained distinct. The question of how such information was understood, processed, and interpreted was always influenced by national cultures and leaders. The fact that communist officials had agency, particularly after the death of Stalin, on how to make sense of the intelligence they were given helps explain why these states followed widely different trajectories after 1953 even though their secret police forces shared many of the same methods, practices, and structures.

After the death of Stalin, the question of what to do with the secret police, one of the pillars of the Stalinist system, became a testing ground for the possibilities and limits of reform in communist Europe. Although East European leaders, taking their cue from Moscow, condemned the excesses of Stalinist violence—shorthand for the mass arrests, forced confessions, and brutal interrogations of the 1950s—none dissolved secret police institutions. True, the authority of the Polish secret police was shaken in 1956 after the uprising in Poznań. PZPR and judicial authorities opened investigations on Józef Różański, Roman Romkowski, and Anatol Fejgin. Jakub Berman, Stanisław Radkiewicz, Mikołaj Orechwa, and Julia Brystiger were removed from the service.¹² Such changes were not limited to high-ranking officials. Tadeusz Wojtyniak, an operative agent who had joined the MBP in 1945, was removed in 1956 after complaints were raised against him in a party meeting.¹³ Across the country, secret police officials were treated with condescension and aversion, which undermined their power and demoralized them.¹⁴ As one report noted, “Many security employees do not know how they are supposed to work now and are helpless. The offices have been working less and in many cases not conducting investigations.”¹⁵ In 1956 Poles began to speak openly about issues that were taboo but not forgotten in the 1940s and 1950s: the Home Army, the Katyń massacre, and the arrest of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński. Some citizens demanded that the secret police be abolished.¹⁶ As in East Germany in June 1953, the total power of a police state dissolved remarkably quickly when citizens began to question or even mock it. Even so, the year 1956 hardly put the memory of Stalinism to rest. The long shadow of the postwar era returned in the figure of Mieczysław Moczar, a UB official who had been arrested after being accused of anti-Semitism during the Stalinist period who returned to head the Security Service in December 1964. From this position he spearheaded an anti-Semitic campaign in 1968 in which thousands of Jews were expelled from Poland.¹⁷ Not just reform and liberalism but nationalism, anti-Semitism, and repression were integral parts of Poland’s “national road to socialism.”

Nowhere were the zigzags of reform and retreat more evident than in Czechoslovakia. A particularity of the Czechoslovak regime’s foundational period was its schizophrenic nature: the revolutionary spirit of February 1948 and the terror, mass violence, and show trials of the 1950s.¹⁸ As a former communist judge pointed out, average citizens faced this duality when trying to make sense of the regime’s laws: “Mr. Smith . . . read the 1948 Constitution that guaranteed freedom of speech. He also read the 1950 Penal Code specifying more than a dozen felonies that might be committed by exercising this right. The Constitution assured the citizen of his right to leave a country he was not allowed to leave.”¹⁹ Karel Kaplan interviewed former secret police officials and concluded that this contradictory nature reflected the gap between local communists’ expectations for the revolution and its outcome: “Many communists did things they did not want to do. Things they had not imagined and probably knew were wrong. Their actions went against relationships with their family, friendships with other comrades, and public pronouncements about socialist humanism and comradeship. This contradiction [rozpolcenost] was a product of the schizophrenia of the regime.”²⁰ Jacques Rupnik raised this paradox in reference to a later era: how was a country capable of passing the liberal reforms of the Prague Spring capable of carrying out the repressive normalization period that followed?²¹

In the decades after 1954 the fates of secret police agents reflected this dual legacy, a back and forth over how to make sense, judicially, morally, and politically, of 1948 and the 1950s, eras that seemed starkly different and yet inextricably linked. Remembering one era invariably raised questions about the other. From the mid-1950s and into the 1990s, secret police officials were arrested, put on trial, rehabilitated, arrested again, released, and so on. While some continued to live in the ideals of 1948, others succumbed to disillusionment, depression, alcoholism, and suicide. The reform of the StB was one of many projects never seen through to the end after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. It is difficult not to see the shadow of Action Committees in the normalization campaign that followed the Prague Spring, in which thousands of people from the party, newspapers, state institutions, and culture were expelled from their positions by committees of their peers and acquaintances and forced to the margins of public life.²²

East Germany took the path of conservatism well into the 1970s. There were few changes at the top of the Stasi after Wilhelm Zaisser was removed. Although the year 1956 saw the rehabilitation of political prisoners, including twenty-five thousand Communists and Social Democrats, the arrests were blamed on Soviet military tribunals rather than on German security forces.²³ Those emerging from prison received an apology for the behavior of the “Soviet security organs.”²⁴ The role of the Soviets was obviously significant, but the opportunity to use the rehabilitations to grapple with the culpability of the Soviets’ local helpers was given wide berth. The Stasi rank and file was also characterized by numerous continuities. Many agents who were serving in the force in the 1970s and 1980s had begun their careers in K5. Gerhard Franke, who quit his former profession as a blacksmith to join K5, remained in the MfS until 1984.²⁵ Rudolf Mittag, who joined K5 in 1947, served until 1990.²⁶ Rudolf Gutsche, who had headed K5 from 1949, retired in 1975.²⁷ Werner Grunert, trained as a member of K5 since 1949, left the service only in 1983. Walter Heiniz, involved in K5 since 1949, retired in 1973.²⁸ Erich Bär was in the service until 1972.²⁹ In this sense, the East Germans’ lack of reform in the post-Stalinist era stemmed not only from Ulbricht’s political longevity (Gottwald died in 1953 and Bierut in 1956, while Ulbricht remained in power until 1971) but also from the fact that East Germany had never experienced as dramatic an alternative to the Soviet model as the other two countries.

Telling the history of the communist secret police through the eyes of individuals as well as institutions reveals that officials’ biographies and autobiographies were malleable and changeable. After the confusion of the post-Stalinist New Course, such mutability became an asset as former secret police officials took on new identities as reform communists, anti-Stalinists, or national communists. Some Stalin-era officials were arrested, others removed from power, and still others remained in the service for decades. A glance inside the “monolith” reveals a checkered picture of faith, belief, and conviction. It reveals the compulsion that underpinned these institutions, pressures no longer evident after the death of Stalin. And the fates of agents were hardly uniform: each was different and each a product of adaptation, conviction, and choice.

Notes

Page vii epigraphs: (Józef Różański) “Referat dyr. Dept. V,” 10 March 1949, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (IPN) Warsaw, IPN BU 1572/18, s. 59; (Stanisław Mikołajczyk) “Streszczenie rozmowy z młodym Zygmuntowiczem,” 9 August 1948, Hoover Institution Archive (HIA), Collection: Stanisław Mikołajczyk, box 13, folder 19, l. 247.

INTRODUCTION

1. “Dopis dra Štěpána Plačka ústř. Tajemníkovi KSČ soudruhovi Rudolfu Slánskému,” 15 May 1950, in Jan Kalous, Štěpán Plaček: Život zpravodajského fanatika ve službách KSČ (Prague: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, 2010), 312.

2. Štěpán Plaček, “Zpráva o cestě do Bukurešti, Sofie a Bělehradu konané ve dnech 17.6.1948 do 28.6.1948,” 30 June 1948, Archiv bezpečnostních složek (ABS) Prague, Prague, f. 310, sv. 43, aj. 6.

3. Jan de Weydenthal, The Communists of Poland (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1978), 63.

4. Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1937), 56.

5. Ibid., 138–49. Karel Kaplan describes them as the “abominable machinery of repression” (L’abominable machinerie de la repression), Karel Kaplan, Dans les archives du Comité Central: 30 ans de secrets du Bloc soviétique (Paris: Albin Michel, 1980), 180. The Polish Communist Party is commonly referred to as a “machine of power”: PZPR jako machina władzy, eds. Dariusz Stola and Krzysztof Persak (Warsaw: IPN 2012).

6. Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), 141. My ideas about the links between institutions and social context have been inspired by Tamar Herzog, Upholding Justice: Society, State, and the Penal System in Quito (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004); Giovanni Levi, Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exorcist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990).

7. T. V. Volokitina, T. M. Islamov, G. P. Murashko, A. F. Noskovoa, L. A. Pogovaya, eds., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskich arkhivov, Tom 2: 1949–1953 (Moscow: Sibirski khronograf, 1997).

8. Karel Kaplan and Vladimír Pacl, Tajný prostor Jáchymov (České Budějovice: ACTYS, 1993). On the uranium mine in East Germany, see Maria HaendckeHoppe-Arndt, Die Hauptabteilung XVIII: Volkswirtschaft (Berlin: Der Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR, 1997), 14.

9. Jonathan Haslam, Near and Distant Neighbors: A New History of Soviet Intelligence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

10. On the militaristic culture of the NKVD, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times, Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 108.

11. For a guide to the specific professional vocabulary of these services, see KGB Lexicon: The Soviet Intelligence Officer’s Handbook, ed. Vasiliy Mitrokhin (London: Frank Cass, 2002); Das MfS Lexikon: Begriffe, Personen und Strukturen der Staatssicherheit der DDR, hrsg. BStU (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2011).

12. Gregory Rabassa, “No Two Snowflakes Are Alike: Translation as Metaphor,” in The Craft of Translation, ed. John Biguenet and Rainer Schulte (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

13. E. A. Rees uses the term “transplantation” in the introduction to The Sovietization of Eastern Europe: New Perspectives on the Postwar Period (Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing, 2008), 2.

14. The Soviets severed diplomatic relations with the Polish government-in-exile in London in 1943 after the latter rightly accused them of brutally massacring more than twenty-one thousand Polish officers at Katyń.

15. “Wykres porównawczy stanów osobowych Apar. BP,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1583/140.

16. Ibid., 64–67. According to Andrzej Paczkowski, there were a few hundred Soviet advisers in the MBP at the regional and district levels, Paczkowski, Aparat bezpieczeństwa w latach 1944–1956 taktyka, strategie, i metody (Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Politicznych PAN, 1994), 5.

17. Igor Lukes, “The Birth of a Police State,” Intelligence and National Security 11, no. 1 (1996). Agents in this network worked both for the official National Front Intelligence Service and for the communist party. In this sense the network was hidden inside the official institutions of the National Front.

18. The Czechoslovak and Slovak communist parties were separated in 1939. They were not reunited into a single party until September of 1948.

19. Karel Kaplan, Nebezpečná bezpečnost (Brno: Doplněk, 1999), 8–12.

20. Molly Pucci, “A Revolution in a Revolution: The Secret Police and the Origins of Stalinism in Czechoslovakia,” East European Politics and Societies 32, no. 1 (2018): 3–22.

21. Michael Lausberg, DDR: 1946–1961 (Marburg: Tectum, 2009), 98.

22. Norman Naimark, The Russians in Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 360; Monika Tantzscher, “Die Vorläufer des Staatssicherheitsdienstes in der Polizei der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone,” in Jahrbuch für historische Kommunismusforschung (Berlin Akademia Verlag, 1998), 125–56.

23. Jens Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit (Berlin: BstU Abteilung Bildung und Forschung, 1996), 91.

24. Michael Wildt, An Uncompromising Generation: The Nazi Leadership of the Reich Security Main Office, trans. Tom Lampert (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009).

25. Marci Shore, “Children of the Revolution: Communism, Zionism, and the Berman Brothers,” Jewish Social Studies 10, no. 3 (Spring/Summer 2004): 35.

26. “Untitled self-criticism session: Ivo Milén,” undated, ABS Prague, Ivo Milén: evidence 2286, l. 90.

27. Teresa Torańska, Oni (London: Aneks, 1985), 342.

28. Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, “The Bluecaps,” in The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 78.

29. Jochen Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 12.

30. “Záznam o pohovoru,” 4 January 1963, ABS Prague, ZV-120 MV svazek dokumentů sektor 2 část 1, l. 124.

31. Béla Szász, Volunteers for the Gallows: Anatomy of a Show Trial (London: Chatto & Windue, 1971), 74.

32. Party members were a primary source of information on state officials, including the secret police. On party information networks in the 1950s, see Alf Lüdke, “. . . den Menschen vergessen?—oder: Das Maß der Sicherheit. Arbeits- verhalten der 1950 Jahre im Blick von MfS, SED, FDGB und staatlichen Leitungen” in Akten. Eingaben. Schaufenster. Die DDR und ihre Texte: Erkundungen zu Herrschaft und Alltag, ed. Alf Lüdke and Peter Becker, (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005). According to Paczkowski, in 1946 PPR members made up as much as 20 percent of agents and 16 percent of informers. Andrzej Paczkowski, “Poland,” in A Handbook of the Communist Security Apparatus in East-Central Europe, 1944–1989, ed. Krzysztof Persak and Łukasz Kamiński (Warsaw: Institute of National Remembrance, 2005), 257.

33. Richard Bessel, “Hatred after War: Emotion and the Postwar History of East Germany,” History and Memory 17, nos. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2005): 195.

34. “Polizeipräsidium Chemnitz Beurteilung des Pol. Meister Franke,” 28 May 1949, Cadres Akte: Gerhard Franke, BStU, Berlin, MfS KS II 333–84.

35. Barbara Fijałkowska, Borejsza I Różański: Przyczynek do dziejów stalinizmu w Polsce (Olsztyn: Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna, 1995), 185.

36. This goal was expressed during the show trials of church figures in March 1950. This trial of ten church figures was accompanied by a propaganda campaign aimed at evoking the “wrath of the people.” Karel Kaplan, Stát a církev v Československu v letech 1948–1953 (Brno: Doplněk, 1993), 120.

37. Úřední záznam o poradě, konané ve dnech 23–25 září 1946, MNB 11/4–104.

38. Zpráva o návštěvě s. Bogdanova, 7 September 1946, MNB 11/4–104.

39. Bohumil Doubek, StB o sobě: výpověd vyšetřovatele Bohumila Doubka, ed. Karel Kaplan (Prague: Úřad dokumentace a vyšetřování zločinů komunismu PČR, 2002), 226.

40. See Nikita Petrov, Pervyi predsedatel’ KGB Ivan Serov (Moscow: Materik, 2005); George Hodos, Show Trials: Stalinist Purges in Eastern Europe (New York: Praeger, 1987).

41. Katherine Verdery, Secrets and Truths: Ethnography in the Archive of Romania’s Secret Police (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2014), 13–14.

42. “Wyrok v imieniu polskiej rzeczypospolitej ludowej,” 11 November 1957, l. 16–20, Akta Osobowe Różański Józef s. Adama, Instytut Pamieci Narodowej (IPN) IPN BU 0193/7094.

43. In November 1948 Włodzimierz Lechowicz, the first Polish communist to be apprehended in the internal party terror in Poland, was arrested. Fejgin, who joined the service in 1950, was charged with crimes from that date.

44. The Czechoslovak Political Trials, 1950–1954: The Suppressed Report of the Dubcek Government’s Commission of Inquiry, ed. Jíři Pelikán (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971), 13.

45. For an overview of these commissions, see Milan Bárta, Inspekce ministra vnitra v letech 1953–1989: Výběr dokumentů (Prague: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, 2009).

46. The main proponent of this perspective on the Nazi dictatorship was Martin Broszat, The Hitler State: The Foundation and Development of the Internal Structure of the Third Reich (London: Longman, 1981).

47. The Czechoslovak Political Trials, 1950–1954, 268.

48. Oto Ulč, “The Vagaries of Law,” Problems of Communism, July 1969, 21. For the transcript containing the accusations, see “Vyšší Vojenský prokurátor: Obžaloba,” 1968, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 2, folder 6, l.409. Defendants included Josef Čech, Ladislav Zelenka, Miroslav Pich-Tůma, Bohuslav Šedivý, Antonín Liška, Bořivoj Váver, and Josef Volf.

49. Applebaum, Iron Curtain; Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967).

50. The best-known account remains Stéphane Courtois, Jonathan Murphy, Mark Kramer, eds., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).

51. See the recent work on the multiple reasons for the failure of East European collectivization campaigns in The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe, eds. Constantin Iordachi and Arnd Bauerkamper (Budapest: CEU Press, 2014).

52. Padraic Kenney, Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists: 1945–1950 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); Malgorzata Fidelis, Women, Communism, and Industrialization in Postwar Poland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Mark Pittaway, The Workers’ State: Industrial Labor and the Making of Socialist Hungary (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012); Jon Bloomfield, Passive Revolution: Politics and the Czechoslovak Working Class, 1945–1948 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979); M. R. Myant, Socialism and Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Charles Gati, Hungary and the Soviet Bloc (Durham: Duke University Press, 1986).

53. Krzysytof Szwagrzyk, “Wstęp,” in Aparat bezpieczeństwa w Polsce: Kadra kierownicza, tom I 1944–1956 (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2005), 7–13; Piotr Chmielowiec, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Łańcucie 1944–1956 (Łódź: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2006); Konrad Rokicki, ed., Departament X MBP, wzorce, struktury, działanie (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2007).

54. Cristina Vatulescu, Police Aesthetics: Literature, Film, and the Secret Police in Soviet Times (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010); Katherine Verdery, Secrets and Truths: Ethnography in the Archive of Romania’s Secret Police (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2014).

55. Jens Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit (Berlin: BstU Abteilung Bildung und Forschung, 1996); Krzysztof Lesiakowski, Mieczsław Moczar “Mietek” biografia polityczna (Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza Rytm, 1998); Barbara Fijałkowska, Borejsza i Różański: Przyczynek do dziejów stalinizmu w Polsce (Olsztyn: Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna, 1995); Otto Wilfriede, Erich Mielke, Biographie: Aufstieg und Fall eines Tschekisten (Berlin: Dietz, 2000); Nikita Petrov, Pervyi predsedatel’ KGB Ivan Serov (Moscow: Materik, 2005); Andrzej Paczkowski, Trzy Twarze Józefa Światły (Warsaw: Proszynski Media Sp, 2009); Anna Sobór-Świderska, Jakub Berman: Biografia komunisty (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2009); Jan Kalous, Štěpán Plaček: Život zpravodajského fanatika ve službách KSČ (Prague: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, 2010).

56. Thomas Lindenberger, “La police populaire de la RDA de 1952 á 1958,” Annales, HSS, 53, no. 1 (January-February 1998): 119–51; Sonia Combe, Une société sous surveillance: les intellectuels et la Stasi (Paris: Albin Michel 1999); Jens Gieseke, ed., Staatssicherheit und Gesellschaft: Studien zum Herrschaftsalltag in der DDR, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2007); Duane Huguenin, “Mutations des pratiques répressives de la police secréte tchécoslovaque,” Vingtiéme siècle: Revue d’histoire 2007/4, no. 96; Françoise Mayer, “Individus sous contrôle dans la société tchécoslovaque de 1945 à 1989: Avant-propos” Cahiers du CEFRES no. 32 (Prague 2012): 5–13.

57. Matěj Spurný, Nejsou jako my. Česká společnost a menšiny v pohraničí (Prague: Antikomplex, 2011); Gregor Thum, Die fremde Stadt: Breslau 1945 (Berlin: Siedler, 2003).

58. Karel Bartošek, Les Aveux des Archives: Prague, Paris, Prague 1948–1968 (Paris: Seuil, DL, 1996). Another thought-provoking critique on the limitations of communist archives is Karel Kaplan, Dans les archives du Comité Central: 30 ans de secrets du Bloc soviétique (Paris: Albin Michel, 1980).

59. Teresa Torańska, Oni (London: Aneks, 1985); Karel Kaplan, Mocní a bezmocní (Toronto: Sixty-Eight Publishers, 1989).

60. Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind, 26–27.

61. These are available on the website of the Institute for National Remembrance in Poland, see the following page: https://inwentarz.ipn.gov.pl/archivalCollection?id_a=2033&id_pz=9808&id_s=10366&id_ps=17910.

62. Krystyna Kersten and Tomasz Szarota, “Znaczenia masowych materiałów pamiętnikarskich w badaniach historycznych oraz aktualne możliwości ich wykorzystania,” Dzieje najnowsze: Rocznik 11 (1979): 1.

63. Neil MacFarquhar, “From a Dacha Wall, a Clue to Raoul Wallenberg’s Cold War Fate,” New York Times, August 6, 2016.

64. T. V. Volokitina, T. M. Islamov, G. P. Murashko, A. F. Noskovoa, L. A. Pogovaya, eds., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskich arkhivov, 1949–1953; Sowjetische Speziallager in Deutschland 1945 bis 1950, heraus. von Alexander von Plato (Berlin: Akademie Verlag GmbH, 1998).

PART I. POSTWAR AS REVOLUTION

1. “Raport z inspekcji w Komitecie Powiatowym w Łowiczu dokonany przez ppor. Robowskę instruktor Wojewódzkiego Komitetu PPR” AAN Warsaw, PPR Komitet Centralny, Wydział Personalny-KW Łódź woj. 1945–1949, sygn. 295/XXI-31.

2. “Týdenní zpráva o náladě a smyšlení obyvatelstva Velké Prahy,” 14 July 1945, ABS Prague, f. 300, a.č. 300–29–2.

3. Anonymous, A Woman in Berlin, trans. Philip Boehm (New York: Picador, 2003), 41.

4. Naimark, Russians in Germany, 9.

5. Vladislav Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 1.

6. Naimark, Russians in Germany, 69–140.

7. Jan Gross, “War as Revolution,” in The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, ed. Norman Naimark and Leonid Gibianskii. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997), 17–40.

8. Stephen Smith, “Introduction,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 5. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

9. Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (London: Bodley Head, 2010).

10. Marcin Zaremba, Wielka Trwoga: Polska 1944–1947 (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, 2012), 96.

11. Ibid., 96.

12. R. M Douglas, Orderly and Humane (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 1.

13. Bradley Abrams, “The Second World War and the East European Revolution,” East European Politics and Societies 16, no. 3 (August 2002), 631.

14. Ibid., 633.

15. Vasily Grossman, A Writer at War, ed. Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova (London: Harvill Press, 2005), 315.

16. Zaremba, Wielka Trwoga, 190.

17. Peter Holquist made a similar argument linking Bolshevik surveillance and censorship practices with those developed during the First World War in late tsarist Russia, see Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002).

18. Stanisław Bigaj, “Organizowanie B. Powiatowego Urzędu Bezpieczeństwa w Chrzanowie I Pierwszy okres jego działalności, Relacja nr. 125,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/11, s. 23.

19. “Historická data partyzánské brigády mistra J. Husi,” undated, ABS Prague, f. 325, ač. 325–130–1, l. 4.

20. Milan Šimečka, The Restoration of Order: The Normalization of Czechoslovakia, 1969–1976 (London: Verso, 1984), 84.

21. Czesław Miłosz, The Captive Mind (New York: Vintage International, 1981).

22. Barbara Fijałkowska, Borejsza i Różański: Przyczynek do dziejów stalinizmu w Polsce (Olsztyn: Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna, 1995), 175.

23. Olaf Kappelt, Die Entnazifizierung in der SBZ sowie die Rolle und der Einfluss ehemaliger Nationalsozialisten in der DDR als ein soziologisches Phänomen (Hamburg: Kovač, 1997), 319.

24. Zaremba, Wielka Trwoga, 407–18.

25. “Návrhy na zlepšení chodu zpravodajské služby,” 1 October 1946, ABS Prague, f. 304, ač. 304–60–5.

26. Jan Gross, Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland’s Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

CHAPTER 1. THE RULE OF CHAOS

Epigraph: “Protokół z posiedzenia Komitet Centralny,” 9 October 1944, Archiwum Akt Nowych (AAN), zespół. PPR Komitet Centralny: Biuro Polityczne 1944, sygn. 295/V-1.

1. “Raport okresowy: Przebieg Wyborów w Powiecie Jasło,” 27 January 1947, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (IPN), Warsaw, Rz. 04–8.

2. Andrzej Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom, trans. Jane Cave (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 234.

3. Zygmunt Klukowski, Red Shadow: A Physician’s Memoir of the Soviet Occupation of Eastern Poland, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997), 95.

4. For a more concrete discussion of this term, see Paczkowski, “Aparat bezpieczeństwa wobec podziemia niepodległościowego w latach 1944–1948,” in Wojna domowa czy nowa okupacja? Polska po roku 1944 (Warsaw: światowy Związek Żołnierzy Armii Krajowej Oficyna Wydaw. RYTM, 2001); Anita Prażmowska, Civil War in Poland: 1942–1948 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

5. Marek Chodakiewicz, Between Nazis and Soviets: Occupation Politics in Poland (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004); according to Łukasz Kamiński, “Today’s Polish historians . . . tend to reject the term ‘civil war,’ arguing instead that this was a national war waged by Polish society against the Soviet and NKVD troops occupying their towns and villages.” Kamiński, Stalinism Revisited: The Establishment of Communist Regimes in East-Central Europe (New York: Central European University Press, 2009), 95.

6. Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

7. Józef Kijko, “Relacja,” Lublin, 26 September 1979, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/82, s. 81.

8. Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, 210.

9. Anna Sobór-Świderska, Jakub Berman: Biografia komunisty (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2009), 147–48.

10. Szwagrzyk, “Wstęp” in Aparat bezpieczeństwa w Polsce: Kadra kierownicza, tom I 1944–1956, 25–26.

11. “Wykres porównawczy stanów osobowych Apar. BP,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1583/140.

12. There are many reference materials on the structure of the MBP and its affiliated militia. See H. Dominiczak, Organy bezpieczeństwa PRL 1944–1990. Rozwój i działalność w świetle dokumentów MSW (Warsaw, 1997); P. Majer, Milicja Obywatelska 1944–1957: Geneza, organizacja, działalność, miejsce w aparacie władzy (Olsztyn, 2004); Aparat bezpieczeństwa w Polsce: Kadra kierownicza, tom I 1944–1956 (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2005).

13. Krzysztof Czubara, Bezpieka: Urząd bezpieczeństwa na Zamojszczyźnie 1944–1947 (Atut Biuro Promocji, 2003); Rok pierwszy: Powstanie i działalność aparatu bezpieczeństwa publicznego na Lubelszczyźnie, ed. Leszek Pietrzak, Sl Poleszak, R. Wnuk, M. Zajączkowski. (Warsaw: IPN, 2004); Rok pierwszy: Powstanie i działalność aparatu bezpieczeństwa publicznego na Rzeszowszczyźnie, sierpień 1944-lipiec 1945, wyb. I oprac. D. Iwaneczko, Z. Nawrocki, (Rzeszów: IPN, 2005); J Kułak. Pierwszy rok sowieckiej okupacji, Białystok 1944–1945 (Białystok: IPN, 1996); D. Iwaneczko, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Przemyślu 1944–1956 (Rzeszów: IPN, 2004); Krzysztof Sychowicz, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Łomży 1944–1956; (Białystok: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2009); Robert Klementowski, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w powiecie Lwówek śląski 1945–1956 (Wroclaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej); Piotr Chmielowiec, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Łańcucie 1944–1956 (Łódź: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2006); Twarze Olsztyńskiej Bezpieki: Informator Personalny, ed. Piotr Kardela (Białystok: IPN, 2007); Robert Klementowski, Urząd bezpieczeństwa w Lubinie 1945–1956 (Wroclaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2007); Piotr Chmielowiec, Urząd bezpieczeństwa w Brzozowie 1944–1956 (Rzezów: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2008); Twarze koszalińskiej bezpieki: Informator Personalny, ed. Paweł Knap, Marcin Ozga, and Paweł Skubisz (Szczecin: IPN, 2008); T. Danilecki and M. Zwolski, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego w Bielsku Podlaskim (1944–1956) (Białystok: IPN, 2008); K. Sychowicz, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Łomży-powstanie i działalność (1944–1956) (Białystok: IPN, 2008); Rok pierwszy: Powstanie i działalność aparatu bezpieczeństwa publicznego na Pomorzu i Kujawach (luty-grudzień 1945), red. nauk. B. Binaszewska, P. Rybarczyk. (Warsaw-Bydgoszcz-Gdańsk: IPN, 2010).

14. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, 147.

15. Ibid., 149.

16. Henryk Słabek, “W związku z problematyką sesji I publikacji Wojna domowa czy nowa okupacja” in Dzieje najnowsze, rocznik XXXI, 1999, 108.

17. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, 96–97.

18. Adela Jaworowska, “Relacje nr. 24 płk. Adeli Jaworowskiej,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/75, s. 9.

19. Aparat bezpieczeństwa w Polsce: Kadra kierownicza, tom I 1944–1956 (Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2005), 25–26.

20. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, 118.

21. Paczkowski discusses how the department for political education and censorship of the PPR evolved from departments in the Polish military with such responsibilities, ibid., 160.

22. Paczkowski, “Poland,” in A Handbook of the Communist Security Apparatus in East-Central Europe, 226.

23. “Untitled Memoir,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/51.

24. Bigaj, “Organizowanie B. Powiatowego Urzędu Bezpieczeństwa w Chrzanowie I Pierwszy okres jego działalności,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/11, s. 17–18.

25. Klukowski, Red Shadow, 24, 39.

26. Andrzej Paczkowski, “Poland, the ‘Enemy Nation’” in The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, ed. Stéphane Courtois, Jonathan Murphy, and Mark Kramer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 373.

27. Kazimierz Frontczak, Siły zbrojne Polski Ludowej (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej, 1974), 24.

28. Klukowski, Red Shadow, 25.

29. “Sytuacja w terenie,” March 1946, AAN Warsaw, zespół. 1400, sygn. 295/IX t. 410.

30. “Wydział Organizacyjny—Wojsko Polskie i rząd Pol. Wydz. Sprawozdania opisowe: Sytuacja w Terenie,” March 1946, AAN, Dział: PPR KC, sygn. 295/IX—410.

31. “Sytuacja w terenie,” March 1946, AAN Warsaw, zespół. 1400, sygn. 295/IX t.410.

32. “Raport I. Sierowa dla Ł. Berii o nastrojach w armii polskiej,” 14 May 1945, Teczka Specjalna J. W. Stalina: raporty NKWD z Polski, 1944–1946, op. Tatiana Cariewskaja (Warsaw: Oficyjna Wydawnicza Rytm, 1998), 242.

33. On the Soviet case, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Stalin and the Making of a New Elite, 1928–1939,” Slavic Review 38, no. 3 (1979): 377–402.

34. “Iz pis’ma zamestitelya direktora Tsentral’noi partiinoi shkoly TsK PPR R. Kaplan Kobrenskoi v TsK VKPb o politicheskoi polozhenii v Pol’she i nedostatkach v rabote PPR,” in T. V. Volokitina, T. M. Islamov, G. P. Murashko, A. F. Noskovoa, L. A. Pogovaya, eds., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskich arkhivov, Tom I, 1944–1948, 375.

35. Augustyn Bochenek, “Relacja,” 14 May 1976, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/14, s. 6.

36. Ibid.

37. Tadeusz Kuźma, “Wspomnienia Własne z lat 1944–1960,” Lidzbark Warmiński, 1984, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/355, s. 8–23.

38. Sheila Fitzpatrick, “The Civil War as a Formative Experience,” in Bolshevik Culture: Experiment and Order in the Russian Revolution, ed. Abbot Gleason, Peter Kenez, and Richard Stites (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 57–76; Mark Von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917–1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990).

39. Paczkowski, The Spring Is Ours, 162.

40. “Praca Polityczno-Wychowawcza,” 1946, AAN Warsaw, sygn. 1400: 295/IX t.410.

41. Fijałkowska, Borejsza i Różański, 174.

42. Józef Kijko, “Relacja,” 26 September 1979, IPN BU 2241/82, 112.

43. Paczkowski, “Poland,” in A Handbook of the Communist Security Apparatus in East-Central Europe, 247.

44. Krystyna Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 1943–1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 239.

45. Ibid., 234.

46. Paczkowski, “Poland, the ‘Enemy Nation,’” 373; Teczka Specjalna J. W. Stalina: Raporty NKWD z Polski 1944–1946 (Warsaw: Wydawnicza RYTM, 1998); Franciszek Gryciuk, Represje NKWD wobec żołnierzy podziemnego Państwa Polskiego w latach 1944–1945 wybór źródeł (Siedlce WSRP, 1995); Iz Warshawy, Moscow, Tovarishchu Beriya (Moscow: Sibirskii khonograf, 2001).

47. Jan Gross, Revolution from Abroad, xv.

48. Jan Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz (New York: Random House, 2006), 9.

49. Amir Weiner and Aigi Rahi-Tamm, “Getting to Know You,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 13, no. 1 (Winter 2012), 9.

50. Nikita Petrov, “Rol’ MGB SSSR v sovetizatsii Pol’shi,” accessed on BBB Live Journal.

51. Petrov, Pervi predsedatel’ KGB: Ivan Serov (Moscow: Materik, 2005), 15–17.

52. Ibid., 19; Ivan Serov, Zapiski iz chemodana: tainiy dnevniki pervogo predsedatelia KGB (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 2016), 20.

53. Serov, Zapiski iz chemodana, 251.

54. Paczkowski, “Poland, the ‘Enemy Nation,’” 374.

55. “Raport nachal’niku glavnogo upravleniya informatsii pol’skogo voiskapolkovniku tov. Kozhushko,” 26 July 1945, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2386/17339.

56. Petrov, “Rol’ MGB SSSR v sovetizatsii Pol’shi,” accessed on BBB Live Journal.

57. Ibid.

58. Petrov, Pervi predsedatel’ KGB, 915.

59. Andrzej Paczkowski, Trzy Twarze Józefa Światły (Warsaw: Proszynski Media Sp, 2009), 76.

60. Paczkowski, Aparat bezpieczeństwa w latach 1944–1956 taktyka, strategie, i metody, 1.

61. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, 138.

62. Petrov, Kto rukovodil organami gosbezopacnost, 1942–1954 (Moscow: Zven’ya: Memorial, 2010), 777. He was promoted in 1935, 1938, 1941, and 1943.

63. Ibid., 326. He was promoted in 1942, 1943, and 1944.

64. Bigaj, “Organizowanie B. Powiatowego Urzędu Bezpieczeństwa w Chrzanowie I Pierwszy okres jego działalności,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/11, s. 18.

65. Marci Shore, Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation’s Life and Death in Marxism, 1918–1968 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).

66. De Weydenthal, The Communists of Poland, 31.

67. These facts about Światło’s life are from Mówi Józef Światło, 11–13.

68. Paczkowski, “Poland, the ‘Enemy Nation’,” 363–67.

69. Adela Jaworowska, “Wspomnienia z pracy w organach bezpieczeństwa w okresie 1944–1945, Relacja nr. 24,” 1977, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/75, s. 17.

70. “Iz pis’ma zamestitelya direktora Tsentra’noi partiinoi shkoly TsK PPR R. Kaplan Kobrenskoi v TsK VKPb o politicheskoi polozhenii v Pol’she i nedostatkach v rabote PPR,” T. V. Volokitina, T. M. Islamov, G. P. Murashko, A. F. Noskovoa, L. A. Pogovaya, eds., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskich arkhivov, Tom I, 1944–1948, 374.

71. “Soobschenie narodnogo komissara vnutrennykh del SSSR L.P. Berii narodnomy komissary inostrannykh del V.M. Molotovu o khode osvobozhdeniya pol’skykh grazhdan iz mest zaklyucheniya, ssylki I spetsposelenii NKVD,” in Volokitina, Murashko, Noskova, and Ermakova, NKVD I pol’skoe podpol’e, 1944–1945, 40.

72. Klukowski, Red Shadow, 52–53.

73. Andrzej Friszke, Przystosowanie i opór: Studia z dziejów PRL (Warsaw: Biblioteka ‘Więzi,’ 2007), 6.

74. Chmielowiec, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Łańcucie 1944–1956, 25.

75. Ibid.

76. “Zarządzenie nr. 31,” 10 August 1948, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1572–63.1.

77. Szwagrzyk, Aparat bezpieczeństwa w Polsce: Kadra kierownicza, tom I: 1944–1956, 69.

78. Paczkowski, Aparat bezpieczeństwa w latach 1944–1956 taktyka, strategie, i metody, 59.

79. De Weydenthal, The Communists of Poland, 26.

80. Jaff Schatz, The Generation: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Communists of Poland (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 85.

81. Szwagrzyk, “Wstęp” in Aparat bezpieczeństwa w Polsce: Kadra kierownicza, tom I 1944–1956, 54.

82. “Życiorys: Mikołaj Orechwa,” undated, IPN BU 0193/6999/1, s. 4.

83. Ibid.

84. “Ankieta specjalna: Orechwa Mikołaj Szymona,” IPN BU 0193/6999/1, s. 7.

85. Gross, Revolution from Abroad, 4.

86. Ibid., 5.

87. “Ankieta specjalna: Orechwa Mikołaj Szymona,” IPN BU 0193/6999/1, s. 7.

88. Szwagrzyk, Aparat bezpieczeństwa w Polsce: Kadra kierownicza, tom I: 1944–1956, 69.

89. “Życiorys,” 7 September 1944, Akta Osobowe Różański Józef s. Adama, IPN BU 0193–7094, s. 6.

90. Fijałkowska, Borejsza i Różański, 62–63.

91. Schatz, The Generation, 27–28.

92. Ibid., 151.

93. Fijałkowska, Borejsza i Różański, 87.

94. Piotr Kosicki, “The Katyń Massacres of 1940,” 8 September 2008, accessed on http://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/katyn-massacres-1940.

95. Fijałkowska, Borejsza i Różański, 100–101.

96. “Ankieta specjalna,” Akta Osobowe Różański Józef s. Adama, IPN BU 0193–7094, s. 9.

97. Fijałkowska, Borejsza i Różański, 183.

98. Agata Stopyra, “Figurantka ‘Roxana:’ inwigilacja Julii Brystiger przez Służbę Bezpieczeństwa 1962–1974” Przegląd Archiwalny Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej 2 (2009): 389–404.

99. Aparat bezpieczeństwa w Polsce: Kadra kierownicza, tom I, 35–3.

100. “Odpis życiorysu płk. Grzybowskiego,” 16 August 1944, Akta osobowe: Grzybowski Faustyn s Filipa, IPN BU 0329/27 t.1.2, s. 5.

101. Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 240.

102. “Karta Statystyczno-Ewidencyjna etatowego funkcjonariusza BP,” 5 February 1951, Akta osobowe: Grzybowski Faustyn s Filipa, IPN 0329/27 t.1.2, s. 9.

103. “Voennomy attashe pri posol’stve SSSR v Pol’she—maiory Maslovy, 23 April 1948, Akta osobowe, Grzybowski Faustyn s Filipa, IPN 0329/27 t.1.2.

104. Szwagrzyk, Aparat bezpieczeństwa w Polsce: Kadra kierownicza, tom I: 1944–1956, 64–67.

105. Mieczysław Broniatowski, “W służbie porządku publicznego: Wspomnienia rok 1943–1963,” undated, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/278, 12.

106. Cadres file, “Mieczysław Moczar,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 0194/3161, l. 14.

107. “Ministerstwo Spraw Wewnętrznych Generała Dywizji: Mieczysław Moczar,” undated, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 0194/3161, s. 13.

108. Gross, Revolution from Abroad, 6.

109. Stanisław Radkiewicz, “Letter to Bierut,” 11 May 1944, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1576/6.

110. Szwagrzyk, Aparat bezpieczeństwa w Polsce: Kadra kierownicza, tom I: 1944–1956, 17.

111. “Wykres porównawczy stanów osobowych Apar. BP,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1583/140.

112. “Iz pis’ma zamestitelya direktora Tsentral’noi partiinoi shkoly TsK PPR R. Kaplan Kobrenskoi v TsK VKPb o politicheskoi polozhenii v Pol’she i nedostatkach v rabote PPR,” in T. V. Volokitina, T. M. Islamov, G. P. Murashko, A. F. Noskovoa, L. A. Pogovaya, eds., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskich arkhivov, Tom I, 1944–1948, 374.

113. “Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego: Rozkaz nr. 75,” 20 November 1945, IPN BU 01258–126.

114. Bigaj, “Organizowanie B. Powiatowego Urzędu Bezpieczeństwa w Chrzanowie I Pierwszy okres jego działalności,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/11, s. 29.

115. “Iz informatsii chlena TsK PPR L. Kasmana G. Dimitrovu o polozhenii v Pol’she,” 5 September 1944, T. V. Volokitina, T. M. Islamov, G. P. Murashko, A. F. Noskovoa, L. A. Pogovaya, eds., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskich arkhivov, Tom I, 1944–1948, 65.

116. Krzysztof Czubara, Bezpieka: Urząd bezpieczeństwa na Zamojszczyźnie 1944–1947 (Atut Biuro Promocji, 2003), 51.

117. Augustyn Bochenek, “Relacja,” 14 May 1976, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/14, s. 4.

118. Krzysztof Sychowicz, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Łomży 1944–1956; (Białystok: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2009); Robert Klementowski, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w powiecie Lwówek śląski 1945–1956 (Wroclaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej); Piotr Chmielowiec, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Łańcucie 1944–1956 (Łódż: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2006); Krzysztof Czubara, Bezpieka: Urząd bezpieczeństwa na Zamojszczyźnie 1944–1947 (Atut Biuro Promocji, 2003); Piotr Chmielowiec, Urząd bezpieczeństwa w Brzozowie 1944–1956 (Rzezów: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2008); Robert Klementowski, Urząd bezpieczeństwa w Lubinie 1945–1956 (Wroclaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2007); Twarze koszalińskiej bezpieki: Informator Personalny, ed. Paweł Knap, Marcin Ozga, and Paweł Skubisz (Szczecin: IPN, 2008); Twarze Olsztyńskiej Bezpieki: Informator Personalny, ed. Piotr Kardela (Białystok: IPN, 2007).

119. Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 166.

120. Andrzej Paczkowski, “Communist Poland 1944–1989: Some Controversies and A Single Conclusion,” Polish Review 44, no. 2 (1999): 222.

121. “Raport do Kierownika Woj. Urz. Bezp. Publ. W Lublinie kpt. Dudy Teodora,” 2 October 1944, IPN Warsaw, IPN Lu 029/1.

122. “Rozkaz Nr. 13” Lublin, 3 October 1944, IPN Warsaw, IPN Lu 029/1.

123. Jaworowska, “Relacje nr. 24 płk. Adeli Jaworowskiej,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/75, s. 7–8.

124. Her claim is supported by the personnel files available from lower-level offices. See Piotr Chmielowiec, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Łańcucie 1944–1956 (Łódź: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2006); Klementowski, Urząd bezpieczeństwa w Lubinie 1945–1956 (Wroclaw Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2007); Twarze koszalińskiej bezpieki: Informator Personalny, ed. Paweł Knap, Marcin Ozga, and Paweł Skubisz (Szczecin IPN. 2008); Twarze Olsztyńskiej Bezpieki: Informator Personalny, ed. Piotr Kardela (Białystok IPN, 2007); Tomasz Rochatka, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Gnieźnie w latach 1945–1956 (Poznań: Wydaw. Poznańskie, 2009).

125. Adrian Jusupović, “Nie matura, lecz chęć szczera zrobi z ciebie oficera, czyli rola przyzakładowego szkolnictwa w kształceniu kadr RBP/MBP/MSW 1944–1990,” Dzieje najnowsze, rocznik XLVII, 2015, 98.

126. Ibid.

127. Krzysztof Sychowicz, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Łomży 1944–1956, (Bia lystok: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2009), 50.

128. Dariusz Iwaneczko, “Powiatowe struktury UB-alienacja czy przynależność do lokalnej wspólnoty?” “W stronę antropologii: bezpieki.” Nieklasyczna refleksja nad aparatem bezpieczeństwa w Polsce Ludowej, ed. Jarosław Syrnyk, Agnieszka Klarman, Mariusz Mazur. Eugeniusz Kłosek (Wroclaw: IPN, 2014), 273.

129. Norman Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 132.

130. Andrzej Duda, “Relacja organizatora pracy kadrowej w b. Wojewódzkich Urzędach Bezpieczeństwa Rzeszów, Kraków i Gdańsk,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/20.

131. Gregor Thum, Uprooted: How Breslau Became Wrocław during the Century of Expulsions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 181. Klementowski, Urząd bezpieczeństwa w Lubinie 1945–1956, 77.

132. Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 164.

133. Jan Bielecki, “Wspomnienia ze służby w Milicji Obywatelskiej w okresie od lipca 1945 do grudnia 1947,” October 1979, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/8, s. 4.

134. Tadeusz Kuźma, “Wspomnienia Własne z lat 1944–1960,” Lidzbark Warmiński, 1984, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/355, 8–23.

135. Józef Nowitkiewicz, “Relacja z mojej pracy w organach Milicji Obywatelskiej w latach 1944–1977,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/145.

136. Bigaj, “Organizowanie B. Powiatowego Urzędu Bezpieczeństwa w Chrzanowie I Pierwszy okres jego działalności,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/11, s. 8.

137. Bolesław Purchla, “Wspomnienia z pracy w Milicji Obywatelskiej w latach 1944–1975 na terenie woj. Rzeszowskiego, Krakowskiego, Olsztyńskiego, i Zielonogórskiego,” undated, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/171.

138. Augustyn Bochenek, “Relacja,” 14 May 1976, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/14, s. 4.

139. Ibid.

140. Mieczysław Broniatowski, “W służbie porządku publicznego: Wspomnienia rok 1943–1963,” undated, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/278, s. 14.

141. “Protokół z posiedzenia odprawy partyjnej Komendanta Krajowego MO I jego zastępcy dla spraw polit-wychowawczych,” 10 November 1944, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1572/4407.

142. “Protokół z plenarnego posiedzenia Komitetu Centralnego,” 3–4 November 1945, AAN Warsaw, dział. PPR Komitet Centralny, sygn. 295/II-4.

143. Sobór-Świderska, Jakub Berman: Biografia komunisty, 170.

144. Ibid., 171.

145. Ibid., 126–32.

146. Ibid., 287–88.

147. Jeremy M. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 29.

148. “Ze sprawozdania Wojewódzkiego Lubelskiego Komitetu za luty i marzec,” AAN Warsaw, dział. PZPR, sygn. 295/VII-107.

149. “Materiały dotyczące referendum w 1946 roku oraz wyborów w 1947 roku w woj. poznańskim,” Poznań, 1946–1947, IPN BU 00231/86/37.

150. Teofil Bartoszewski, “Wspomnienie z okresu służby w Sekcji do Walk z Bandytyzmem w PUBP Turek,” Warsaw, undated, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/226.

151. Chmielowiec, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Łańcucie 1944–1956, 26.

152. Leopold Arendarski, “Relacja,” Kozienice, 15 May 1974, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/2, s. 10.

153. Adam Górka, “Organizacja aparatu bezpieczeństwa i walki z reakcyjnym podziemiem na Lubelszczyźnie w latach 1944–1947: Relacja 183,” 1979, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/57.

154. Szwagrzyk, Aparat bezpieczeństwa w Polsce: Kadra kierownicza, tom I: 1944–1956, 68.

155. Tomasz Gałwiaczek, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Oławie (Wroclaw: Oddział Instytutu Pamięci, 2012), 59. Gałwiaczek argues that the violence between the militia and secret police in 1945 had “somewhat lessened” by May 1947. See Jan Gross on how these arguments impeded their ability to intervene in pogroms, in Fear, 94.

156. “Okólnik Nr. 85 o formie zwracania się do Sądów I Urzędów państwowych,” 10 October 1945, AAN Warsaw, zespół. 1744, sygn. 20.

157. Teofil Bartoszewski, “Wspomnienie z okresu służby w Sekcji do Walk z Bandytyzmem w PUBP Turek,” Warsaw, undated, IPN BU 2241/226.

158. Chmielowiec, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Brzozowie 1944–1956 (Rzeszów: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2008), 28–34.

159. “Raport do Ministra Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego płk. Radkiewicza,” Bialy stok, 11 October 1945, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1572–718.

160. “Protokół z plenarnego posiedzenia Komitetu Centralnego,” 20–21 May 1945, AAN Warsaw, PPR Komitet Centralny, Protokół Plenum KC, sygn. 295/II-2.

161. Stanisław Bigaj, “Organizowanie B. Powiatowego Urzędu Bezpieczeństwa w Chrzanowie I Pierwszy okres jego działalności, relacja nr. 125,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/11, s. 39.

162. Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 240.

163. “Program kursu szkolenia organizacyjnego,” undated, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 01206/101, l. 14.

164. Jan Bielecki, “Wspomnienia ze służby w Milicji Obywatelskiej w okresie od lipca 1945 do grudnia 1947,” October 1979, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/8, s. 69.

165. Józef Kijko, “Relacja,” 26 September 1979, IPN BU 2241/82, s. 112.

166. “Materiały dotyczące referendum w 1946 roku oraz wyborów w 1947 roku w woj. poznańskim,” Poznań, 1946–1947, IPN BU 00231/86/37.

167. “Protokół Plenum KC,” May 1945, AAN Warsaw, zespół. PPR Komitet Centralny, sygn., 295-II-2.

168. “Postanowienie o pociągnięciu do odpowiedzialności karnej,” 17 July 1946, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/11, s. 54.

169. “Rozkaz Personalny Nr. 142: Ministerstwo Bezp. Publ.,” 2 July 1945, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 01225/35.

170. “Rozkaz Karny Nr. 16: Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego,” 21 October 1945, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 01225/36.

171. Dokumenty do dziejów PRL: Aparat bezpieczeństwa w latach 1944–1956, część 1, ed. Andrzej Paczkowski (Warsaw: Instytut studiów politycznych PAN, 1996), 28.

172. Tadeusz Lewandowski, “Wspomnienia: Praca w PUBP Tczew 1945–1947,” Gdańsk, 1964, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/361.

173. Klukowski, Red Shadow, 22.

174. Ibid., 56.

175. Zaremba, Wielka Trwoga, 391.

176. Gałązka, “Z lat służby w Powiatowym Urzędzie Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego w Węgrowie,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241–49.

177. Ibid.

178. “Raport Dekadowy do Szefa WUBP w Olsztynie,” July 1946, IPN Warsaw, IPN Bi 084/227.

179. Around seven hundred thousand Poles worked in agriculture in Hitler’s Germany by May 1940, see Ulrich Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany under the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 84.

180. Klementowski, Urząd bezpieczeństwa w Lubinie 1945–1956, 12.

181. R. M. Douglas, Orderly and Humane, 134.

182. Ibid., 153.

183. “Okólnik Nr. 9,” Warsaw, 7 March 1947, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 01225/56.

184. “MBP-Rozkaz Nr. 88,” 13 October 1946, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 01258–145.

185. “Niedomagania w funkcjonowaniu organów Urzędu Bezpieczeństwa na terenach Ziem Odzyskanych,” 7 October 1945, AAN, zespół. Ministerstwo Administracji Publicznej, sygn. 2473.

186. “Wyrok w Imieniu Polskiej Rzeczypospolitej Ludowej: Wojskowy Sąd Rejonowy w Szczecinie,” Szczecin, 20 July 1952, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 0859–793.

187. Ibid.

188. Tadeusz Wojtyniak, “Wspomnienia z życia i pracy w PUBP-Poznań, Krosno Odrzańskie, WUBP Zielona Góra i PUBP-Szprotawa w latach 1945–1956,” Zielona Góra, 25 March 1984, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241–448, s. 23.

189. Klukowski, Red Shadow, 7.

190. “Zestawienie ilości broni zdobytej przez grupy rozbrojeniowe za okres Kwiecień-czerwiec 1950,” 9 June 1950, IPN BU 1572/274, 40–45.

191. Tadeusz Wojtyniak, “Wspomnienia z życia i pracy w PUBP-Poznań, Krosno Odrzańskie, WUBP Zielona Góra i PUBP-Szprotawa w latach 1945–1956,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/448, s. 23–24.

192. Ibid.

193. This file includes cases of UB officials put on trial for drunkenness: IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 0859–793.

194. Kamil Janicki, Pijana wojna: alkohol podczas II wojny światowej (Warsaw: Wydaw. Erica 2012), 57.

195. Ibid.

196. Jerzy Kochanowski, Through the Back Door: The Black Market in Poland, 1944–1989, trans. Anda MacBride and Anna Wrobel (New York: Peter Lang, 2017), 229–35.

197. “Protokół z inspekcji w Komitecie Pow. W Radomsku dokonany przez Ryzyka Marię dnia 18 czerwca 1945 r., 18 June 1945,” AAN, PPR Komitet Centralny, Wydział Personalny-KW Łódź woj. 1945–1949, sygn. 295/XXI-31.

198. “Sprawozdanie Instruktora KC Domagały z wyjazdu na przedzjazdową konferencję powiatową PPR w Radomsku,” 27–28 October 1945, PPR Komitet Centralny, Wydz. Personalny-Sprawozdania 1945–1948, AAN Warsaw, 295/XXI 12.

199. “MBP-Zarządzenie Nr 31,” 10 August 1948, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1572–631.

200. Ibid.

201. “Niedomagania w funkcjonowaniu organów Urzędu Bezpieczeństwa na terenach Ziem Odzyskanych,” 7 October 1945, AAN Warsaw, zespół. Ministerstwo Administracji Publicznej, sygn. 2473.

202. Thum, Uprooted, 118.

203. Jan Rypiński, “Wspomnienia z pracy w organach bezpieczeństwa z powiatów Maków Mazowiecki. Sierpc. Płock z lat 1945–1948 Relacja Nr. 7,” 1978, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/178.

204. Bigaj, “Organizowanie B. Powiatowego Urzędu Bezpieczeństwa w Chrzanowie I Pierwszy okres jego działalności,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/11, s. 29.

205. Protokół z posiedzenia odprawy partyjnej Komendanta Krajowego MO I jego zastępcy dla spraw polit.-wychowawczych, 10 November 1944, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1572/4407.

206. Józef Nowitkiewicz, “Relacja z mojej pracy w organach Milicji Obywatelskiej w latach 1944–1977,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/145.

207. “Untitled Letter to the Ministry for Public Security in Warsaw,” 13 July 1947, AAN Warsaw, zespół. Ministerstwo Administracji Publicznej, nr. mikrofilm. 1542, sygn. 607.

208. “Oświadczenie płk. Gruby do ob. Ministra Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego Gen. Dyw. S. Radkiewicza,” 20 June 1949, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 698/1010 t. 9.

209. Thum, Uprooted, 127.

210. “List od wojewody Poznański do Ministerstwa Administracji Publicznej w Warszawie,” 30 July 1947, AAN, zespół Ministerstwo Administracji Publicznej, nr. mikr. 3900, syg. 2034; “Analiza wykazu osobnych kwater stałych w budynkach prywatnych zajętych przez b, wojskowych zdemobilizowanych dokonana przez wywiad Wydziału Kwaterunkowego,” 12–14 November 1947, AAN Warsaw, zespół Ministerstwo Administracji Publicznej. Mikr. 3900. Syg. 2034; on the confusing rules regulating postwar housing distribution, see Dariusz Jarosz, Mieszkanie się należy-studium z peerelowskich praktyk społecznych (Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza “Aspra-Jr,” 2010).

211. “Protokół posiedzenia I grupy PPR,” 28 August 1945, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 01790/562 t.1.

212. Andrzej Paczkowski, Referendum z 30 czerwca 1946: Przebieg I Wyniki (Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Politycznych Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1993), 5.

213. Andrzej Paczkowski, Od sfałszowanego zwycięstwa do prawdziwej klęski szkice do portretu PRL (Cracow: Wydaw, Literackie, 2009); Michał Skoczylas, Wybory do Sejmu Ustawodawczego z 19 stycznia 1947 w świetle skarg ludności (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo TRIO, 2003).

214. Mieczysław Gałązka, “Z lat służby w Powiatowym Urzędzie Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego w Węgrowie: Relacja nr. 76,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/49.

215. “Sprawozdanie 5-cio dniowe z przeprowadzonych prac w WUBP w Olsztynie,” 15 December 1946, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 000231–86–33.

216. Nikita Petrov, “Rol’ MGB SSSR v sovetizatsii Pol’shi,” accessed on BBB Live Journal.

217. Bronisław Baryla, “Wspomnienia z pracy na terenie Kielce 1945–1947,” relacja nr. 140, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241–6.

218. In Russian, the word воспитать connotes not only academic learning but also instilling certain behavior, habits, and ways of thinking.

219. “Członkowie Okręgowej Komisji Okręg I-Poznań,” 5 January 1946, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 00231/86/33.

220. Ibid.

221. “Sprawozdanie po Referendum z woj. Poznańskiego,” July 1946, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 00231/86/37, s. 61.

222. Tadeusz Wojtyniak, “Wspomnienia z życia i pracy w PUBP, Poznań, Krosno Odrzańskie, WUBP-Zielona Góra i PUBP-Szprotawa w latach 1945–1956,” 25 March 1984, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241–52, s. 25.

223. Andrzej Paczkowski, “Terror und Überwachung: Die Funktion des Sicherheitsdienstes im kommunistischen System in Polen von 1944 bis 1956,” trans. Hanna Labrenz-Weiss (Berlin: BStU, 1999).

224. On the importance of the card catalogue in the Soviet system, see David Shearer, Policing Stalin’s Socialism: Repression and Social Order in the Soviet Union, 1924–1953 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009) 158–180.

225. Paczkowski, “Poland,” in Handbook of Communist Security Apparatuses, 250.

226. Aparat bezpieczeństwa w Polsce: Kadra kierownicza, 48.

227. Tadeusz Wojtyniak, “Wspomnienia z życia i pracy w PUBP, Poznań, Krosno Odrzańskie, WUBP-Zielona Góra i PUBP-Szprotawa w latach 1945–1956,” 25 March 1984, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241–52, s. 25.

228. Ibid., 67.

229. Ibid., 25.

230. Ibid., 71.

231. Ibid., 27.

232. Gross, Fear, 25.

233. Ibid., 23.

234. Ibid., 25.

235. “Wykres porównawczy stanów osobowych Apar. BP,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1583/140.

236. “Komitet Powiatowy Polskiej Partii Robotniczej w Tarnobrzegu: Sprawozdanie ogólne,” 13 February 1946, IPN Warsaw, IPN Rz. 0174–5.

237. “Raport z wywiadu Nowaka Piotra z obywatelami, którzy wystąpili z partii Dołęgą, Seweryniakiem i Wojtysiakiem ze wsi Kruszów gm, Kruszów pow. Łódź,” 7 August 1945, AAN Warsaw, PPR Komitet Centralny, Wydz. Personalny-KW Łódź woj, 1945–1948, sygn. 295/XXI-31.

238. Klukowski, Red Shadow, 17.

239. “Raport Przewodniczącego Okręgowej Komisji Głosowania Ludowego Tow. Biernisia,” Białystok, 27 May 1946, AAN Warsaw, dział. PPR Komitet Centralny, Tytuł, Sekretariat—Referendum Ludowe, 1946, sygn., 295/VII-173.

240. “Protokół z plenarnego posiedzenia Komitetu Centralnego,” 18 September 1946, AAN Warsaw, PPR Komitet Centralny, Protokół i stenogram Plenum KC, sygn. 295-II-7.

241. “Protokół z Ogólnokrajowej narady kierowników i pracowników Wydziałów Personalnych Komitetów Wojewódzkich,” 25 April 1945, AAN Warsaw, PPR Komitet Centralny, Wydz. Personalny-Protokoły narad wydz. Personalnych KW i KP PPR, 295/XXI-9.

242. “Iz pis’ma zamestitelya direktora Tsentral’noi partiinoi shkoly TsK PPR R. Kaplan Kobrenskoi v TsK VKPb o politicheskoi polozhenii v Pol’she i nedostatkach v rabote PPR,” in Volokitina et al., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentach rossiiskich archivov 1944–1953, Tom I (Moscow: Sibirskii khronograf, 1997), 372–378.

243. As cited in Andrzej Paczkowski, “PZPR a aparat bezpieczeństwa,” in Dariusz Stola and Krzysztof Persak, PZPR jako machina władzy (Warsaw: IPN/PAN, 2012), 178.

244. “Program z posiedzeniu kierowników personalnych na odprawie Wojewódzkiej,” 15 December 1945, AAN, PPR 295/XXI-25.

245. “Stan UBP w Województwie Łódzkim,” 4 May 1946, AAN Warsaw, PPR KC, 295-XXI-54.

246. “Sprawozdanie Instruktora Wydziału Personalnego Domagały Czesł. z wyjazdu do Szkoły Centralnej PPR w Łodzi,” 12–18 October 1945, AAN Warsaw, PPR Komitet Centralny, wydz. Personalny-Sprawozdania, sygn. 295/XXI-12.

247. Ibid.

248. “Sprawozdanie instruktora KC domagały z wyjazdu do Szkoły Centralnej PPR” 8–12 March 1945, AAN Warsaw, PPR Komitet Centralny, wydz. Personalny-Sprawozdania, sygn. 295/XXI-12.

249. “Organizacja Pracy Koła PPR,” undated, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1572–3751.

250. “Egzekutywy Komitet w MBP,” November 1945–April 1947, AAN Warsaw, PPR Komitet Centralny, Sekretariat—Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego, sygn. 295/VII-161.

251. “Protokół z Konferencji Org. Part. PPR w Min. Bez. Publ.,” 26–27 April 1947, PPR Komitet Centralny, Sekretariat-Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego, 295/VII-161.

252. Tadeusz Wojtyniak, “Wspomnienia z życia i pracy w PUBP-Poznań, Krosno Odrzańskie, WUBP Zielona Góra i PUBP-Szprotawa w latach 1945–1956,” IPN BU 2241/448, s. 18.

253. “Sprawozdania z konferencji UB i MO w Kielcach,” 14 October 1945, AAN Warsaw, PPR Komitet Centralny, wydz. Personalny-Sprawozdania, sygn. 295/XXI-12.

254. “Egzekutywy Komitet w MBP,” November 1945–April 1947, AAN Warsaw, PPR Komitet Centralny, Sekretariat—Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego, sygn. 295/VII-161.

255. Bobowicz, “Wspomnienia z służby w organach MO i SB na terenie wojew. Poznańskiego w latach 1945–1968,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/13.

256. “Wykres porównawczy stanów osobowych Apar. BP,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1583/140.

257. “Informatsiya Zagranichnogo otdela TsK PPR LC Baranovu o politicheskom polozhenii v Pol’she posle vyborov v Sejm,” 17 March 1947, in Volokitina et al., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskikh archivov, Tom I, 1944–1948, 587–91.

258. “Kadry Partyjne,” undated, AAN Warsaw, PPR Komitet Centralny, Wydz. Personalny-Wytyczne wydziału, sygn. 295/XXI-5.

259. “Protokół z posiedzenia personalników w Komitecie Wojewódzkim PPR Kielce,” 10 October 1946, AAN Warsaw, PPR Komitet Centralny, Wydz. Personalny-KW Kielce, 1945–1948, sygn. 295/XXI-25.

260. “Sprawozdania o stanie Kadr,” Katowice, 1 August 1946, AAN Warsaw, PPR Komitet Centralny, wydz. Personalny-KW Katowice, sygn. 295/XXI-23.

261. “Protokół z odprawy instruktorów Personalnych województwa Kielskiego,” 11 February 1946, PPR Komitet Centralny, wydz. Personalny-KW Kielce, 295/XXI-25.

262. “Wykres porównawczy stanów osobowych Apar. BP,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1583/140.

263. Mieczysław Gałązka, “Z lat służby w Powiatowym Urzędzie Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego w Węgrowie: Relacja nr. 76,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/49.

264. Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 363.

265. Jerzy Muszyński, “Ze wspomnień pracownika Urzędu Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego,” undated, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/380.

266. “Rozkaz Nr. 7 o stanie agenturowo-operacyjnej pracy w Wojewódzkich Urzędach bezpieczeństwa publicznego w Warszawie i Krakowie,” 20 January 1946, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 01258/129.

267. “Okólnik Nr. 27,” 19 September 1947, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 01225/56.

268. James C. Scott, “Revolution in the Revolution: Peasants and Commissars,” Theory and Society 7, no. 1/2 (January–March 1979): 97–134.

269. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War, 113.

270. Henry Abramson describes a similar social breakdown in Ukraine during the revolution of 1917–20. See A Prayer for the Government (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).

CHAPTER 2. THE CZECHOSLOVAK ROAD TO THE SECRET POLICE

Epigraph: “Pokračování ve výpovědi K. Švába,” 12 September 1951, ABS Prague, f. MNB aj. 11/1 100.

1. “Seznam věcí, nalezených na ÚV KSČ v tresoru Švába,” Archivbezpečnostních složek, ABS, Prague, f. A a.č. A 8/2–1.

2. “Záznam o pohovoru se s. Čechem, plk. MV., kterého se zúčastnili s. nám. Kudrna, s. Čerman, s. Smrž,” 8 January 1963, ABS Prague, f. Zvláštní vyšetřování, a.č. ZV 4 MV 39, sv. 15.

3. “Zápis o výpovědi s obviněným Dr. Štěpánem Plačkem,” 29 November 1949, ABS Prague, f. Zvláštní vyšetřování, a.č. ZV 45 MV sv. 03.

4. “Ministerstvo národní bezpečnosti: Zápis o výpovědi Osvalda Závodského,” 25 July 1951, ABS, Prague, MNB 11/6 106, folder 8.

5. Karel Kaplan, Short March: The Communist Takeover in Czechoslovakia 1945–1948 (London: C. Hurst, 1987), 137.

6. Šváb’s archive can be found at the Security Service Archive (ABS) in Prague: MNB 11/10–110, aj. 1.

7. On the military intelligence service, see František Hanzlík, Vojenské obranné zpravodajství v zápasu o politickou moc, 1945–1950 (Prague: Úřad dokumentace a vyšetřování zločinů komunismu, 2003). On the people’s militia, see Jiří Bašta, Lidové Milice (Prague: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, 2013).

8. “Porada o novém zákonu národní bezpečnosti,” 1 June 1948, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–21–21, nonpaginated.

9. František Hanzlík, Únor 1948: výsledek nerovného zápasu (Prague: Prewon 1997), 112.

10. “Těsnopisecká zpráva o 3. schůzi ústavodárného Národního shromáždění republiky Československa,” 8 July 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–65–26.

11. Karel Kaplan and Pavel Kosatík, Gottwaldovi muži (Prague: Litomyšl, 2004), 80.

12. Ibid., 84.

13. When the Czechoslovaks spoke of revolution after the war, they were referring to 1945, not to the communist takeover of power in 1948, which was referred to as Victorious February. Bradley Abrams, The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004).

14. Karel Kaplan, Znárodnění a socialismus (Prague: Práce, 1968), 24.

15. Gordon Skilling, “People’s Democracy, the Proletarian Dictatorship and the Czechoslovak Path to Socialism,” American Slavic and East European Review 10, no. 2 (April 1951): 103.

16. “Přehled správních úřadů,” ABS Prague, f. A17, ač. A17–12.

17. Dekrety prezidenta republiky 1940–1945: Dokumenty, ed. Karel Jech and Karel Kaplan (Brno: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny: Doplněk, 2002), 56.

18. “Vládní nařízení, jimž se zřizují očistné komise pro přezkoumání činnosti veřejných zaměstnanců,” 1945, ABS Prague, f. 304, a.č. 304–27–3.

19. “Dekret o očistných komisích pro veřejné zaměstnance,” NA Prague, f. Klement Gottwald, sv. 138, aj. 1494.

20. “Politická práva příslušníků sboru národní bezpečnosti,” 8 December 1945, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–19–8.

21. Jan Machala, “Retribuce a parlamentní volby 1946,” Paměť a Dějiny, 2013–02, 39–51.

22. Milan Bárta, “Josef Pavel, My jsme rozhodnuti zneškodnit každého, nikoho se nebojíme,” Paměť a Dějiny, 2012–04.

23. Ibid.

24. “Resoluce ve věci mravně politické a osvětové výchovy ve SNB,” April 1947, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–21–18.

25. Týdenní zpráva o náladě a smyšlení obyvatelstva Velké Prahy,” 8–14 July 1945, ABS Prague, f. 300, ač. 300–29–2.

26. Vlastislav Kroupa, Sbor národní bezpečnosti (Prague: Naše Vojsko, 1977), 42.

27. “Přehled intervencí a dotazů, zpracovávaných u ministerstva vnitra: hlavního velitelství SNB,” 2 September 1947, ABS, f. 304, a.č. 304–78–1.

28. “Připomínky k zpracování návrhů na jmenování, 2 December 1946,” ABS Prague, f. 304, ač. 304–84–9.

29. “Přehled intervencí a dotazů, zpracovávaných u ministerstva vnitra: hlavního velitelství SNB,” 2 September 1947, ABS Prague, f. 304, ač. 304–78–1.

30. “Doplnění mužstva Sboru národní bezpečnosti v roce 1948,” 27 May 1948, ABS Prague, f. Zvláštní vyšetřování, a.č. ZV 4 MV 25–16.

31. Jindřich Veselý, “Nástin hlavních zásad pro organizační a pracovní plán v národní bezpečnosti pro údobí 1948–1950,” December 1947, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–22–3.

32. Eagle Glassheim, Cleansing the Czechoslovak Borderlands (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016), 2–3.

33. “Untitled report by Oldřich Kryštof,” undated, ABS, Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–19–8.

34. “Zápis o výpovědi s obviněným Bedřichem Pokorným,” 27 srpna 1952, ABS Prague, f. Zvláštní vyšetřování, a.č. ZV 4 MV Pokorný.

35. “OZO X Litoměřice,” 14 March 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–1–7, “OZO-XII-Liberec,” 14 March 1946, f. 310, ač. 310–1–7. For more on the military intelligence service of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps, see František Hanzlík, Vojenské obranné zpravodajství v zápasu o politickou moc, 1945–1950 (Prague: Úřad dokumentace a vyšetřování zločinů komunismu, 2003), 20.

36. Erich Kulka, Jews in Svoboda’s Army in the Soviet Union (London: Institute of Contemporary Jewry, 1987), 367.

37. Hanzlík, Vojenské obranné zprávodajství v zápasu o politickou moc, 20.

38. “Směrnice pro obranné zpravodajství 1. cs. sboru v SSSR, Hanzlík, Vojenské obranné zprávodajství v zápasu o politickou moc 1945–1950, 282.

39. Ibid., 91.

40. “Převedení jednotky partyzánů a dobrovolců SPO do sboru národní bezpečnosti v Kutné Hoře,” 19 June 1945, ABS Prague, f. 304, ač. 304–84–6. “Úřad národní bezpečnosti v Liberci,” 22 July 1945, ABS Prague, f. Zvláštní vyšetřování, a.č. ZV 4 MV Pokorný.

41. František Fara, Četnické vzpomínky (Prague: Codyprint, 2002), 120.

42. “Záznam,” 26 July 1948, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–22–4.

43. “Politické problémy národní bezpečnosti,” 19 October 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–21–21, nonpaginated.

44. Kádrový posudek o s. Miroslavu Pich-Tůmovi, 10 May 1949, l. 60, 5235–5356, evidence c. PS 3783/19.

45. Miroslav Pich-Tůma, “untitled assessment,” ABS Prague, Pich-Tůma: evidence č. PS 3783/19.

46. “Historická data partyzánské brigády mistra J. Husi,” undated, ABS Prague, f. 325, ač. 325–130–1, l. 4.

47. Ibid.

48. Protokol sepsaný s Vladimírem Syrovým v příčině založení partyzánské skupiny Mstitel, 304–216–2, l. 38.

49. “Odpověď na otázky p. přednosty úřadu ZOB II,” 21 January 1947, ABS Prague, Miroslav Pich-Tůma: evidence č. PS 3783/19.

50. “Potvrzení: Kancelář Národního shromáždění republiky Československé,” 18 September 1947, ABS Prague, Miroslav Pich-Tůma: evidence č. PS 3783/19.

51. Ibid., 23.

52. Hanzlík, Vojenské obranné zpravodajství v zápasu o politickou moc, 79.

53. “Untitled report by Oldřich Kryštof,” undated, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310-19-8.

54. “K politické situaci ve sboru SNB v Čechách,” 14 January 1947, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–33–1.

55. “Untitled report by Oldřich Kryštof,” undated, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–19–8.

56. Hanzlík, Únor 1948, 43.

57. Jan Kuklík, Czech Law in Historical Contexts (Prague: Charles University Karolinum Press, 2015), 86.

58. “Provolání československé vlády k tvoření národních výborů se směrnicemi pro jejich organizaci a činnost,” 16 April 1944, in Dekrety Prezidenta Republiky 1940–1945, ed. Jech and Kaplan.

59. Marie Švermová, Vzpomínky (Prague: Futura, 2008), 195–96.

60. Kuklík, Czech Law in Historical Contexts, 89.

61. This service included the civil police, citizens’ militia, and border guards. Jan Pešek, Štátna bezpečnost na Slovensku 1948–1953 (Bratislava: Veda vydavatel’stvo slovenskej akadémie vied, 1996), 7.

62. Zdeněk Suda, Zealots and Rebels: A History of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1980), 193.

63. Igor Lukes, “The Czech Road to Communism,” in The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944–1949, ed. Norman Naimark and Leonid Gibianskii (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997); Abrams, The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation. Abrams speaks in particular about the appeal of the Slavophile tradition after the Second World War.

64. Karel Kaplan, Pět kapitol o únoru (Brno: Doplněk, 1997), 168.

65. Pešek, Štátna bezpečnost na Slovensku 1948–1953, 15.

66. Václav Kaška, Neukáznění a neangažovaní disciplinace členů Komunistické strany Československa v letech 1948–1952 (Prague: Ústav pro stadium totalitních režimů, 2012); Michel Christian, Camarades ou Apparatchiks? Les communistes en RDA et en Tchécoslovaquie: 1945–1989 (Paris: PUF, DL 2016).

67. Kaplan, Národní fronta, 274.

68. Ibid., 234.

69. Švermová, Vzpomínky, 234.

70. Ibid., 190.

71. The Cominform: Minutes of Three Conferences, 1947/1948/1949, ed. Giuliano Procacci (Milano: Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, 1994), 145.

72. Heda Kovály, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941–1968 (New York: Penguin Books, 1989).

73. Kaplan, Pět kapitol o únoru, 186.

74. “Záznam,” 7 March 1947, ABS Prague, f. MNB, ač. MNB 11/1 99.

75. “Zpráva o prověrce činnosti II. Sektoru v období 1949–1954,” 30 January 1963, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 8, folder 2.

76. “Dytrychová Ludmila, závady v členství v KSČ,” 27 February 1951, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–109–7.

77. Jindřich Veselý, “Úřední záznam,” February 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–4–20.

78. Igor Lukes, “The Birth of a Police State,” Intelligence and National Security 11, no. 1 (1996).

79. Kalous, Štěpán Plaček, 47.

80. In the National Front era until the end of 1947 the security and intelligence services were divided. Even after this date they remained in many ways separate in practice.

81. “Zpráva o dosavadním výsledku organis. Oblastních odboček OZO,” 20 January 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–1–3.

82. Pešek, Štátna bezpečnost na Slovensku 1948–1953, 23.

83. “Záznam o pohovoru se soudruhem Moučka Milan,” 10 January 1963, ABS Prague, f. Zvláštní vyšetřovací, a.č. ZV-122, sv. 1.

84. “Zprav. Orgány oblastí SNB-ustanovení,” 1 January 1947, ABS Prague f. S, a.č. S-557–11.

85. Štěpán Plaček, “Záznam č. 4 o dojmech z cesty na Balkán,” 30 June 1948, ABS, Prague, f. 310, sv. 43, aj. 6.

86. “Zpráva o dosavadním výsledku organis. oblastních odboček OZO,” 20 January 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–1–3.

87. “Zápis o výpovědi s obviněným Bedřichem Pokorným,” 27 August 1952, ABS Prague, f. Zvláštní vyšetřování, a.č. ZV 4 MV Pokorný.

88. Jiřina Dvořáková, Státní bezpečnost v letech 1945–1953 (Prague: Úřad dokumentace a vyšetřování zločinu komunismu, 2007), 53.

89. “Zápis o výpovědi s obviněným Bedřichem Pokorným,” 27 August 1952, ABS Prague, f. Zvláštní vyšetřování, a.č. ZV 4 MV Pokorný, nonpaginated.

90. “Dodatek k pokynům o prozatímní východiskové organisaci politického obranného zpravodajství,” 8 August 1945, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–4–6.

91. “Zápis o výpovědi s obviněným Bedřichem Pokorným,” 23 July 1951, ABS Prague, f. Zvláštní vyšetřování, a.č. ZV 4 MV Pokorný, l. 17.

92. “Zpravodajské orgány—výběr vhodných osob,” 22 March 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–1–7. “Zápis o výpovědi s obviněným Dr. Štěpánem Plačkem,” 29 November 1949, ABS Prague, f. Zvláštní vyšetřování, a.č. ZV 45 MV sv. 03.

93. “Situační plán hotelu,” 16 December 1946, ABS Prague, f. MNB, ač. MNB 11/8–108, sv. 2.

94. “Hlášení o stavu zaměstnanců ústředí ZOB II,” 1 March 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–1–8.

95. “Záznam,” 24 January 1947, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–73–3.

96. “K politické situaci ve sboru SNB v Čechách,” 14 January 1947, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310-33-1.

97. Kalous, Štěpán Plaček, 24.

98. “Zápis o výpovědi s obviněným Dr. Štěpánem Plačkem,” 29 November 1949, ABS Prague, f. Zvláštní vyšetřování, a.č. ZV 45 MV sv. 03, l. 102.

99. Kuklík, Czech Law in Historical Contexts, 86.

100. Karel Kaplan, Mocní a bezmocní (Toronto: Sixty-Eight Publishers, 1989), 388.

101. “Zápis ze schůze bezpečnostní komise při ÚV KSČ,” 2 November 1945, ABS Prague, f. 310, 310–22–1, nonpaginated; Kalous, Štěpán Plaček, 56.

102. Biografický slovník představitelů ministerstva vnitra v letech 1948–1989 (Prague: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, 2009), 181.

103. “Zápis o výpovědi s obviněným Dr. Štěpánem Plačkem,” 29 November 1949, ABS Prague, f. Zvláštní vyšetřování, a.č. ZV 45 MV sv. 03.

104. “Untitled letter to Štěpán Plaček,” 6 March 1947, ABS, Prague, f. H, a.č. H-670, l. 5.

105. “Protokol Štěpána Plačka ke Švábovi a jiným osobám,” undated, ABS Prague, f. Zvláštní vyšetřování, ač. ZV 45 MV sv. 10.

106. Arguments are in “Plaček, Štěpán: zhodnocení přiložených dopisů,” undated, ABS Prague, f. H-670, l. 40.

107. “Documents of ZOB II org. odd.,” 3 March 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–1–7.

108. OZO X Litoměřice, 14 March 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–1–7.

109. OZO-XII-Liberec, 14 March 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–1–7.

110. OZO-XV-Hradec Králové: Šubert Miroslav, 15 March 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–1–7.

111. OZO-VII Plzeň: Šnejdárek, Antonín 14 March 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–1–7.

112. OZO-VII Plzeň: Poláček Jiří, 14 March 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–1–7.

113. “Zpravodajské orgány: výběr vhodných osob,” March 1945, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–1–7.

114. Jaroslav Matoušek, OZO-IX-Most, 14 March 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–1–7.

115. Josef Rypl, OZO-IX-Most, 14 March 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–1 7.

116. František Hoberlant, OZO-II-Prague-venkov, 14 March 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–1–7.

117. Matěj Sedláček, OZO X Litoměřice, 14 March 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–1–7.

118. František Jiřena: OZO-XII-Liberec, 14 March 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–1–7.

119. Kaplan, Short March, 62.

120. “Připomínky a návrhy na organizační a pracovní výstavbu zpravodajské služby v rámci dvouletého budovatelského plánu,” ABS Prague, f. 304, ač. 304–60–5.

121. “Návrh na úpravu součinnosti a vzájemného poměru bezpečnostních referentů MNV a ONV s jednotlivými složkami veřejné bezpečnosti,” 18 July 1946, NA, Prague, f. Veselý, 110, sign. 43.

122. Ibid.

123. “Bezpečnostní i zpravodajství komise při ÚV KSČ: Předsednictvu Ústředního výboru KSČ,” 19 October 1946, ABS Prague, f. Zvláštní vyšetřovací, a.č. ZV-4 MV 32/15.

124. “Akční výbory a zákroky Sboru národní bezpečnosti,” 2 March 1948, ABS Prague, f. S, ač. S-557–4. Personnel files and materials from the revolution suggest there was an overlap between security consultants and action committees, see Životopis-Bořivoj Vávra,” 16 April 1948, ABS Prague, f. Zvláštní vyšetřování, a.č. ZV 4 MV 7; “Okresní národní výbor v Sedlčanech-Návrh,” 28 February 1948, ABS Prague, f. MNB, ač. MNB 11/4–104.

125. “ZOB II: Zpravodajské kursy,” 2 May 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–36–4.

126. “Zpravodajské kursy,” 17 September 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–36–4.

127. “Poznatky získané v průběhu zpravodajského kursu,” 9 December 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–36–6, nonpaginated; “Zpravodajský kurz: posudok,” 18 December 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310-36-6.

128. “Rozvrh hodin od 1 do 4 října 1946,” October 1946, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–36–4.

129. Student exams from ZOB II course, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310-36-6.

130. “Návrhy na zlepšení chodu zpravodajské služby,” 1 October 1946, ABS Prague, f. 304, ač. 304–60–5.

131. Ibid.

132. Matěj Spurný, Nejsou jako my. Česká společnost a menšiny v pohraničí (Prague: Antikomplex, 2001).

133. “Návrhy na zlepšení chodu zpravodajské služby,” 1 October 1946, ABS Prague, f. 304, ač. 304–60–5.

134. “Záznam ze dne 31 října 1946,” 31 October 1946, ABS Prague, f. 305, ač. 305–386–1.

135. Hanzlík, Únor 1948, 52.

136. “Iz analiticheskoi zapiski zaveduiushchego sektorom OBP TsK VKPb PV Gulyaeva o polozhenii v Chekhoslovakii,” 22 July 1947, in Volokitina, ed., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentach rossiiskikh arkhivov 1944–1953, 651.

137. Ibid., 652.

138. Ibid., 191.

139. Ibid., 29.

140. Hanzlík, Únor 1948, 179.

141. Ibid., 180.

142. Kaplan, Short March, 176.

143. Klement Gottwald, “Bud’te jednotni a rozhodni a pravda zvítězí, Projev k shromáždění lidu na Staroměstském náměstí,” 21 February 1948, in pamphlet “Kupředu, zpátky ni krok!,” 14–19.

144. Karel Kaplan, Kronika komunistického Československa: Klement Gottwald a Rudolf Slánský (Brno: Barrister and Principal, 2009), 225. Kaplan, Pět kapitol o únoru, 370.

145. “Osobní změny prováděné v souvislosti s očistou řešení,” 22 March 1948, ABS Prague, f. A14, ač. A14–618.

146. For a fictional account of the long shadow of 1948, see Zdena Salivarová, Nebe, peklo, ráj: lovestory (Toronto: Sixty-Eight Publishers, 1976).

147. Karel Kaplan, Poúnorový exil 1948–1949 (Liberec: Dialog, 2007), 12.

148. Pešek, Štátna bezpečnost na Slovensku 1948–1953, 27.

149. “Do 6 března ustavte akční výbory NF ve všech místech,” Rudé právo, 27 February 1948.

150. “Zápotocký zvolen předsedou Ústředního akčního výboru NF,” Rudé právo, 26 February 1948.

151. Jiří Pernes, Komunistky s fanatismem v srdci (Prague: Brána, 2006), 127.

152. Ibid., 87.

153. “Důvodová zpráva,” undated, ABS Prague, f. 304, ač. 304–103–18.

154. On these decrees, see Frommer, National Cleansing. On the reanimiation of these decrees in 1948, see “Prozatímní opatření o služebním poměru zaměstnanců odstraněných v rámci očisty z veřejné služby,” 1 March 1948, ABS Prague, f. A14, ač. A14–618.

155. “Vládní nařízení, jimž se zřizují očistné komise pro přezkoumání činnosti veřejných zaměstnanců,” 1945, ABS Prague, f. 304, a.č. 304–27–3.

156. “Lid čistí republiku od sabotérů, zrádců a nespolehlivých živlů,” Rudé právo, 26 February 1948.

157. Jak to bylo v únoru: Reportáž o osmi dnech vítězného únoru (Prague: Ústřední akční výbor národní fronty, 1949).

158. Antonín Zápotocký, “Jak provádět očistu,” Rudé právo, 11 March 1948.

159. “Prozatímní opatření o služebním poměru zaměstnanců odstraněných v rámci očisty z veřejné služby,” 1 March 1948, ABS Prague, f. A14, ač. A14–618.

160. “Dodatek k oběžníku ministerstva vnitra ze dne 1. března 1948,” 3 March 1948, ABS Prague, f. A14, ač. A14–618.

161. “Akční výbory a zákroky Sboru národní bezpečnosti,” 2 March 1948, ABS Prague, f. S, a.č. S-557–4.

162. Rudolf Slánský, “O očistě, poslání tisku a růstu naší strany,” Rudé právo, 7 March 1948.

163. “Zápis’ besedy vtorogo sekretarya Posol’stva SSSR v Chekhoslovakii NG Novikov s zamestitelem glavnogo redaktora gazety Rudé Právo M Karny o predstoyashchem ob’edinenii kommunisticheskou I social demokraticheskou partii I o podgotovke k parlamentskim vyborem v strane,” 16 April 1948, in Volokitina, ed., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentach rossiiskikh arkhivov 1944–1953.

164. “Za dva dny 7540 nových členů KSČ!,” Rudé právo, February 25 1948; “Za únor vstoupilo do KSČ 55,874 nových členů,” Rudé právo, 3 March 1948.

165. Jiří Maňák, Komunisté na pochodu k moci. Vývoj početnosti a struktury KSČ v období 1945–1948 (Prague: USD, 1995), 51.

166. “Akční výbory a zákroky Sboru národní bezpečnosti,” 2 March 1948, ABS Prague, f. S, a.č. S-557–4.

167. Ibid.

168. Ibid.

169. “Prozatímní opatření o služebním poměru zaměstnanců SNB odstraněných v rámci zaměstnanců očisty z veřejné služby,” 2 March 1948, ABS Prague, f. A14, ač. A14–618.

170. “Finanční stráž-zásahy akčních výborů národní fronty,” 27 February 1948, ABS Prague, f. S, a.č. S-557–4.

171. “Zápis o poradě přednostů zemských a oblastních úřadoven státní bezpečnosti země České a Moravskoslezské,” 11 March 1948, ABS Prague, f. MNB, ač. MNB 11/4–104.

172. The 1948 laws granted national committees the authority to confiscate and redistribute apartments. Landlords had to receive permission from national committees before accepting tenants. “Rozhodný krok k odstranění bytové krise,” Rudé právo, 13 March 1948, “Vláda schválila bytový zákon,” Rudé právo, 14 April 1948.

173. Ibid.

174. “Zápis z porady konané v místnosti instr. oddílu,” 15 January 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–29–6.

175. Kovály, Under a Cruel Star, 69–70.

176. “Zápis č. 29 ze schůze širšího předsednictva ÚV KSČ,” 9 September 1948, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 1, folder 3.

177. Jan Hora, “K problémům státně bezpečnostní služby a bezpečnostní služby vůbec,” 4 October 1948, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 27, folder 2.

178. “Ladislav Technik: šéfredaktor Svobodného slova” 28 May 1951, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 2, folder 8. For more on exiles from Czechoslovakia after February 1948, see Kaplan, Poúnorový exil 1948–1949.

179. Kalous, Štěpán Plaček, 64.

180. “Prohlášení,” 3 March 1948, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 2, folder 8, nonpaginated.

181. “Záznam,” 3 March 1948, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 2, folder 8, nonpaginated.

182. “Nová ústava je dokladem vyšší, lepší a dokonalejší demokracie,” Rudé právo, 14 April 1948.

183. Maňák, Komunisté na pochodu k moci, 54.

184. Karel Kaplan, Political Persecution in Czechoslovakia, 1948–1972 (Research Project: Crises in Soviet-type Systems, Study no. 3, 1983), 8.

185. “Informatsionnaya zapiska otvetstvennogo sekretarya Obshcheslavyanskogo komiteta I. N. Medveda v TsK VKP o vnytripoliticheskom polozhenii v Chekhoslovakii posle fevral’skogo krizisa 1948,” 29 March 1948, in Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentach rossiiskikh arkhivov 1944–1953, 806. Action committees were translated literally and rather awkwardly as Комитеты действия.

186. “Spravka OVP TsK VKPb MA Suslovy, ‘O nekotorych oshibkach Kommunisticheskoi partii Chechoslovakii,’” 5 April 1948, in Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentach rossiiskikh arkhivov 1944–1953, 831–51.

187. The Cominform, ed. Procacci, 575.

188. Jan Hora, “K problémům státně bezpečnostní služby a bezpečnostní služby vůbec,” 4 October 1948, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 27, folder 2.

189. Ibid.

190. “O přijímání nových členů do strany,” Rudé právo, 11 July 1948.

191. “Zápis z porady,” 29 July 1948, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–22–4.

192. Maňák, Komunisté na pochodu k moci, 15.

193. Jan Hora, “K problémům státně-bezpečnostní služby a bezpečnostní služby vůbec,” October 1948, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 27, folder 2, nonpaginated. His trip met with so many obstacles that he was not able to write the report until October 1948. Hora had served in the police force of the First Czechoslovak Republic between 1931 and 1939. Dvořáková, Státní bezpečnost v letech 1945–1953, 60.

194. Hora, “K problémům státně bezpečnostní služby a bezpečnostní služby vůbec,” 4 October 1948, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 27, folder 2, nonpaginated.

195. Ibid.

196. Kaplan, Nebezpečná bezpečnost, 8.

197. Ibid.

198. “Ministerstvo vnitra, III. odb. porada s pracov. Stb služby o neuspokojivém stavu této a opatřeních k jeho kard. zlepšení,” 14 May 1948, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–29–6.

199. “Porada o novém zákonu národní bezpečnosti,” 1 June 1948, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–21–21, nonpaginated.

200. “Záznam pro p. přednostu skup. III-A o pracích na zákoně o národní bezpečnosti,” ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–21–20, nonpaginated.

201. Ibid.

202. “Obsahový záznam z pohovoru se Štěpánem Plačkem,” 12 January 1963, ABS Prague, Zvláštní vyšetřování, a.č. ZV 4 MV 38, sv. 15.

203. Plaček, “Zpráva o cestě do Bukurešti, Sofie a Bělehradu konané ve dnech 17.6.1948 do 28.6.1948,” 30 June 1948, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–43–6.

204. Ibid.

205. Ibid.

206. “Dopis Š. Plačka a K. Černého ÚV KSČ,” 13 July 1948, in Kalous, Štěpán Plaček, 294.

207. “Dopis dra Štěpána Plačka ústř. Tajemníkovi KSČ soudruhovi Rudolfu Slánskému,” 15 May 1950, in Kalous, Štěpán Plaček, 313.

208. Molly Pucci, “The Anatomy of a Police State,” forthcoming in Journal of Cold War Studies. The Soviets banned the use of party members as informers.

209. “Záznam,” 9 April 1948, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–43–12, l. 4.

210. “Dopis dra Štěpána Plačka ústř. Tajemníkovi KSČ soudruhovi Rudolfu Slánskému,” 15 May 1950, in Kalous, Štěpán Plaček, 297.

211. Ibid., 290.

212. Ibid., 291.

213. “Zápis z porady,” 29 July 1948, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–22–4.

214. Ibid.

215. “Zápis z porady,” 29 July 1948, ABS Prague, f. Zvláštní vyšetřování, a.č. ZV 4 MV 34, sv. 15.

216. “Hlavní zásady osnovy zákona o národní bezpečnosti a chyby starého,” undated, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–21–21.

217. Pešek, Štátna bezpečnost na Slovensku 1948–1953, 37.

218. “Služba žen ve Sboru národní bezpečnosti,” 15 September 1948, ABS Prague, f. 304, ač. 304–84–5.

219. Jan Kalous, “Osvald Závodský-aktér i oběť’ politických procesů,” Paměť a dějiny 2013/03, 89.

220. Kalous, “Osvald Závodský-aktér i oběť’ politických procesů,” 90.

221. “Zápis z porady,” 3 September 1948, ABS Prague, MNB 11/4–104.

222. “Zápis č. 29 ze schůze širšího předsednictva ÚV KSČ,” 9 September 1948, HIA, Jíri Šetina Collection, box 1, folder 3.

223. Kaplan, Political Persecution in Czechoslovakia, 11.

224. Ibid.

225. “Untitled letter to Štěpán Placek,” 10 September 1948, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–81–4.

226. “Osnova zákona o táborech nucených prací,” 5 October 1948, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač, 310–46–1, l. 17–87.

227. “Untitled document on campaign against asocial elements,” undated, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–46–1.

228. Dvořáková, Státní bezpečnost v letech 1945–1953, 111.

229. Clinton Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979).

230. Dvořáková, Státní bezpečnost v letech 1945–1953, 134.

231. Karel Kaplan, “The Rise of a Monopoly of Power in the Hands of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, 1948–1949,” experience of the Prague Spring 1968, working study, no. 2.

232. Mečislav Borák and Dušan Janák, Tábory nucené práce v ČSr: 1948–1954 (V Šenově u Ostravy: Tilia, 1996), 16.

233. “Zápis č. 29 ze schůze širšího předsednictva ÚV KSČ,” 9 September 1948, HIA, Jíri Šetina Collection, box 1, folder 3.

234. Alexej Čepička, “Nový právní řád přispěje k urychlení našeho vývoje k socialismu,” Rudé právo, 2 September 1948.

235. Josef Dubský, “Do druhé etapy vývoje národních výborů,” Rudé právo, 13 August 1948.

236. Alexej Čepička, “Nový právní řád přispěje k urychlení našeho vývoje k socialismu,” Rudé právo, 2 September 1948.

237. Borák and Janák, Tábory nucené práce v ČSr, 143.

238. Kaplan, Political Persecution in Czechoslovakia, 11.

239. Mečislav Borák and Dušan Janák, Tábory nucené práce v ČSr: 1948–1954 (V Šenově u Ostravy: Tilia, 1996), 31.

240. “Situační zpráva o táborech nucené práce ku dni 28. Února 1949,” 7 March 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310 ač. 310–46–7.

241. “Záznam z porady přednostů sektorů,” 21 May 1948, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–29–6, l. 35.

242. “Výpis ze zápisu porady,” 15 September 1948, ABS Prague, f. MNB, ač. MNB 11/10a—111, aj. 3.

243. Kaplan, Political Persecution in Czechoslovakia, 11.

CHAPTER 3. SECRET POLICE NETWORKS IN THE SOVIET ZONE OF OCCUPATION IN GERMANY

1. Martin Casper, “Hilfe der Sowjetunion für den Aufbau der Deutschen Volkspolizei nach 1945: Die Tätigkeit bei der Kriminalpolizei in Leipzig 1945–1950,” Leipzig, 7 September 1969, Bundesarchiv Berlin (BA), SgY 30/EA 1430.

2. Gregory Sandford, From Hitler to Ulbricht: The Communist Reconstruction of East Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 9–10.

3. Anonymous, A Woman in Berlin, trans. Philip Boehm (New York: Picador, 2003), 13.

4. Ilya Ehrenburg, “We Come as Judges,” Soviet War News, 1945, accessed at the Hoover Institution Library.

5. Richard Overy, Russia’s War (London: Penguin Books, 1997), 288.

6. Eyal Benvenisti, The International Law of Occupation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 93.

7. Naimark, Russians in Germany, 67.

8. Ibid., 23.

9. Liesbeth Van de Grift, Securing the Communist State: The Reconstruction of Coercive Institutions in the Soviet Zone of Germany and Romania, 1944–1948 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012).

10. In 1946 the acronyms NKVD and NKGB were changed to MVD and MGB, but I keep them consistent here.

11. Jan Foitzik and Nikita Petrov, Sowjetische Kommandanturen und deutsche Verwaltung in der SBZ und frühen DDR: Dokumente (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2015), 54.

12. Jan Foitzik, Der sowjetische Terrorapparat in Deutschland (Berlin: Schriftenreihe des Berliner Landesbeauftragten für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR, 2006), 17.

13. Serov, Zapiski iz chemodana, 289.

14. Amir Weiner and Aigi Rahi-Tamm, “Getting to Know You,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 13, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 5–45.

15. “Befehl des NKWD der UdSSR Nr. 00461 zur Organisation von Lagern (Gefängnisse) bei den Frontbevollmächtigten des NKWD der UdSSR,” 10 May 1945, in Foitzik and Petrow, Die sowjetischen Geheimdienste in der SBZ/SSR von 1945 bis 1953, 203–7. Foitzik, Der sowjetische Terrorapparat; Sowjetische Speziallager in Deutschland 1945 bis 1950, heraus. von Alexander von Plato (Berlin: Akademie Verlag GmbH, 1998).

16. Documents from 1945 mention arrests based on “tips supplied by informers.” See Foitzik and Petrov, Die sowjetischen Geheimdienste in der SBZ/DDR von 1945 bis 1953, 37.

17. Bettina Greiner, Suppressed Terror: History and Perception of Soviet Special Camps in Germany (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), 45.

18. Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace (London: Simon and Schuster, 2009), 187. He cites the number of NKVD arrests as 122,671. In the American Zone there were 117,500 arrests.

19. Foitzik and Petrow, Die sowjetischen Geheimdienste in der SBZ/DDR von 1945 bis 1953, 22.

20. Foitzik, Der sowjetische Terrorapparat, 20.

21. “Schreiben des Volkskommissars der Staatssicherheit der UdSSR Merkulow an den Volkskommissar für Inneres der UdSSR Berija über die Aufgaben der tschekistischen Organe in Deutschland,” 19 June 1945, in Foitzik and Petrow, Die sowjetischen Geheimdienste in der SBZ/DDR von 1945 bis 1953, 215.

22. Ibid., 23.

23. “Viktor Semenovich Abakumov,” in Kto rukovodil NKVD 1934–1941: Spravochnik, ed. N. V. Petrov and K. B. Skorkin (Moscow: Zven’ya, 1999), 80.

24. “Spravka otdela administrativnych organow TsK VKP(b) o zamestitele upolnomochnnogo MGB v Germanii P. M. Chaikovskom,” 24 August 1949, in Apparat NKVD-MGB v Germanii, 1945–1953, ed. Nikita Petrov and Jan Foitzik (Moscow: Demokratii, 2009), 425.

25. “Zakluycenie upravleniya kadrov MGB SSSR ob utverzhdeniii v TsK VKP(b) S. I. Filatova v dolzhnosti nachal’nika operativnogo sektora MGB zemli Brandenburg,” 19 January 1949, in Apparat NKVD-MGB v Germanii, 1945–1953, 419.

26. Ibid., 421.

27. Apparat NKVD-MGB v Germanii, 1945–1953, 29.

28. Naimark, Russians in Germany, 69–140.

29. Apparat NKVD-MGB v Germanii, 1945–1953, 29.

30. “Soobshchenie nachal’nika OKR SMERSH voisk NKVD po okhrane tyla GSOVG N. I. Panasenko nachal’niku voisk P. M. Ziminy ob areste voennoslyszashchego 2ogo batal’ona 83ogo pogranichnogo polka A. N. Myshlyaeva za izmennicheskie namereniya,” in Apparat NKVD-MGB v Germanii, 337–38.

31. “Spravka o chrezvychainykh proisshestviyakh i chastyakh vnutrennych voisk MGB v Germanii za 1947 god,” 10 September 1947, in Apparat NKVD-MGB v Germanii, 369–71.

32. Ibid., 369.

33. Foitzik and Petrov, Sowjetische Kommandanturen und deutsche Verwaltung in der SBZ und frühen DDR, 38–39.

34. The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, ed. Ivo Banac (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 373.

35. Foitzik and Petrov, Sowjetische Kommandanturen, 39–40.

36. Die Russen sind da: Kriegsalltag und Neubeginn 1945 in Tagebüchern aus Brandenburg, ed. Peter Böthig and Peter Walther (Berlin: Lukas, 2011), 148–49.

37. Karl Grünberg, “Der Beginn des demokratischen Neuaufbaus in Berlin-Pankow 1945,” BA, undated, SgY 30–1110.

38. Fritz Köhn, “Über den Aufbau der Parteiorganisationen der KPD im Berliner Stadtbezirk Treptow Mai-Juni 1945,” BA Berlin, SgY 30/0012.

39. Kappelt, Die Entnazifizierung in der SBZ, 322.

40. Else Eisenkolb-Großmann, “Wie wurde ich Aktivist der Ersten Stunde,” Berlin, February 1975, BA Berlin, SgY 30-EA 2080.

41. Hugo Bergmann, “Über die Zusammenarbeit mit der sowj. Kommandantur,” undated, BA Berlin, SgY 30/EA 1907.

42. Grossman, A Writer at War, 338.

43. Eric Weitz, Creating German Communism, 1890–1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 319.

44. Jens Gieseke, The History of the Stasi (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014), 26.

45. Else Eisenkolb-Großmann, “Wie wurde ich Aktivist der Ersten Stunde: Erinnerungen an die letzten Wochen des Faschismus und die Tage der Befreiung 1945,” BA Berlin, SgY 30/EA 2080.

46. Fritz Köhn, “Erinnerungen des Genossen Fritz Köhn,” BA Berlin, SgY 30–0012.

47. Werner Bruschke, “Erinnerungen,” 28 November 1974, Halle, BA Berlin, SgY 30–1319–1.

48. Petrov and Foitzik, eds., Apparat NKVD-MGB v Germanii, 29.

49. Karl Wilhelm Fricke, Politik und Justiz in der DDR: Zur Geschichte der politischen Verfolgung, 1945–1968 (Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1979), 101.

50. Ibid.

51. See Die sowjetischen Speziallager in Deutschland 1945 bis 1950, ed. Sergej Mironenko, Lutz Niethammer, and Alexander von Plato (Berlin, 1998), and Sowjetische Militärtribunale, ed. Andreas Hilger, Mike Schmeizner, and Ute Schmidt (Cologne: Hannah Arendt Institut für Totalitarismusforschung, 2003).

52. Greiner, Suppressed Terror, 51, 4.

53. Ibid., 16.

54. Ulrich Weissgerber, Giftige Worte der SED-Diktatur: Sprache als Instrument von Machtausübung und Ausgrenzung in der SBZ und der DDR (Berlin, Lit, 2010), 94–284.

55. Ibid., 95.

56. Ibid., 141.

57. Ibid., 94–95.

58. Ibid., 17.

59. “Protokoll in der Sitzung am Minister Dr. Benjamin als Vorsitzende, Generalstaatsanwalt Dr. Mehlsheimer, Generalleutnant Mielke, in ihrer Eigenschaft als Mitglieder der Kommission der Regierung der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik nachstehend aufgeführte Vorgänge in Strafsachen gegen deutsche Staatsangehörige, die von sowjetischen Militärtribunalen verurteilt wurden, durchsehen und beschlossen,” 10 February 1956, BStU Berlin, MfS AS Nr. 3/59 Band 1.

60. These cases were from a list of people sentenced by Soviet military tribunals who were released in 1955: “Gnadenerweis des Präsidenten unter dem 17. Dezember 1955,” BStU Berlin, MfS AS Nr. 3/59 Band 1/1.

61. Richard Bessel, “The People’s Police and the People in Ulbricht’s Germany” in The Workers’ and Peasants’ State: Communism and Society in East Germany under Ulbricht, 1945–1971, ed. Patrick Major and Jonathan Osmond (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 62.

62. Fricke, Politik und Justiz in der DDR, 36.

63. Weissgerber, Giftige Worte der SED-Diktatur, 201.

64. Monika Kaiser, “Wechsel von sowjetischer Besatzungspolitik zu sowjetischer Kontrolle?” in Sowjetisierung und Eigenständigkeit in der SBZ/DDR, ed. Michael Lemke (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1999), 192.

65. Ibid., 192. Helle, Nachkriegjahre in der Provinz, 198.

66. Mike Dennis, The Stasi: Myth and Reality (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2003), 19.

67. Ibid., 448.

68. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter der Staatssicherheit, 71.

69. Victor Klemperer, The Lesser Evil (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2003), 71.

70. Foitzik, “Kadertransfer: Der organisierte Einsatz sudetendeutscher Kommunisten in der SBZ 1945/46,” in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 331, 1983, 308–34.

71. Renate Hürtgen, Zwischen Disziplinierung und Partizipation: Vertrauensleute des FDGB im DDR-Betrieb (Cologne: Böhlau, 2005), 30.

72. Memorandum S. Tjul’panovs für das ZK der KpdSU B, “Über die Lage hinsichtlich der Vereinigung der Arbeiterparteien Deutschlands,” 26 February 1946, in Sowjetische Politik in der SBZ 1945–1949: Dokumente zur Tätigkeit der Propagandaverwaltung der SMAD unter Sergej Tjulpanov, ed. Bernd Bonwetsch, G. A. Bordjugov, Norman Naimark (Bonn: J. H. W. Dietz Nachf, 1998), 18.

73. “Bericht des Informationsbüros der SMAD ‘Über die politische Lage in Deutschland,’” in Sowjetische Politik in der SBZ 1945–1949, 20–21.

74. Grünberg, “Der Beginn des demokratischen Neuaufbaus in Berlin-Pankow,” undated, BA Berlin, SgY 30/1110.

75. Karl Heinz Hanja, Die Landtagswahlen 1946 in der SBZ: eine Untersuchung der Begleitumstände der Wahl (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2000).

76. Paul Fiedler, “Erinnerungsbericht,” 27 May 1974, BA Berlin, SgY 30–1711.

77. “Über die Lage hinsichtlich der Vereinigung der Arbeiterparteien Deutschlands,” 26 February 1946, in Sowjetische Politik in der SBZ 1945–1949: Dokumente zur Tätigkeit der Propagandaverwaltung der SMAD unter Sergej Tjul’panov, ed. Bernd Bonwetsch, G. A. Bordjugov, and Norman Naimark (Bonn: J. H. W. Dietz Nachf, 1998).

78. Ibid., 77.

79. Ibid.

80. Ibid., 41.

81. Kaiser, “Wechsel von sowjetischer Besatzungspolitik zu sowjetischer Kontrolle?” in Sowjetisierung und Eigenständigkeit in der SBZ/DDR, 192.

82. Rudolf Bühring, “Wie war das im Ringen um die Durchsetzung der Beschlüsse der Partei für eine Partei neuen Typus,” Halle, Pasewalk, 20July 1977, BA Berlin, SgY 30/1845/1.

83. Helmut Müller-Enbergs, Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit: Teil 1: Richtlinien und Durchführungsbestimmungen (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2012), 23.

84. Bernd Kaufmann, Eckhard Reisener, Dieter Schwips, and Henri Walther, Der Nachrichtendienst der KPD, 1919–1937 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag), 38–49.

85. Ibid., 138.

86. Hubertus Knabe, West-Arbeit des MfS: das Zusammenspiel von ‚Aufkläung’ und ‚Abwehr’ (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1999), 62–63.

87. Foitzik and Petrov, Sowjetische Kommandanten, 41.

88. Foitzik, Der sowjetische Terrorapparat, 23.

89. “Organisationsplan der Sekretariatsleitung der Polizei der Provinz Mark Brandenburg,” 6 June 1946, BStU Berlin, MfS AS 400–66.

90. “Planirovanie i organizatsiya boevoi podgotovki nemetskoi narodnoi politsii,” BA Berlin, Upravlenie vnutrenych del SVAG, f. P-7317, o. 17, d. 1, st. 1–294.

91. Hugo Bergmann, “Über die Zusammenarbeit mit der sowj. Kommandantur,” undated, BA Berlin, SgY 30/EA 1907.

92. Rudolf Bühring, “Meine Erinnerung für den Beitrag zur Sicherheit und zur Verteidigungsbereitschaft zur Stärkung der DDR,” 10 August 1978, BA Berlin, SgY 30/1845/1–3.

93. Ibid.

94. Ibid.

95. “Cadres Akte: Walter Heinitz,” BStU Berlin, MfS KS I 4/87.

96. Fricke, Politik und Justiz in der DDR, 16.

97. Jens Gieseke, “Erst braun, denn Rot? Zur Frage der Beschäftigung ehemaliger Nationalsozialisten als hauptamtliche Mitarbeiter des MfS,” in Staatspartei und Staatssicherheit, ed. Siegfried Suckut and Walter Süss (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1997), 130–31.

98. Bessel, “The People’s Police and the People in Ulbricht’s Germany,” 60.

99. Ibid., 134.

100. Ibid., 60.

101. Naimark, Russians in Germany, 43.

102. Ibid.

103. Ibid., 280.

104. Joachim Spors, Der Aufbau des Sicherheitsapparates in Sachsen, 1945–1949: Die Gewährleistung von Ordnung und Sicherheit unter den Bedingungen eines politischen Systemwechsels (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2003), 125.

105. Ibid.

106. Ibid.

107. “Zuständigkeit der Deutschen Verwaltung des Innern,” 26 June 1947, BStU Berlin, MfS-AS 229–66, Bd. 1.

108. Naimark, Russians in Germany, 45.

109. “Verordnung über die DvdI in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone Deutschlands,” May 1947, BStU Berlin, MfS-AS 399–66.

110. “Amtliche Erläuterungen zu den Passvorschriften für Innländer,” BStU Berlin, MfS-AS 399–66.

111. “Protokoll über die Konferenz der Präsidenten der Deutschen Verwaltung des Innern mit den Chefs der Polizei der Länder und Provinzen in der sowjetischen Besatzungszone und den Vertretern der SMAD” 30 October 1946, BStU Berlin, MfS-AS 229/66 Bd. 1.

112. Bernhard Müller, “Anfänge der Volkspolizei: Erinnerungen,” BA Berlin, SgY 30–1947.

113. “Protokoll über die Konferenz der Präsidenten der Deutschen Verwaltung des Innern mit den Chefs der Polizei der Länder und Provinzen in der sowjetischen Besatzungszone und den Vertretern der SMAD,” 30 October 1946, BStU Berlin, MfS-AS 229/66 Bd. 1.

114. Ibid.

115. “Stenografischer Bericht über die Innenminister-Konferenz,” 11–12 August 1947, Berlin, BStU Berlin, MfS-AS 229/66 Bd. 1.

116. Fricke, Politik und Justiz in der SBZ/GDR, 32.

117. Wilhelm Bick, “Mein Einsatz in die Funktion des Generalstaatsanwalts in Mecklenburg, 1947,” BA Berlin, SgY 30/EA 0066.

118. “Befehl des stellvertretenden Chefs der SMA der Provinz Brandenburg Nr. 112,” 23 May 1946, BStU Berlin, MfS AS 399–66.

119. “Befehl nr. 35 des Chefs der Polizei des Landes Brandenburg: Rüpelhaftes Verhalten einiger Polizisten,” 15 September 1947, MfS AS, 341/66, s. 4.

120. “Bericht des Abt. Leiters P über eine durchgeführte Dienstreise zur Landespolizeibehörde Sachsen vom 6.3 bis 12.3.1947,” 13 March 1947, BStU Berlin, 229–66 Bd 2.

121. “Monatsbericht der Arbeitsgruppe C für Juli 1948,” 31 July 1948, BStU Berlin, MfS-AS 237–66.

122. “Monatsbericht Februar 1946 der sächsischen Polizei: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands Bezirksleitung Sachsen Kaderabteilung,” Dresden, 11 March 1946, BA Berlin, Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands Zentralkomitee, DY 30/IV 2/5/4975.

123. Ibid.

124. “Planirovanie i organizatsiya boevoi podgotovki nemetskoi narodnoi politsii,” BA Berlin, Upravlenie vnutrenych del SVAG, f. P-7317, o. 17, d. 1, st. 1–294.

125. “Abschlussbericht für den 3. Lehrgang der Landesschule der SED Land Brandenburg vom 17–23.5.1947,” BA Berlin, DY 30/IV 2/9 03/49.

126. “Bericht über die vom Referat K5 der DvdI am 7. Und 8.10.1947 abgehaltene Arbeitstagung mit den Dezernaten und Kommissariatsleitern K5 der sowjetischen Besatzungszone im Hause der DvdI,” Berlin, BStU Berlin, MfS HE IX 21327.

127. Naimark, Russians in Germany, 360.

128. Stephan Wolf, “Die ‚Bearbeitung’ der Kirchen in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone und der DDR durch die politische Polizei und das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit bis 1953” in Die Ohnmacht der Allmächtigen: Geheimdienste und politische Polizei in der modernen Gesellschaft, ed. Bernd Florath, Armin Mitter, and Stefan Wolle (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1992), 176.

129. Roger Engelmann, “Diener zweier Herren: Das Verhältnis der Staatssicherheit zur SED und den sowjetischen Beratern, 1950–1959,” in Staatspartei und Staatssicherheit: Zum Verhältnis von SED und MfS, ed. Siegfried Suckut and Walter Süß (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1997), 51–72.

130. Martin Casper, “Die Tätigkeit bei der Kriminalpolizei in Leipzig 1945–1950,” Leipzig, 7 September 1969, BA Berlin, SgY 30/EA 1430.

131. “Jahresbericht Dezernat K5 im Lande Sachsen,” 1947, BStU Berlin, MfS-AS 229/66, Bd 3, s. 363–64.

132. Wer war wer in der DDR: ein Lexikon ostdeutscher Biographien, ed. Helmut Müller-Enbergs (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2006), 461–62.

133. “Lebenslauf,” 15 December 1957, BStU Berlin, MfS SED-KL 6873, s. 9–10.

134. “Charakteristik über Heinitz, Walter,” 8 September 1949, BStU Berlin, MfS KSI 04/87, s. 20.

135. “Walter Heinitz,” 24 August 1949, MfS KSI 04/87, s. 19; “Charakteristik über Walter Heinitz,” 8 September 1949, s. 20.

136. “Charakteristik,” 8 March 1949, BStU Berlin, Aktenmappe: Emil Wagner, 9985/90, s. 23.

137. “Charakteristik über den Genossen Oberstleutnant Wagner,” 11 May 1953, Emil Wager, 9985/90, s. 29.

138. “Jahresbericht Dezernat K5 im Lande Sachsen,” 1947, BStU Berlin, MfS-AS 229/66, Bd 3, s. 597.

139. Heinrich Fomferra, “Erinnerungen,” BA Berlin, SgY 30/1275/1.

140. “Jahresbericht Dezernat K5 im Lande Sachsen,” 1947, BStU Berlin, MfS-AS 229/66, Bd 3, s. 597.

141. Ibid.

142. Ibid., s. 465.

143. Ibid., s. 600.

144. “4-wöchentlichen Kursus des D5 für abgestellte Kreispolizisten zu den A5 bei den KD,” 2–28 June 1947, BStU Berlin, MfS AS 229/66, Bd. 3, s. 424–28.

145. “Stoffplan des 10-Tagekursus für die Arbeitsgruppe 2 (Ermittlung) im Befehl 201,” 1 December 1947, BStU Berlin, MfS AS 229/66, Bd. 3, s. 429–30.

146. Markus Wolf, Man Without a Face: The Autobiography of Communism’s Greatest Spymaster (New York: Times Books, 1997), 40.

147. Timothy Vogt, Denazification in Soviet-Occupied Eastern Germany: Brandenburg, 1945–1948 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 48.

148. Ibid., 34.

149. Günter Benser, Die KPD im Jahre der Befreiung (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1985); Weitz, Creating German Communism, 322; Gareth Pritchard, The Making of the GDR: From Antifascism to Stalinism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 30–38; Dieter Marc Schneider, “Kommunalverwaltung und—Verfassung,” in SBZ-Handbuch, ed. Martin Broszat and Hermann Weber (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1990), 297–313.

150. Ernst Altenkirch, “Einige Gedanken zur Vereinigung der beiden Arbeiterparteien KPD und SPD zur SED im Kreis Brandenburg,” BA Berlin, SgY 30–1318.

151. Kappelt, Die Entnazifizierung in der SBZ, 249.

152. Vogt, Denazification in Soviet-Occupied Eastern Germany, 103.

153. Ibid., 111.

154. “Bericht über die vom Referat K5 der DvdI am 7. Und 8.10.1947 abgehaltene Arbeitstagung,” BStU Berlin, MfS HE IX 21327.

155. “Charakteristik über den Kommissar Rudolf Hans Mittag,” 17 April 1950, Cadres Akte: Rudolf Mittag, BStU Berlin, 31699/90.

156. Wer war wer in der DDR, ed. Müller-Enbergs, 689–90.

157. “Jahresbericht Dezernat K5 im Lande Sachsen,” 1947, BStU Berlin, MfS-AS 229/66, Bd 3.

158. “Landespolizei Brandenburg: Fragebogen,” 14 August 1949, Cadres Akte: Siegfried Leibholz, BStU Berlin, MfS KS 27348–90.

159. “SED Personalpolitische Abteilung, Betr: Erich Bär,” 11 January 1947, Cadres Akte Erich Bär, BStU Berlin, MfS KS 31–73.

160. “SED Abtl. Personalpolitik, Betr. Wilhelm Enke,” 15 September 1948, Cadres Akte Wilhelm Enke, BStU Berlin, MfS KS I 26/84.

161. “Beurteilung,” 14 August 1949, Cadres Akte: Siegfried Leibholz, BStU Berlin, MfS KS 27348–90.

162. “Kriminalamt Torgau: Beförderungsvorschlag,” 1 November 1948, Cadres Akte: Werner Kukelski, BStU Berlin, MfS KSI 2–78.

163. “Polizeipräsidium Chemnitz Beurteilung des Pol. Meister Franke,” 28 May 1949, Cadres Akte: Gerhard Franke, BStU Berlin, MfS KS II 333–84.

164. “Jahresbericht Dezernat K5 im Lande Sachsen,” 1947, BStU Berlin, MfS-AS 229/66, Bd 3.

165. “Stoffplan des 10-Tagekursus für die Arbeitsgruppe 2 (Ermittlung) im Befehl 201,” 1 December 1947, BStU Berlin, MfS AS 229/66, Bd. 3, s. 429–30.

166. “Jahresbericht Dezernat K5 im Lande Sachsen,” 1947, BStU Berlin, MfS-AS 229/66, Bd 3, s. 638.

167. Kappelt, Die Entnazifizierung in der SBZ, 228.

168. Otto Wilfriede, Erich Mielke: Aufstieg und Fall eines Tschekisten (Berlin: Dietz, 2000).

169. Ibid., 393.

170. Ibid., 425.

171. “Kreispolizeiamt Kamenz: Beurteilung des Volkspolizei-Meisters Rudolf Mittag,” 26 June 1949, Cadres Akte: Rudolf Mittag, BStU Berlin, 31699/90.

172. “VP-Kreisamt,” 13 September 1949, Cadres Akte: Rudolf Mittag, BStU Berlin, 31699/90.

173. “Charakteristik über den Kommissar Rudolf Hans Mittag,” 17 April 1950, Cadres Akte: Rudolf Mittag, BStU Berlin, 31699/90.

174. “Jahresbericht Dezernat K5 im Lande Sachsen,” 1947, BStU Berlin, MfS-AS 229/66, Bd 3, s. 595.

175. “Anordnung des Herrn Oberstleutnant Shipkow in Bezug auf die freiwilligen Mitarbeiter des Dezernats K5,” 11 June 1948, Thüringen, BStU Berlin, MfS AS 1270–67.

176. “Ermittlungsbericht über Hopperdietz, Kurt, geb. 18.3.03,” October 1948, BStU Berlin, MfS AS 1270–67.

177. “Bericht über den Privatbetrieb auf Blatt 9 Nr. 64,” Bautzen, 15 August 1948, BStU Berlin, MfS AS 1270–67.

178. Ibid.

179. Bessel, “The People’s Police and the People in Ulbricht’s Germany,” 62.

180. “Planirovanie i organizatsiya boevoi podgotovki nemetskoi narodnoi politsii,” BA Berlin, Upravlenie vnutrenych del SVAG, f. P-7317, o. 17, d. 1, st. 1–294.

181. Greiner, Suppressed Terror, 15.

182. Weissgerber, Giftige Worte der SED-Diktatur, 283.

183. “Jahresbericht Dezernat K5 im Lande Sachsen,” 1947, BStU Berlin, MfS-AS 229/66, Bd 3, s. 592.

184. Ibid., s. 613.

185. Weissgerber, Giftige Worte der SED-Diktatur, 284.

186. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter der Staatssicherheit, 79.

187. Rudolf Bühring, “Erinnerungen und Erfahrungen aus meiner Tätigkeit im Land Sachsen-Anhalt bzw. Halle/Salle,” Pasewalk, 20 July 1977, BA Berlin, SgY 30/1845/1.

188. Karl Grünberg, “Der Beginn des demokratischen Neuaufbaus in Berlin-Pankow 1945,” undated, BA Berlin, SgY 30/1110.

189. “Lebenslauf: Hans Gregorenz,” Berlin, 30 August 1948, BStU Berlin, MfS Allg. S. 1358/67.

PART II. THE TRIAL OF THE HUNGARIAN COMMUNIST LÁSZLÓ RAJK, TRANSNATIONAL STALINISM, AND THE CREATION OF THE EASTERN BLOC

1. George Hodos, Show Trials: Stalinist Purges in Eastern Europe (New York: Praeger, 1987), 63.

2. Ibid., 25.

3. “Notatka służbowa z podróży do Budapesztu w dn, 14–27. IX. 49.,” 3 October 1949, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2089–789, s. 3–8.

4. “Návrh na vyslání československých pozorovatelů do Maďarska na proces s László Rajkem,” 10 September 1949, Československá justice v letech 1948–1953 v dokumentech, Díl III, ed. J. Vorel, A. Šimánková, and L. Babka (Sešity Úřadu dokumentace a vyšetřování zločinů komunismu, č. 10, 2004), 219.

5. Artur London, On Trial (London: Macdonald and Company, 1970), 69.

6. Sobór-Świderska, Jakub Berman: Biografia komunisty, 324; “Protokół posiedzenia podstawowej organizacji partyjnej PZPR Nr. 11,” 25 October 1949, IPN BU 1572/3772, s. 18.

7. “Zhodnocení procesu s Rajkem-Zápis o velitelské schůzce na KVStb Karl Vary,” 4 November 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–13–3.

8. “Záznam o velitelské poradě na KVStb Karl. Vary,” 9 December 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–13–3.

9. Doubek, StB o sobě, ed. Karel Kaplan, 15–25.

10. Der Fall Noel Field: Schlüsselfigur der Schauprozesse in Osteuropa, eds. Bernd-Rainer Barth and Werner Schweizer (Berlin: Basisdruck, 2005).

11. Hermann Weber, “Schauprozess Vorbereitungen in der DDR,” in Terror: Stalinistische Parteisäuberungen, 1936–1953, ed. Hermann Weber and Ulricht Mählert (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1998), 476.

12. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, 231.

13. Roger Engelmann and Frank Joestel, Hauptabteilung IX: Untersuchung (Berlin: Der Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR, 2016), 56.

14. “Rozsudek Jménem republiky,” 21–23 December 1953, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 7, folder 2, nonpaginated.

15. Procacci, ed., The Cominform: Minutes of Three Conferences, 995.

16. Ibid., 849.

17. Vojtech Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 132.

18. Weissgerber, Giftige Worte der SED-Diktatur, 104.

19. Milan Bárta, “Akce Isolace: Snaha Státní bezpečnosti omezit návštěvnost zastupitelných úřadů kapitalistických států,” Paměť a dějiny, 2008/04.

20. Jusupović, “‘Nie matura, lecz chęć szczera zrobi z ciebie oficera,’” 104–5.

21. Christian, Camarades ou Apparatchiks?, 96.

22. “Zkušební řád pro školy a kursy zřizované ministerstvem národní bezpečnosti v ČSr: Pozorování frekventantů,” 1 February 1951, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–40–7; “Svolání krajského velitelského shromáždění: Jihlava,” 26 October 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–15–6.

CHAPTER 4. CONQUERING THE SECRET POLICE IN POLAND

1. “Wyrok w imieniu rzeczpospolitej polskiej: Wojskowy Sąd Rejonowy w Szczecinie,” 26 November 1950, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 0859–793, s. 220–23.

2. The cases are available in these files in the IPN: IPN BU 0859/793 and IPN BU 2241/11.

3. “Zarządzenie nr. 1,” 3 January 1948, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 01225/88, s. 5–15.

4. Komisja Specjalna do Walki z Nadużyciami i Szkodnictwem Gospodarczym, 1945–1954: Wybór dokumentów, ed. Dariusz Jarosz and Tadeusz Wolsza (Warsaw: IPN, 1995); Jerzy Kochanowski, Tylnymi drzwiami: czarny rynek w Polsce, 1944/1989 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo ‘Neriton,’ 2010).

5. “Materiały odprawy kierowników i zastępców kierowników WUBP oraz przedstawicieli wydziałów V,” 28 March 1948, in Dokumenty do dziejów PRL, ed. Andrzej Paczkowski (Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Politycznych Akademii Nauk, 1992), 32.

6. “Kursy Sekretarzy POP przy Pow., Miejskich i Woj. Urzędach BP i Komendach MO oraz przy Komisariatach MO,” undated, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1572/837, s. 73.

7. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, 232.

8. Ibid., 234.

9. Ibid., 232.

10. Ibid., 234.

11. “Instrukcja Nr. 1/0: Praca przełożonych operacyjnych,” 20 June 1947, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 01225/56, s. 41.

12. Ibid., s. 44.

13. Ibid., s. 43.

14. Krzysztof Szwagrzyk, ed. Aparat bezpieczeństwa w Polsce: Kadra kierownicza, tom I, 47.

15. Adrian Jusupović, “‘Nie matura, lecz chęć szczera zrobi z ciebie oficera,’ czyli rola przyzakładowego szkolnictwa w kształceniu kadr RBP/MBP/MSW 1944–1990,” Dzieje najnowsze, rocznik XLVII-2015, vol. 4, 100.

16. Ibid., 103.

17. “Zarządzenie nr. 1,” 3 January 1948, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 01225/88, s. 5–15.

18. Ibid.

19. “Protokół nr. 8 posiedzenia BP,” 25 February 1948, dział. Polska Partia Robotnicza Komitet Centralny, Biuro Polityczne, sygn. 295/V-4, s. 20.

20. Stanisław Radkiewicz, “W sprawie ‘Życia Partii,’” 7 February 1948, AAN Warsaw, PPR Komitet Centralny, dział. Biuro Polityczne, 1948, sygn., 295/V-4.

21. “Charakterystyka służbowa na Dyrektora Departamentu Ochrony Rządu Komitetu do Spraw Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego-płk Grzybowskiego Faustyna Filipa,” 28 June 1955, Akta osobowe: Grzybowski, Faustyn, IPN Warsaw, IPN 0329/27 t.1., s. 27.

22. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, 56.

23. “Informatsiya Zagranichnogo otdela TsK PPR LC Baranovu o politicheskom polozhenii v Pol’she posle vyborov v Sejm,” 17 March 1947, in Volokitina et al., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskikh archivov, 587–91.

24. Roman Werfel, “Tło wypadków w Czechosłowacji,” Nowe Drogi, March 1948, 8, Wydawnictwo KC Polskiej Partii Robotniczej, 170.

25. “Wykluczonych z Partii na terenie Iłża-Starachowice,” 24 November 1948, IPN Kielce, IPN Ki 69–103.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid.

29. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, 206.

30. “Wniosek o nadanie odznaczenia,” 25 November 1952, IPN BU 0193/6999/1, l. 26.

31. Szwagrzyk, Aparat bezpieczeństwa w Polsce: Kadra kierownicza, tom I, 1944–1956, 57.

32. “Uchwała Centralnej Komisji Kontroli Partyjnej PZPR: Henryk Palka,” 9 July 1949, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 0218/83.

33. Tadeusz Wojtyniak, “Wspomnienia z życia i pracy w PUBP-Poznań, Krosno Odrzańskie, WUBP Zielona Góra i PUBP-Szprotawa w latach 1945–1956,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/448, s. 28.

34. Mówi Józef Światło: Za kulisami bezpieki i partii 1940–1955, ed. Zbigniew Błażyński (London: Polska Fundacja Kulturalna, 1985).

35. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, 201.

36. Ibid., 204.

37. Sobór-Świderska, Jakub Berman: Biografia komunisty, 243.

38. Ibid., 271.

39. Ibid., 284.

40. “Protokół dla egzekutywy Koła PPR w Wydziale I-szym Dept. II,” 13 April 1948, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1572/3735.

41. “Pełnomocnik na Okręg Nr. 3 Brycki: Raport do Sztabu Wyborczego MBP,” undated, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 00231–86–58.

42. Ibid.

43. “Instrukcja o przeprowadzeniu egzaminów z zajęć pol. wych. w W.U.B.P i P.U.B.P.,” IPN BU 01225–58, s. 57.

44. Ibid.

45. “O państwie demokracji ludowej,” June 1947, AAN Warsaw, PPR Komitet Centralny, Wydz. Szkolenia Partyjnego, sygn. 295/XVIII-22.

46. Zenon Celejewski, “Relacja,” 1977, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/24.

47. “Sprawozdanie z akcji Wyborczej w Województwie Warszawskim,” 23 January 1947, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 00231–86–58, s. 216.

48. “Kursy Sekretarzy POP przy Pow., Miejskich i Woj. Urzędach BP i Komendach MO oraz przy Komisariatach MO,” undated, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1572/837, s. 73.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid., s. 71.

51. Ibid., s. 73.

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid., s. 72.

55. Piotr Kosicki, Catholics on the Barricades: Poland, France, and ‘Revolution,’ 1891–1956 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 130.

56. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, 234.

57. Mariusz Krzysztofinski, “Działalność struktur terenowych Departamentu X Ministerstwa Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego” in Departament X MBP: wzorce-struktury-działanie, 166.

58. Natalia Jarska, Piotr Perkowski, “Droga do władzy Kobiety w PZPR, 1948–1989,” Pamięć i sprawiedliwość, 1 (27), 2016.

59. Ibid., 239.

60. “Zarządzenia Nr. 38: Warsaw,” 20 August 1948, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 01225–58.

61. “Untitled letter to General Romkowski,” 22 September 1948, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 0649/9, s. 70.

62. “Raport Specjalny do Szefa Woj. Urzędu Bezp. Publicznego mjr. Zabawskiego,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 0649/9, s. 71.

63. Andrzej Paczkowski, “PZPR a aparat bezpieczeństwa,” in PZPR jako machina władzy, ed. Dariusz Stola and Krzysztof Persak (Warsaw: IPN, 2012), 180.

64. “Przemówienie tow. Ministra Radkiewicza wygłoszone na krajowym aktywie partyjnym pracowników UBP, MO, KBW i ORMO,” 8 September 1948, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1572/2785.

65. “Do Pracy partyjnej w organach bezpieczeństwa,” undated, AAN Warsaw, PPR Komitet Centralny, Sekretariat-Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego, sygn. 295/VII-161.

66. PZPR jako machina władzy, ed. Stola and Persak, 77.

67. As quoted in Kaplan, Národní fronta, 62.

68. “Referat dyr. Dept. V,” 10 March 1949, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1572/18, s. 59.

69. Tonia Lechtman, “Oświadczenie,” 26 October 1954, Kolekcja dokumentów dotyczących ruchu robotniczego i jego działaczy zgromadzona przez Centralną Komisję Kontroli Partyjnej PZPR w Warszawie, 1938–1972, AAN, zespół nr. 1584, s. 4.

70. Ibid.

71. “Rozmowa z tow. Radkiewiczem,” 16 November 1956, Kolekcja dokumentów dotyczących ruchu robotniczego i jego działaczy zgromadzona przez Centralną Komisję Kontroli Partyjnej PZPR w Warszawie, 1938–1972, AAN, zespół nr. 1584, s. 13.

72. “Odprawa” 12 March 1949, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1572/18, s. 8–12.

73. Ibid., s. 10.

74. Ibid., s. 11.

75. Klementowski, Urząd bezpieczeństwa w Lubinie, 110.

76. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, 231.

77. Piotr Chmielowiec, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Brzozowie 1944–1956 (Rzeszów: IPN, 2008), 296.

78. “Stenogram I protokół Plenum KC,” 2 June 1946, AAN Warsaw, dział: PPR Komitet Centralny, sygn. 295/II—6. A similar brutalization of life in the countryside and villages was evident in Hungary in the early 1950s as well. See Istvan Rev, “The Advantages of Being Atomized: How Hungarian Peasants Coped with Collectivization,” Dissent, vol. 34, issue 3 (Summer 1987): 342–43.

79. Dariusz Jarosz, Polacy a stalinizm, 1948–1956 (Warsaw: Instytut Historii PAN, 2000), 12.

80. Krzysztof Sychowicz, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Łomży-powstanie i działalność, 1944–1956 (Białystok: IPN, 2009), 133.

81. “Przemówienie Mjr. Zabowskiego,” 23 March 1949, IPN BU 1572/18, s. 8.

82. “Protokół z zebrania Sekretarzy Podstawowych Organizacji PZPR w Komitecie Dzielnicowym MBP, 28 May 1949,” IPN BU 1572/3856, s. 37.

83. Protokoł y posiedzenia Egz. Kom. Poddzielnicy Sródmiesciew, 30 November 1949, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1572/3856, s. 205.

84. Protokol z posiedzenia K.D., 13 July 1949, IPN BU 1572/3856, s. 75.

85. “Notatka służbowa z podróży do Budapesztu w dn, 14–27. IX. 49.,” 3 October 1949, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2089–789, s. 3–8.

86. Jusupović, “‘Nie matura, lecz chęć szczera zrobi z ciebie oficera,’” 104–5.

87. Krzysztof Szwagrzyk, ed. Aparat bezpieczeństwa w Polsce: Kadra kierownicza, tom I, 33.

88. “Rozkaz Nr. 49,” 12 September 1949, IPN 01225/70, s. 215.

89. Pucci, “The Anatomy of a Police State,” forthcoming in the Journal of Cold War Studies.

90. “W.U.B.P Gdańsk: Sprawozdanie roczne od 1.I.50 do 31.XII.1950,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 01206–3–4.

91. “Zakres pracy i kompetencje Referatów Ochrony,” 12 September 1949, IPN BU 01225/70, s. 218.

92. “Rozkaz Nr. 49,” 12 September 1949, IPN 01225/70, s. 215.

93. Klementowski, Urząd bezpieczeństwa w Lubinie, 110.

94. Robert Klementowski, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w powiecie Lwówek Śląski, 1945–1956 (Wroclaw: IPN, 2006).

95. Twarze białostockiej bezpieki: obsada stanowisk kierowniczych Urzędu Bezpieczeństwa i Służby Bezpieczeństwa w Białymstoku: informator personalny, ed. Paweł Kalisz and Piotr Łapiński (Białystok: IPN-Oddział w Białymstoku, 2007), 15.

96. Tadeusz Wojtyniak, “Wspomnienia z życia i pracy w PUBP—Poznań, Krosno Odrzańskie, WUBP-Zielona Góra i PUBP-Szprotawa w latach 1945–1956,” 25 March 1984, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241–52, s. 46.

97. Ibid., s. 47.

98. Ibid., s. 49.

99. Ibid., s. 50.

100. Sobór-Świderska, Jakub Berman: Biografia komunisty, 324.

101. “Protokół posiedzenia podstawowej organizacji partyjnej PZPR Nr. 11,” 25 October 1949, IPN BU 1572/3772, s. 18.

102. “Zapis’ besedy pervogo sekretarya Posol’stwa SSSR v Pol’she E.I. Dluzhinskogo s J. Bermanom o podgotovke plenuma TsK PORP,” 28 September 1949, Volokitina et al., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentach rossiiskich archivov 1944–1953, Tom II, 225.

103. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, 241.

104. “Informatsionnaya spravka sotrudnika kantselyarii sekretariata Informbyuro V. I. Ovcharova ob otklikach pervichnych organizatsii na resheniya III plenuma TsK PORP ob usilenii revoluytsionnoi bditel’nosti,” 15 December 1949 in Sovetskii faktor v Vostochnoi Evrope, 1944–1953, Tom II, ed. T. V. Volokitina et al. (Moscow: Rosspen, 2002), 232–35.

105. Władysław Anders was the army general who commanded Polish troops in the Second World War. He later became a leader of the Polish community in exile in London.

106. “Informatsionnaya spravka sotrudnika kantselyarii sekretariata Informbyuro V. I. Ovcharova ob otklikach pervichnych organizatsii na resheniya III plenuma TsK PORP ob usilenii revoluytsionnoi bditel’nosti,” 15 December 1949, in Sovetskii faktor v Vostochnoi Evrope 1944–1953, t. 2, ed. T. V. Volokitina et al. (Moscow: Rosspen, 2002), 232–35.

107. “Pis’mo B. Z. Lebedeva I. V. Stalinu ob otsenke K. K. Rokossovskim situatsii v rukovodstve PORP, noyabr’skogo plenuma TsK PORP, nastroenii pol’skich rabochikh I krest’yan I dr.,” 26 February 1950, Volokitina et al., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentach rossiiskich archivov 1944–1953, Tom II, 311.

108. Ibid.

109. PZPR jako machina władzy, ed. Stola and Persak, 85.

110. Ibid.

111. Chmielowiec, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Łańcucie 1944–1956, 25.

112. “Protokół z posiedzenia Egzekutywy Komitetu Dzielnicowego PZPR Warsaw-Ujazdów,” 10 December 1952, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1572/3851.

113. Błażyński, ed. Mówi Józef Światło, 255.

114. Chmielowiec, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Łańcucie 1944–1956, 25.

115. Ibid.

116. “Wykres porównawczy stanów osobowych Apar. BP,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1583/140.

117. Klementowski, Urząd bezpieczeństwa w Lubinie, 87.

118. Chmielowiec, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Łańcucie, 94.

119. Ibid., 25.

120. Bobowicz, “Wspomnienia z służby w organach MO i SB na terenie wojew. Poznańskiego w latach 1945–1968,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/13.

121. “Protokół z posiedzenia egzekutywy Komitetu Dzielnicowego PZPR Warsaw-Ujazdów,” 10 March 1952, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1572/3852, s. 82.

122. Ibid., s. 99.

123. Klementowski, Urząd bezpieczeństwa w Lubinie, 82.

124. Ibid., 83.

125. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, 223.

126. Klementowski, Urząd bezpieczeństwa w Lubinie, 79.

127. Krzysztofinski, “Działalność struktur terenowych Departamentu X Ministerstwa Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego,” 172.

128. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, 213.

129. Petrov, Kto rukovodil organami gosbezopacnost, 1942–1954, 186.

130. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, 222.

131. “Pismo Okolne w sprawie nadsyłania wniosków odznaczeniowych na Odznakę Przodownika Pracy,” Warsaw 1952, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1572–4073, s. 4.

132. Ibid., 231.

133. Chmielowiec, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Brzozowie 1944–1956, 293.

134. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, 246.

135. Klementowski, Urząd bezpieczeństwa w Lubinie, 119.

136. “W.U.B.P. Gdańsk: Sprawozdanie roczne od 1.I.50 do 31.XII.1950,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 01206–3–4, s. 6.

137. “Iz dnevnika konsula SSSR v g. Katovitse A.P. Nikitina,” 19 October 1951, in T. V. Volokitina, ed. Sovetskii faktor v Vostochnoi Evrope 1944–1953, t. 2., 546.

138. Jarosz, Polacy a stalinizm, 18.

139. Ibid., 14.

140. Ibid., 20.

141. Ibid., 22.

142. Paczkowski, Terror und Überwachung, 18.

143. Ibid., 17.

144. Jarosz, Polacy a stalinizm, 34.

145. Tadeusz Wojtyniak, “Wspomnienia z życia i pracy w PUBP—Poznań, Krosno Odrzańskie, WUBP-Zielona Góra i PUBP-Szprotawa w latach 1945–1956,” 25 March 1984, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241–52, 32–33.

146. Jarosz, Polacy a stalinizm, 35.

147. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, 238.

148. Tadeusz Wojtyniak, “Wspomnienia z życia i pracy w PUBP—Poznań, Krosno Odrzańskie, WUBP-Zielona Góra i PUBP-Szprotawa w latach 1945–1956,” 25 March 1984, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241–52, s. 33.

149. Sychowicz, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Łomży, 133.

150. Tadeusz Wojtyniak, “Wspomnienia z życia i pracy w PUBP—Poznań, Krosno Odrzańskie, WUBP-Zielona Góra i PUBP-Szprotawa w latach 1945–1956,” 25 March 1984, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241–52, s. 33.

151. Ibid., s. 35.

152. Błażyński, ed. Mówi Józef Światło, 260.

153. Paczkowski, “Terror und Überwachung,” 29.

154. “Wyrok w imieniu rzeczypospolitej polskiej,” Szczecin, 28 September 1950, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 0859–793, s. 62–64.

155. Tadeusz Wojtyniak, “Wspomnienia z życia i pracy w PUBP—Poznań, Krosno Odrzańskie, WUBP-Zielona Góra i PUBP-Szprotawa w latach 1945–1956,” 25 March 1984, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241–52, s. 52.

156. “Trial of Zygmunt Chmielinski,” 16 October 1950, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 0859–793.

157. “Spravka o nedostatkakh agenturno operativnoi raboty organov obschestvennoi bezopasnosti,” 8 June 1951, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 01988–1, non paginated.

158. “Wyciąg z protokołu zebrania partyjnego POP nr. 22 MBP,” 12 May 1950, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 1572–3772., s. 35–36.

159. Paczkowski, “Terror und Überwachung,” 17.

160. Tadeusz Wojtyniak, “Wspomnienia z życia i pracy w PUBP—Poznań, Krosno Odrzańskie, WUBP-Zielona Góra i PUBP-Szprotawa w latach 1945–1956,” 25 March 1984, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241–52, s. 52, 29.

161. “Iz pis’ma vitse-konsula SSSR s g. Shchetsine M.L Dzhibladze poslu SSSR v Pol’she A.A. Sobolevu u zaveduyushchemu IV EO G. P Arkad’evu o situatsii v organisatsiyakh PORP,” 28 June 1951, Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentach rossiiskich archivov 1944–1953, Tom II, 553–56.

162. “Soprovoditel’noe pis’mo V. G. Grigor’yana I.V. Stalinu s prilozheniem soobshcheniya general’nogo konsula SSSR v Gdan’ske A. M. Krasnenkova o polozhenii v Gdan’skom voevodstve,” 17 May 1950, Sovetskii faktor v Vostochnoi Evrope, 1944–1953, ed. T. V. Volokitina (Moskva: Rosspen, 2002), 329.

163. Ibid.

164. Szwagrzyk, “Wstęp” in Aparat bezpieczeństwa w Polsce: Kadra kierownicza, tom I, 68.

165. Krzysztofinski, “Działalność struktur terenowych Departamentu X Ministerstwa Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego,” 170.

166. “Protokół z rozmowy przeprowadzonej przez pracownika CKKP tow. Putę Józefa, przewodniczącego WKKP w Olsztynie Grzegorczyka Władysława z naczelnikiem Wydz. X-go WUBP w Olsztynie tow. Tychoniukiem Włodzimierzem w sprawie pracy b. Wydz. X-to WUBP,” Olsztyn, 3 December 1954, Kolekcja dokumentów dotyczących ruchu robotniczego i jego działaczy zgromadzona przez Centralną Komisję Kontroli Partyjnej PZPR w Warszawie, 1938–1972, AAN, zespół nr. 1584, AAN.

167. Rokicki gives these figures: 4 percent joined in 1944, 30 percent in 1945, 14 percent in 1946, 10 percent in 1947, 5 percent in 1948, 9 percent in 1949, 12 percent in 1950, 5 percent in 1951. and 2.5 percent in 1952. Rokicki, “Portret zbiorowy kadry X Departamentu,” in Departament X MBP, wzorce, struktury, działanie, 200–204.

168. Andrzej Paczkowski, “Departament X-Kontekst ogólny i aspekty międzynarodowe,” in Departament X MBP, wzorce, struktury, działanie, ed. Konrad Rokicki (Warsaw: IPN, 2007), 13.

169. Ibid.

170. Jusupović, “Nie matura, lecz chęć szczera zrobi z ciebie oficera,’ 99.

171. Andrzej Duda, “Relacja organizatora pracy kadrowej w b. Wojewódzkich Urzędach Bezpieczeństwa Rzeszów, Kraków i Gdańsk,” IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 2241/20.

172. “Untitled document by Mikołaj Orechwa,” 12 May 1948, AAN Warsaw, zesp. 1744, sygn. 111, s. 4. On the 1968 anti-Semitic campaign, see Dariusz Stola, Kampania antysyjonistyczna w Polsce, 1967–1968 (Warsaw: In. Studiów Politycznych Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2000).

173. Lesiakowski, Mieczysław Moczar “Mietek:” biografia polityczna, 132.

174. Torańska, ‘Them:’ Stalin’s Polish Puppets (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 262.

175. “Charakterystyka: Piasecki Henryk,” 31 November 1949, Akta personalne funkcjonariusz SB: Piasecki Pesses Markowicz Henryk Izrael Chaim Izrail, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU 0193–7015.

176. Twarze Olsztyńskiej Bezpieki: Informator Personalny, ed. Piotr Kardela (Białystok: IPN, 2007).

177. Krzysztofinski, “Działalność struktur terenowych Departamentu X Ministerstwa Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego,” 166 (footnote 10).

178. Ibid., 171 (footnote 30).

179. Ibid (footnote 34).

180. Ibid., s. 172.

181. “Oświadczenie Tychoniuka Włodzimierza pracownika WUBP: Olsztyn,” AAN Warsaw, Kolekcja akt dotyczących ruchu robotnicznego, 509/117, s. 22.

182. Ibid., s. 33.

183. Krzysztofinski, “Działalność struktur terenowych Departamentu X Ministerstwa Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego,” 172.

184. “Rozmowa z tow. Radkiewiczem,” 16 November 1956, AAN Warsaw, Kolekcja dokument.w dotyczących ruchu robotniczego i jego działaczy zgromadzona przez Centralną Komisję Kontroli Partyjnej PZPR w Warszawie, 1938–1972, zesp.ł 1584, s. 22.

185. Mówi Józef Światło, 4.

186. The lovers and broken marriages of the Polish and Soviet elite were one topic under the heading “socialist morality,” Mówi Józef Światło, 35–37.

187. On the privileges enjoyed by security officials, ibid., 110–12.

188. Paczkowski, Trzy Twarze Józefa Światły, 189.

189. Ibid., 191.

190. Schatz, The Generation, 266.

191. Paweł Machcewicz, Rebellious Satellite: Poland 1956 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 243.

192. Krzysztof Szwagrzyk, “Kierownictwo Departamentu X MBP przed sądami PRL,” in Departament X MBP, wzorce, struktury, działanie, ed. Konrad Rokicki, 256.

193. “Sprawozdanie Komisji powołanej przez VIII Plenum KC dla zbadania odpowiedzialności partyjnej za wypaczenia w organach Bezpieczeństwa,” 16 November 1956, AAN Warsaw, Kolekcja dokumentów dotyczących ruchu robotniczego i jego działaczy zgromadzona przez Centralną Komisję Kontroli Partyjnej PZPR w Warszawie, 1938–1972, zespół 1584; Schatz, The Generation, 267.

194. Machcewicz, Rebellious Satellite: Poland 1956, 243.

195. Szwagrzyk “Kierownictwo Departamentu X MBP przed sądami PRL” in Departament X MBP, wzorce, struktury, działanie, 245.

196. Members of the commission included Roman Nowak, Ostap Dłuski, Zenon Kliszko, Edmund Pszczółowski, Marian Rybnicki, from Sobór-Świderska, Jakub Berman: Biografia komunisty.

197. Ibid.

198. “Wyrok w imieniu polskiej rzeczypospolitej ludowej,” 11 November 1957, IPN Warsaw, IPN BU, 0193/7094.

199. “Rozmowa z tow. Radkiewiczem,” 16 November 1956, AAN Warsaw, Kolekcja dokument.w dotyczących ruchu robotniczego i jego działaczy zgromadzona przez Centralną Komisję Kontroli Partyjnej PZPR w Warszawie, 1938–1972, zesp.ł 1584, s. 21.

200. Ibid.

CHAPTER 5. A REVOLUTION IN A REVOLUTION IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Epigraph: Jako nemůže být žádný podnik bez plánování, nemůže být bez plánování ani státní bezpečnost, “Velitelské shromáždění,” 7 October 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–30–4.

1. “Dopis dra Štěpána Plačka ústř. Tajemníkovi KSČ soudruhovi Rudolfu Slánskému,” 15 May 1950, in Kalous, Štěpán Plaček, 312.

2. Kalous, Štěpán Plaček, 121–122.

3. “Rok stranického školení v útvarových organisacích SNB,” undated, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–32–6.

4. Jan Hora, “K problémům státně bezpečnostní služby a bezpečnostní služby vůbec,” 4 October 1948, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 27, folder 2, nonpaginated.

5. “Vlastnoruční zpráva s. Ších,” 1963, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 28, folder 1, nonpaginated.

6. “Zápis 22. schůze vedení stranické práce složky Stb,” 18 August 1950, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 20, folder 3.

7. “Vyjádření Ladislava Šícha,” undated, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 28, folder 1, nonpaginated.

8. “Stav a doplnění státně bezpečnostní služby,” 20 December 1948, ABS Prague, f. Zvláštní vyšetřování, a.č. ZV 4 MV 34, sv. 15.

9. “Směrnice pro individuální prověřování kandidátů při skončení jejich čekatelské doby v bezpečnosti,” undated, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–32–3.

10. “Iz dnevnika sotrudnika posol’stva SSSR v Chekhoslovakii N. I. Semenova,” 8 January 1949, Volokitina et al., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentach rossiiskich archivov 1944–1953, Tom II, 29–30.

11. Karel Kaplan, Národní fronta, 1948–1960 (Prague: Academia, 2012), 62.

12. Ibid.

13. “Nový výbor KSČ v pardubické Tesle,” Rudé právo, 5 January 1949.

14. Ibid.

15. “Prověřování pomáhá odkrývat nedostatky,” Rudé právo, 5 January 1949.

16. “Zpráva o prověrce činnosti I. Sektoru v období 1949–1954,” 30 January 1963, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 8, folder 2, nonpaginated.

17. Wolfgang Leonhard, Child of the Revolution (Chicago: H. Regnery, 1958), 205–8.

18. “Záznam o poradě konané dne 1.3.1949 na KV-StB Prague,” 2 March 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–12–3, nonpaginated.

19. Jindřich Veselý, “Referát na otevření státně bezpečnostní školy v Novém Městě,” 5 March 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–39–14, l. 1.

20. Záznam o pohovoru, Milada Vejvodová, 4 January 1963, ABS Prague, ZV-120 MV svazek dokumentů sektor 2 část 1, l. 124.

21. “Zápis z první schůze vedení stranických organisací v bezpečnosti,” 15 March 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–32–3.

22. “Výstavba a hlavní úkoly stranických organisací v bezpečnosti,” June 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–33–3.

23. Dvořáková, Státní bezpečnost v letech 1945–1953, 146.

24. “Organizační výstavba strany skupiny I ‘Bezpečnost,’ ministerstva vnitra,” 2 February 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–33–3.

25. “Zápis z první schůze vedení stranických organisací v bezpečnosti,” 15 March 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–32–3.

26. “Stručné směrnice pro práci instruktážního oddílu,” ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–14–2, s. 21.

27. “Zápis o schůzce instruktorů,” 2 November 1948, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–29–3, l. 3.

28. “Stav a doplnění státně bezpečnostní služby,” 20 December 1948, ABS Prague, f. Zvláštní vyšetřování, a.č. ZV 4 MV 34, sv. 15, nonpaginated.

29. “Zápis ze schůzi,” 9 January 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–29–3, l. 9.

30. Dvořáková, Státní bezpečnost v letech 1945–1953, 95. Plaček, who created the unit, admitted that their main job was to spy on communists to identify cases of corruption. Štěpán Plaček, “Zpráva o cestě do Bukurešti, Sofie a Bělehradu konané ve dnech 17.6.1948 do 28.6.1948,” 30 June 1948, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–43–6.

31. “BAa-kádrové oddělení: Zpráva pro 01,” 10 October 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–39–10.

32. “Osobní dotazník: Zdeněk Kupec,” 10 November 1948, ABS Prague, KP 2555 15, l. 39.

33. Dvořáková, Státní bezpečnost v letech 1945–1953, 138.

34. Petr Blažek, Milan Bárta, Jan Kalous, Libor Svoboda, and Pavel Žáček, “Tváře vyšetřovatelů Státní bezpečnosti,” Paměť a dějiny, 2012/04, 73; “Návrh na povýšení do hodnosti štábního kapitána: Kapitán Zdeněk Kupec,” 25 April 1952, ABS Prague, ač. KP 2555 15, l. 158.

35. “Personální stav,” 7 October 1948, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–13–6.

36. “Stručné směrnice pro práci instruktážního oddílu,” ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–14–2, l. 21–23.

37. Ibid., l. 21.

38. “Situační zpráva KV Stb Jihlava,” March 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–15–5.

39. “Zápis z porady,” 21 January 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–29–3, l. 14.

40. Ibid.

41. Ibid., l. 18.

42. “Zápis z porady instruktorů,” 20 December 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–29–3, l. 96.

43. “Zápis z porady,” 15 January 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–29–3, l. 14.

44. “Zápis ze schůzky instruktorů,” 3 February 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–29–3, l. 26.

45. Edward Vyškovský, “Studie o pětiletím plánu z hlediska jeho zajištění se strany hospodářského zpravodajství,” 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–34–9, nonpaginated.

46. “Zápis z porady HZ ze dne 29. 7. 1948, l. 64.

47. “Zápis z porady instruktorů,” 17 May 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–29–3, l. 55.

48. “Ibid., l. 54.

49. “Záznam,” 30 March 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–30–1, l. 42.

50. Ibid., l. 46.

51. Ibid.

52. Kaplan, Stát a církev v Československu, 73.

53. Stanislav Balík and Jiří Hanuš, Katolická církev v Československu 1945–1989 (Brno: Centrum pro studium demokracie a kultury, 2007), 23.

54. “Zápis z porady instruktorů,” 3 May 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–29–3, l. 43; “Zápis z porady instruktorů,” 17 May 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–29–3, l. 54.

55. “Zápis ze schůzi,” 9 January 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–29–3, l. 12.

56. “Zájezd do Bulharska, Rumunska a Maďarska,” 22 April 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–43–7, l. 1.

57. “Zpráva o školení bezpečnosti Bulharské lidové republiky,” ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–43–7, l. 5.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid., l. 7.

60. “Školní učební látka školy státní bezpečnosti pro důstojníky,” April 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–43–7, l. 22–28.

61. Ibid., 304–209–7, 74–112.

62. “Návrhy na frekventanty vyšší politické 6 měsíční školy,” 23 April 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–39–10, l. 1.

63. “Diskusní připomínka s. náměstka ministra Muna,” undated, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–31–2.

64. “Dálnopisem všem přednostům skupin a sektorů odborů BA,” 23 April 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–36–5, l. 1.

65. “BAa-kádrové oddělení—Zpráva pro 01,” 10 October 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–39–10, l. 10–14.

66. “Kádrový posudek z politické školy pro vyš. zaměstnance MV,” 7–19 February 1949, ABS Prague, Pixa: evidence, ač. 2825.

67. Maňák, Komunisté na pochodu k moci, 32.

68. “Opatření pro organisace v bezpečnosti, vyplývající z IX sjezdu KSČ a jejich provádění,” undated, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–32–3.

69. “Směrnice pro kurs nižších a středních velitelských kádrů státní bezpečnosti,” undated, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–39–4.

70. “Dopis Ústředního výboru Komunistické strany Československa všem členům strany,” Rudé právo, 4 March 1949.

71. Ibid.

72. “Zápis ze schůze vedení S IB Zpráva sekretariátu,” 9 July 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–32–3.

73. “Výstavba vedení stranických organisací v bezpečnost,” 15 March 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–32–3.

74. “Zápisy z velitelské porady,” 2 February 1950, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–30–5, l. 98.

75. “Záznam o pohovoru, Milada Vejvodová,” 4 January 1963, ABS Prague, ZV-120 MV svazek dokumentů sektor 2 část 1, l. 124.

76. “Zápis z porady instruktorů,” 8 November 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–29–3, 80.

77. Ibid., 20 December 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–29–3, l. 96.

78. Dvořáková, Státní bezpečnost v letech 1945–1953, 148.

79. “Zřízení školy pro čekatelky SNB,” 11 May 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–39–3, l. 6.

80. “Služba žen ve Sboru národní bezpečnosti,” 15 September 1948, ABS Prague, f. 304, ač. 304–84–5.

81. “Zřízení školy pro čekatelky SNB,” 11 May 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–39–3, l. 7.

82. “Posudek o s. npor. Kamilu Pixovi,” 16 July 1949, ABS Prague, Pixa: evidence, ač. 2825.

83. “Zápis z porady instruktorů a zástupců velitelů studijních oddělení,” 6 December 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–29–3.

84. “KV StB Čes. Budějovice,” ABS Prague, ZV 4 MV 5: 8-Černý, l. 112–13.

85. “Zápis ze schůze vedení S IB: Zpráva sekretariátu,” 9 July 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–32–3.

86. “Státní bezpečnostní šetření,” 8 November 1949, ABS Prague, Jan Musil: evidence, č. 4429/13.

87. Kaplan, Political Persecution in Czechoslovakia, 14.

88. Jan Rychlík, “Collectivization in Czechoslovakia in a Comparative Perspective, 1949–1960,” in The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe, ed. Constantin Iordachi and Arnd Bauerkämper (Budapest: Central Europe University Press, 2014), 188.

89. Soobshchenie L. S. Baranova predsedatel’yu Vneshnepolitichesckou komissii (VPK) TsK BKP(b) V. G Grigor’yanu o besedakh s rukovoditelyami KPCh k Gotval’dom i R Slanskim o torgovych otnosheniyakh s Yugoslaviei, perspektivakh kollektivizatsii v Chekhoslovakii, itogakh proverki chlenskogo sostava KPCh I dr., May 1949, Volokitina et al., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentach rossiiskich archivov 1944–1953 Tom II, 90.

90. Karel Jech, Kolektivizace a vyhánění sedláků z půdy (Prague: Vyšehrad, 2008).

91. “Veřejná schůze Jednotného zemědl. družstva,” 12 May 1949, ABS Prague, f. 304, ač. 304–291–3.

92. “Veřejné schůze Jednotných zemědělských družstvech,” 4 May 1949, ABS Prague, f. 304, ač. 304–291–3.

93. “Schůze zemědělců v Radvánovicích,” 12 May 1949, ABS Prague, f. 304, ač. 304–291–3.

94. “Ustavování jednotných zemědělských družstev v okrese Přejouč,” 27 April 1949, ABS Prague, f. 304, ač. 304–291–3.

95. Rychlík, “Collectivization in Czechoslovakia in a Comparative Perspective, 1949–1960,” 188.

96. “Zápis z porady instruktorů,” 20 December 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–29–3, l. 96.

97. Informatsiya zavedyushchego tekhsekretariatom Informbuyro A.I. Antipova zavedyushchemu kantselyariei Sekretariata Informbyuro L. S. Baranovu o khode podgotovki i IX c’ezdy kompartii Chekhoslovakii, 15 May 1949, Volokitina et al., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentach rossiiskich archivov 1944–1953 Tom II, 87–88.

98. Ibid., 86–87.

99. Ibid., 87.

100. Maňák, Komunisté na pochodu k moci.

101. Zapiska korespondenta TASS v Prage V.S. Medova o vnutripoliticheskoi situatsii v Chekhoslovakii, 17 May 1949, Volokitina et al., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentach rossiiskich archivov 1944–1953 Tom II, 114.

102. “Pracovní porada krajských velitelů StB a NB spolu s kraj. prokurátoři,” 25 July 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–30–3, l. 1.

103. “Návrh na opatření při provádění censury korespondence a telefonního styku státně nespolehlivých osob,” June 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–22–5.

104. Jiří Pernes, Komunistky s fanatismem v srdci (Prague: Brána, 2006), 128.

105. Karel Kaplan, Report on the Murder of the General Secretary (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990), 78.

106. Borák and Janák, Tábory nucené práce v ČSr, 31.

107. Jindřich Veselý, “Pokyny o zřízení funkce a ustavení obranných referentů,” 14 September 1949, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 28, folder 2, nonpaginated.

108. Dvořáková, Státní bezpečnost v letech 1945–1953, 153.

109. Ibid., 150.

110. Ibid., 151.

111. “Návrh na vyslání československých pozorovatelů do Maďarska na proces s László Rajkem,” 10 September 1949, Československá justice v letech 1948–1953 v dokumentech, Díl III, ed. J. Vorel, A. Šimánková, and L. Babka (Sešity Úřadu dokumentace a vyšetřování zločinů komunismu, č. 10, 2004), 219.

112. Ibid., 153.

113. “Annotatsiya dokladnoi zapiski chlena TsK VPT Z Biro o besedakh s K. Gottwal’dom i R. Slanskim v svyazi s podgotovkoi k processu nad L. Rajkom,” in Volokitina et al., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentach rossiiskich archivov 1944–1953 Tom II, 219–21.

114. “Soprovoditel’noe pis’mo VS Abakumova VM Molotovu s prilozheniem soobshcheniya sotrudnikov MGB SSSR MT Likhacheva i NI Makarova o rabote chekhoslovatskikh organov bezopasnosti,” 16 March 1950, in Volokitina et al., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentach rossiiskich archivov 1944–1953 Tom II, 286.

115. “Zpráva o instruktáži na KV StB Liberec,” 28 September 1951, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–14–2, s. 25.

116. Ibid., s. 26.

117. Ibid.

118. Ibid.

119. “Kurs pro nižší a střední velitelské kádry StB,” 12 September 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–39–4.

120. “Směrnice pro kurs nižších a středních velitelských kádrů státní bezpečnosti,” undated, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–39–4.

121. “Kurs pro nižší a střední velitelské kádry StB,” 12 September 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–39–4.

122. “Nižší voj. Prokurátor Prague: Výslech svědka,” 13 November 1951, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 7, folder 2.

123. “Směrnice pro kurs nižších a středních velitelských kádrů státní bezpečnosti,” undated, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–39–4.

124. Kaplan, Mocní a bezmocní, 403.

125. Ibid., 407.

126. “O poryadke v arestakh sledstviyakh i tyuremnykh zaklyuennyakh predvaritel’nykh i po khody nakazaniya,” ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–44–8, l. 3–27.

127. “Reshenie ob areste,” f. 310, ač. 310–44–8, l. 11.

128. “Systemisace,” ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–52–1, nonpaginated.

129. “Příprava kursu pro střední velitelské kádry StB,” undated, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–39–4.

130. “Učební osnova kursu pro nižší a střední velitelské kádry Stb,” September 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–39–4.

131. “Pojem objektu státně a bezpečnostního zájmu,” undated, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–40–8.

132. Ibid.

133. Teodor Bělecký, “Výpisy ze služebních hodnocení,” 30 August 1963, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 27, folder 4, nonpaginated.

134. Josef Čejka, “Výpisy ze služebních hodnocení,” 30 August 1963, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 27, folder 4, nonpaginated.

135. “Zápis o velitelské schůzce na KVStb Karl. Vary: Zhodnocení procesu s Rajkem,” 4 November 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–13–3.

136. “Zápis o krajské velitelské poradě: Plzeň,” 2 November 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–12–10.

137. “Záznam vypracovaný na základě požadavku člena zvláštní komise s. Jehlíka,” 28 December 1962, ABS Prague, ZV 120 MV svazek dokumentu sektor 1 část 2, l. 185.

138. “Záznam o pohovoru se s. Janem Olšaníkem,” 21 December 1962, ABS Prague, ZV-120 MV svazek dokumentů sektor 2 část 1, l. 105.

139. “Svolání krajského velitelského shromáždění: Jihlava,” 26 October 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–15–6.

140. Ibid.

141. “Zápis z porady instruktorů,” 12 December 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–29–3.

142. “Zápis z velitelského shromáždění na krajském velitelství StB v Českých Budějovicích,” 29 October 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–12–7, l. 4.

143. “Obrana vlastního aparátu,” undated, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–30–3, l. 86–96.

144. Ibid., l. 100.

145. “Zápis z porady instruktorů,” 20 December 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–29–3, l. 96.

146. Ibid., 97.

147. “Zápis z porady instruktorů,” 15 November 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–29–3.

148. “Zápis z porady instruktorů: hlášení instruktorů o situaci na krajích,” 20 December 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–29–3.

149. “Zápis ze schůze instruktorů,” 16 January 1950, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–29–3.

150. “Zápis z porady instruktorů,” 29 November 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–29–3.

151. “Zápis z porady instruktorů a zástupců velitelů studijních oddělení,” 6 December 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–29–3, l. 90.

152. “Situační zpráva na KV-Stb Liberec,” 14 December 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–14–2.

153. “Zápis z porady instruktorů,” 12 December 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–29–3.

154. “Zápis ze schůze instruktorů,” 16 January 1950, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–29–3.

155. Pešek, Štátna bezpečnost na Slovensku, 53.

156. “Nábor do Stb,” 23 November 1949, ABS Prague, f. MNB, ač. MNB 11/2 102.

157. “Záznam o vyjádření s. Bohuslava Koubka,” 23 August 1955, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 35, folder 4, nonpaginated.

158. “Zápis z porady instruktorů a zástupců velitelů studijních oddělení,” 6 December 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–29–3.

159. Ibid.

160. “Program velitelského shromáždění,” 7 December 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–30–4, l. 127.

161. Borák and Janák, Tábory nucené práce v ČSr, 160–61.

162. Ibid., 25.

163. “Směrnice pro využití TNP,” 2 September 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–46–6, nonpaginated.

164. Borák and Janák, Tábory nucené práce v ČSr, 24–25.

165. “Pracovní vodítka pro akci T-43,” undated, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–46–6, nonpaginated.

166. Ibid.

167. Karel Kaplan, Tábory nucené práce v Československu v letech 1948–1954 (Prague: R, 1992), 115.

168. Ibid.

169. Borák and Janák, Tábory nucené práce v ČSr, 26.

170. Kaplan, Tábory nucené práce v Československu, 124–25.

171. “Rozpracování a podrobný plán akce T-43,” ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–46–6, nonpaginated.

172. Pavel Žáček, “Czechoslovakia,” in A Handbook of the Communist Security Apparatus in East Central Europe, ed. Persak and Kamiński, 111.

173. “Velitelské shromáždění,” 7 December 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310-30-4.

174. “Příprava kursu pro střední velitelské kádry StB,” undated, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–39–4.

175. “Velitelství státní bezpečnosti: Sekretariát velitele,” 1 December 1950, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–52–3.

176. “Záznam o velitelské poradě na KVStb Karl. Vary,” 9 December 1949, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–13–3.

177. Můj plán stojí za hovno a že mi ho rozbije na tisíc kusů, “Záznam porada velitelů,” 5 July 1950, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–31–3.

178. “Obrana aparátu SNB—Směrnice,” January 1950, ABS Prague, f. 304, ač. 304–203–2, l. 63.

179. Ibid.

180. Jan Kalous, “Instruktážní skupina StB v lednu a února 1950- zákulisí případu Číhošť,” Sešit ÚDV č. 4, Prague 2001.

181. “Znalecký posudek k činnosti StB v r. 1948,” ABS Prague, f. ZV 4, ač. ZV 4 MV 5 14, l. 55.

182. “Soprovoditel’noe pis’mo VS Abakumova VM Molotovu s prilozheniem soobshcheniya sotrudnikov MGB SSSR MT Likhacheva i NI Makarova o rabote chekhoslovatskikh organov bezopasnosti,” 16 March 1950 in Volokitina et al., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentach rossiiskich archivov 1944–1953 Tom II, 76.

183. Jan Kalous, “Osvald Závodský-aktér i oběť’ politických procesů,” Paměť a dějiny 2013/03,

184. “Zapis’besedys zamestitelem ministra informatsii po kadram I Gyshekom o sozdanii Ministerstva gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti Chekhoslovakii i sostoyanii kadrov v Ministerstve informatsii,” 20 May 1950, in Volokitina et al., Sovetskii faktor v Vostochnoi Evrope, Tom II, 1949–1953, 333.

185. “Aplikace usnesení posledního zasedání ÚV KSČ na problematiku státně bezpečnostních úkolů,” 30 March 1950, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–4–16, l. 15.

186. Dvořáková, Státní bezpečnost v letech 1945–1953, 122.

187. Ibid., 161.

188. Pešek, Štátna bezpečnost na Slovensku, 42.

189. Rychlík, “Collectivization in Czechoslovakia in a Comparative Perspective, 1949–1960,” 195.

190. Dvořáková, Státní bezpečnost v letech 1945–1953, 122.

191. Kaplan, Political Persecution in Czechoslovakia, 20.

192. “Záznam o pohovoru se s. Vladimírem Kohoutkem,” 1 July 1955, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 35, folder 4, nonpaginated.

193. Karel Kaplan, Největší politický proces M. Horáková a spol. (Prague: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR; Brno: Doplněk, 1995), 8.

194. Petrov, Kto rukovodil organami gosbezopacnost, 1942–1954, 875.

195. Dvořáková, Státní bezpečnost v letech 1945–1953, 151.

196. Kaplan, Political Persecution in Czechoslovakia, 22.

197. Ibid., 21.

198. Daniel Růžička, “Kolektivizace venkova: Akce K-Kulak,” http://www.totalita.cz/kolekt/kolekt_akce_k.php.

199. “Untitled criticism/self-criticism session: Ivo Milén,” undated, ABS Prague, Ivo Milén: evidence 2286, l. 90–97.

200. “Moje prověrka: Zápis pro paměť,” 26 August 1950, ABS Prague, Ivo Milén: evidence 2286, l. 104.

201. Dvořáková, Státní bezpečnost v letech 1945–1953, 165.

202. Kaplan, Report on the Murder of the General Secretary, 98.

203. Ibid., 85.

204. “Velitelství státní bezpečnosti-sekretariát velitele,” 1 December 1950, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–52–3, l. 62.

205. “Výkaz počtu příslušníků státní bezpečnosti,” 24 November 1950, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–52–3, l. 92.

206. “Velitelství státní bezpečnosti: sekretariát velitele,” 1 December 1950, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–52–3, l. 62.

207. “Velitelství státní bezpečnosti, sektor I,” 29 November 1950, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–52–3, l. 63.

208. “Výkaz počtu zaměstnanců na II. Sektoru,” 1 December 1950, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–52–3, l. 65.

209. “Výkaz počtu zaměstnanců podle stavu, III sektor,” 1 December 1950, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–52–3, l. 69.

210. “Připomínky k poradě velitelů a pol. pracovníků,” 8 December 1950, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–12–2, l. 1–2.

211. “Celoroční plán velitelství státní bezpečnosti,” December 1950, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–7–3, nonpaginated.

212. Kaplan, Report on the Murder of the General Secretary, 105.

213. Ibid., 104.

214. “Poznatky z práce v sekretariátě ÚV, KSČ, KSK, a MNB: Jaroslav Hora,” 12 October 1955, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 35, folder 4, nonpaginated.

215. “Záznam pro soudruha ministra,” 12 July 1950, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–5–13, nonpaginated.

216. Milan Bárta, “Akce Isolace: Snaha Státní bezpečnosti omezit návštěvnost zastupitelných úřadů kapitalistických států,” Paměť a dějiny, 2008/04, 42.

217. Ibid., 179–80.

218. Ibid., 44.

219. “Návrh na organizování desinformace nepřítele,” 29 August 1952, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–34–27, l. 1–4.

220. “Zpráva o situaci na IV. Sektoru odboru BAa, později 4. Sektor VStb, 5 odbor HS Stb, nyní VII správa MV, pplk. Kavan,” undated, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 2, folder 9, nonpaginated.

221. “Záznam o pohovoru se soudruhem Vojtěchem Kozlem,” 1 September 1955, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 35, folder 4, nonpaginated.

222. Kaplan, Report on the Murder of the General Secretary, 107–8.

223. Kovály, Under a Cruel Star, 101.

224. “Zpráva o průzkumu kádrových pracovníků por. Knotka, por. Zadrobílka, šstrážm. Zámečníka ve věci zařazení soudruhů z LM na VI. Sektoru Vstb skupina A a B,” 2 March 1951, HIA box 27, folder 3, nonpaginated.

225. Kaplan, Report on the Murder of the General Secretary, 107.

226. Doubek, StB o sobě, ed. Karel Kaplan, 51–52.

227. “Záznam o pohovoru s Aloisem Jistebnickým,” 30 June 1955, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 35, folder 4, nonpaginated.

228. “Záznam o pohovoru se s. Josefem Kubincem,” 28 June 1955, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 35, folder 4, nonpaginated.

229. Artur London, The Confession (New York: Morrow, 1970), 77.

230. Marian Šlingová, Truth Will Prevail (London: Merlin, 1968), 57.

231. “Záznam o pohovoru se soudr. Martou Gesnárkovou,” 19 October 1955, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 35, folder 4, nonpaginated.

232. Otmar Kašina, “Letter to Rudolf Barák,” 1 November 1956, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 2, folder 9, nonpaginated.

233. “Zvláštní prověrka, Major Kohoutek Vladimír,” ABS Prague, Vladimír Kohoutek: evidence PS 4049/12.

234. “Velitelství Národní bezp. stráže v Mor. Ostravě,” 24 May 1945, ABS Prague, Vladimír Kohoutek: evidence PS 4049/12.

235. London, The Confession, 159.

236. “Kádrové vyhodnocení vypracované k návrhu na ustanovení do funkce zástupce náčelníka Ústřední školy ministerstva vnitra F.E. Dzeržinského Prague,” 1 November 1955, ABS Prague, Jan Musil: evidence, č. 4429/13.

237. Biografický slovník představitelů ministerstva vnitra v letech 1948–1989, ed. Milan Bárta (Prague: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, 2009), 152.

238. Ibid.

239. Kaplan, Mocní a bezmocní, 403.

240. Záznam o pohovoru se soudruhem Vojtěchem Kozlem,” 1 September 1955, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 35, folder 4, nonpaginated.

241. “Záznam o pohovoru se s. Andrejem Keppertem,” 27 September 1955, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 35, folder 4, nonpaginated.

242. “Ústřední škola Státní bezpečnosti MNB,” ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–39–22, l. 20–21.

243. “Jak postupovat při výslechu zatčené osoby,” 1952, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–39–24, nonpaginated.

244. “Zápis o výpovědi sepsaný dnešního dne u zdejšího velitelství s předvedeným Pokorným Bedřichem,” 31 July 1952, ABS Prague, f. Zvláštní vyšetřování, a.č. ZV 4 MV Pokorný, l. 29–30.

245. “Zkušební řád pro školy a kursy zřizované ministerstvem národní bezpečnosti v ČSr: Pozorování frekventantů,” 1 February 1951, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–40–7, nonpaginated.

246. Ibid.

247. “Zkušební řád pro školy a kursy zřizované ministerstvem národní bezpečnosti v ČSr: Pozorování frekventantů,” 1 February 1951, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–40–7.

248. Ibid.

249. Ibid.

250. “Instruktážní materiál Ministerstva spravedlnosti o veřejných soudních procesech a jejich organisaci,” 29 August 1951, Československá justice v letech 1948–1953 v dokumentech, Díl III, ed. J. Vorel, A. Šimánková, and L. Babka (Sešity Úřadu dokumentace a vyšetřování zločinů komunismu, č. 10, 2004), 224.

251. Ibid., 225.

252. Kaplan, Political Persecution in Czechoslovakia, 14; on the trials of farmers in 1952, see “K perzekuci zemědělců” in Československá justice v letech 1948–1953 v dokumentech, Díl III, ed. J. Vorel, A. Šimánková, and L. Babka (Sešity Úřadu dokumentace a vyšetřování zločinů komunismu, č. 10, 2004), 213–19; on the local level, see Jiří Urban, Kolektivizace venkova v horním Polabí (Nakladatelství Karolinum-Ústr, 2016), 119.

253. Kaplan, Political Persecution in Czechoslovakia, 22.

254. “Vyjádření k návrhu na vybudování rezidentských a informátorských sítí,” 7 September 1951, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–34–16, l. 2.

255. “Sebekritika R. Slánského,” 6 September 1951, NA, fond 01, sv. 16, ar.j. 28, l. 39.

256. “Referát soudruha Klementa Gottwalda na zasedání Ústředního výboru,” 6 September 1951, NA, fond 01, sv. 16, ar.j. 28.

257. “Iz dnevnika P. G. Krekotenya: Beseda s A Chepichkoi o R. Slanskom,” 10 October 1951, Volokitina et al., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskich arkhivov, 539.

258. Kaplan and Kosatík, Gottwaldovi muži, 110.

259. “Iz dnevnika sovetnika posol’stva SSSR v Chekhoslovakii N N Tarakanova,” 29 November 1951, Volokitina et al., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskich arkhivov, 555.

260. Kaplan and Kosatík, Gottwaldovi muži, 119.

261. “Rozkaz o práci s agenty,” 21 November 1951, f. 310, ač. 310–34–19, l. 2–6.

262. The following defendants were on trial: Rudolf Slánský, Bedřich Geminder, Ludvík Frejka, Josef Frank, Vladimír Clementis, Bedřich Reicin, Artur London, Evžen Lobl, Vavro Hajdů, Rudolf Margolius, Otto Fischl, Otto Šling, and André Simone. They were accused of high treason, espionage, sabotage, and military treason. See Kaplan, Report on the Murder of the General Secretary, 227; Igor Lukes, “Rudolf Slánský: His Trials and Trial,” Cold War International History Project, Working Paper 50 (July 2011), 26.

263. Doubek, StB o sobě, ed. Karel Kaplan, 147.

264. “Andrej Keppert: Stručný životopis,” 30 August 1963, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 27, folder 4, nonpaginated.

265. “Záznam o pohovoru se s. Andrejem Keppertem,” 27 September 1955, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 35, folder 4, nonpaginated.

266. “Záznam vypracovaný na základě požadavku člena zvláštní komise s. Jehlíka,” 28 December 1962, ABS Prague, ZV 120 MV svazek dokumentu sektor 1 část 2, l. 185.

267. Kaplan, Report on the Murder of the General Secretary, 237.

268. Benjamin Pinkus, The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 155–61, 174–77.

269. London, The Confession, 50.

270. “Správa vyšetřování MV—Záznam o výslechu odsouzené Hložkové Věry,” 25 May 1954, ABS Prague, Vladimír Kohoutek: evidence PS 4049/12.

271. Jaroslav Janoušek, “Výpisy ze služebních hodnocení,” 30 August 1963, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 27, folder 4, nonpaginated.

272. “Záznam o pohovoru se soudruhem Janouškem Jaroslavem,” 31 August 1955, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 35, folder 4, nonpaginated.

273. Jaroslav Janoušek, “Výpisy ze služebních hodnocení,” 30 August 1963, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 27, folder 4, nonpaginated.

274. “MNB: Ustanovka: Charakteristika a rodinné poměry,” 3 May 1951, ABS Prague, f. MNB, ač. MNB 11/5–105, aj. 6.

275. Doubek, StB o sobě, ed. Karel Kaplan, 62.

276. Karel Šváb, “Untitled Letter,” HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 9, folder 3.

277. “Pozvánka na slavnostní přejmenování Ústřední školy MNB na Učiliště F. E. Dzeržinského,” ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–39–22, l. 89.

278. Defendants included Oskar Valášek, Rudolf Viktorin, Theodor Baláž, Viktor Sedmík, Matěj Bel, Šimon Čermák, Juraj Glaser, Mikuláš Fodor, Mikuláš Horský, Martin Kraus, Doubek, StB o sobě, ed. Karel Kaplan, 130.

279. Kalous, “Nepřátelé ve Státní bezpečnosti. Procesy s příslušníky StB,” 77.

280. “Rozsudek Jménem republiky,” 21–23 December 1953, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 7, folder 2, nonpaginated.

281. Dvořáková, “Bedřich Pokorný-vzestup a pád,” in Sborník Archivu Ministerstva vnitra, Prague: Archiv Ministerstva vnitra 2/2004, 265.

282. Kieran Williams, The Prague Spring and Its Aftermath: Czechoslovak Politics, 1968–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

283. František Koudelka and Jiří Suk, Ministerstvo vnitra a bezpečnostní aparát v období pražského jara 1968 (Brno: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR v nakladatelství Doplněk, 1996), 16.

284. Dvořáková, Státní bezpečnost v letech 1945–1953, 28–29.

285. Kaplan, Mocní a bezmocní, 411.

286. Biografický slovník představitelů ministerstva vnitra v letech 1948–1989, 153.

287. “Letter to the Central Control and Revision Commission of the Czechoslovak Communist Party,” 19 March 1964, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 27, folder 2, nonpaginated.

288. “Návrh organisace velitelství státní bezpečnosti,” 21 October 1950, ABS Prague, f. 310, ač. 310–7-1.

289. Antonín Prchal, “Letter to Rudolf Barák,” 11 July 1956, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 2, folder 9.

CHAPTER 6. BUILDING THE STASI IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

1. Christian F. Ostermann, ed., Uprising in East Germany, 1953: The Cold War, the German Question, and the First Major Upheaval Behind the Iron Curtain (Budapest: CEU Press, 2001), 165.

2. “Situation Report from Andrei Grechko and A. Tarasov to Nikolai Bulganin, 17 June 1953–6:30pm,” in ibid., 196.

3. “Auswertung der Stimmungsberichte aus der Bevölkerung zu den faschistischen Provokationen,” 22 June 1953, BStU Berlin, Archiv der Zentralstelle, MfS-SdM, Nr. 249, l. 134.

4. Ibid., l. 132.

5. Ibid., l. 122.

6. “Stimmungsberichte zum Kommuniqué des ZK der SED,” BStU Berlin, Archiv der Zentralstelle, MfS-SdM, Nr. 249, l. 121.

7. Ibid., l. 98.

8. Ibid., l. 98, 100.

9. Fricke, Politik und Justiz in der DDR, 164.

10. Foitzik and Petrow, Die sowjetischen Geheimdienste in der SBZ/DDR, 59.

11. Fricke, Politik und Justiz in der DDR, 163.

12. Petrov and Foitzik, eds., Apparat NKVD-MGB v Germanii, 1945–1953, 17.

13. Ibid.

14. Kaiser, “Wechsel von sowjetischer Besatzungspolitik zu sowjetischer Kontrolle?” 164; Fricke, Politik und Justiz in der DDR, 163–64.

15. Kaiser, “Wechsel von sowjetischer Besatzungspolitik zu sowjetischer Kontrolle?” 193.

16. Nikita Petrov, “Die gemeinsame Arbeit der Staatssicherheitsorgane der UdSSR und der DDR im Osten Deutschlands,” in Speziallager in der SBZ: Gedenkstätten mit ‘doppelter Vergangenheit’, ed. Peter Reif-Spirek and Bodo Ritscher (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1999), 199.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid., 44.

20. Hermann Weber and Ulrich Mählert, eds., Terror: Stalinistische Parteisäuberungen, 1936–1953 (Paderborn: Schöningh Verlag, 1998), 123.

21. Jörg Rudolph, Hingerichtet in Moskau: Opfer des Stalinismus aus Berlin 1950–1953 (Berlin: Der Berliner Landesbeauftragete für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR, 2007), 56.

22. “Bericht des Leiters des Berliner MGB Apparates, an den damaligen Minister für Staatssicherheit der USSR,” 29 February 1952, as cited in Knabe, West-Arbeit des MfS, 69–70.

23. David Murphy, Sergei Kondrashev, and George Bailey, Battleground Berlin: CIA vs KGB in the Cold War (New Haven: Yale University Press), 133.

24. Ibid., 133–34.

25. Silke Schumann, Parteierziehung in der Geheimpolizei: zur Rolle der SED im MfS der fünfziger Jahre (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1997), 25–26.

26. Foitzik and Petrow, Die sowjetischen Geheimdienste in der SBZ/DDR von 1945 bis 1953, 58.

27. Ibid., 26.

28. Petrov and Foitzik, eds., Apparat NKVD-MGB v Germanii, 1945–1953, 29.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid., 28.

31. “Betr. Franke, Gerhard,” 15 October 1949, BStU Berlin, MfS KSII 333–84, 134.

32. “Protokoll des Referats des Gen. Walter Ulbricht anlässlich der Parteiaktivtagung am 28. Mai 1953 im Klub Orankesee,” 28 May 1953, BStU Berlin, SDM 1199, s. 299.

33. Petrov and Foitzik, eds., Apparat NKVD-MGB v Germanii, 1945–1953, 8.

34. Ibid.

35. As quoted in Naimark, Russians in Germany, 47.

36. Weissgerber, Giftige Worte der SED-Diktatur, 204.

37. “Die Arbeit unserer Parteiorganisation,” undated, BStU Berlin, SDM 1199.

38. “Themenplan zur Schulung 1 Sekretäre der Grundorganisationen,” BStU Berlin, MfS-Sekr. d. Min. 1199, s. 190.

39. Weissgerber, Giftige Worte der SED-Diktatur, 163.

40. Ibid., 240.

41. “Über Fälle grober Einmischung von Mitarbeitern des Operativen Sektors in innerparteiliche Angelegenheiten der SED,” 19 April 1948, in Foitzik and Petrow, Die sowjetischen Geheimdienste in der SBZ/DDR, 335.

42. Thomas Klein, “Die Parteikontrolle in der SED als Instrument der Stalinisierung,” in Für die Einheit und Reinheit der Partei, ed. Thomas Klein (Köln: Böhlau, 2002), 152.

43. Ibid., 125.

44. Gary Bruce, Resistance with the People: Repression and Resistance in Eastern Germany, 1945–1955 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 39–40.

45. Ibid., 40.

46. Greiner, Suppressed Terror, 72.

47. Herta Geffke, “Die Arbeit der Parteikontrolle in den Jahren 1949/58,” 13 February 1968, BA Berlin, SgY 30/0257/2; Jeffrey Herf, “East German Communists and the Jewish Question: The Case of Paul Merker,” Journal of Contemporary History 29, no. 4 (October 1994): 634.

48. “Bericht über die Organisationsarbeit im Land Sachsen,” September 1948, BA Berlin, DY 30-Bestand-SED Zentralkomitee Parteiorgane, sign. IV 2–5–227.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid.

51. Paul Fiedler, “Erinnerungsbericht,” 27 May 1974, BA Berlin, SgY 30–1711.

52. Herta Geffke, “Die Arbeit der Parteikontrolle in den Jahren 1949/58,” 13 February 1968, BA Berlin, SgY 30/0257/2; Herf, “East German Communists and the Jewish Question, 634.

53. Wer war wer in der DDR, ed. Müller-Enbergs, 289.

54. “Themenplan zur Schulung 1 Sekretäre der Grundorganisationen: Beschluss des ZK vom 22.2.1949 über die Einführung der Kandidatenzeit,” BStU Berlin, MfS-Sekr. d. Min. 1199, s. 196.

55. Thomas Klein, Für die Einheit und Reinheit der Partei: die innerparteilichen Kontrollorgane der SED in der Ära Ulbricht (Cologne: Böhlau, 2002), 102.

56. Foitzik, “Die stalinistischen ‘Säuberungen’ in den ostmittelsuropäischen kommunistischen Parteien,” in Terror: Stalinistische Parteisäuberungen, 1936–1953, ed. Weber and Mählert, 413.

57. Der Fall Noel Field: Schlüsselfigur der Schauprozesse in Osteuropa, heraus. Bernd-Rainer Barth and Werner Schweizer (Berlin: Basisdruck, 2005).

58. Terror: Stalinistische Parteisäuberungen, 1936–1953, ed. Weber and Mählert, 116–17.

59. Rudolf Bühring, “Erinnerungen und Erfahrungen aus meiner Tätigkeit im Land Sachsen-Anhalt bzw. Halle/Salle,” Pasewalk, 20 July 1977, BA Berlin, SgY 30/1845/1.

60. Rudolf Bühring, “Problemreiche politische Lehrjahre für uns und für die sowjetischen Genossen,” Pasewalk, 20 July 1977, BA Berlin, SgY 30/1845/1.

61. “Kleines politisches Wörterbuch,” undated, BA Berlin, DY 30/IV 2/9.03/60, s. 70–71.

62. “Planirovanie i organizatsiya boevoi podgotovki nemetskoi narodnoi politsii,” BA Berlin, Upravlenie vnutrenych del SVAG, f. P-7317, o. 17, d. 1, st. 1–294.

63. Paul Cantow, “Erinnerungen und persönliche Erlebnisse vom Prozess der Verschmelzung der beiden Arbeiterparteien KPD und SPD zur SED,” 20 March 1974, SgY 30–1703, 11.

64. Weissgerber, Giftige Worte der SED-Diktatur, 240–41.

65. “Erinnerungen von Genossin Köckeritz Wollermann,” BA Berlin, SgY 30–1708.

66. “Die Arbeit der Landesleitung SED Land Brandenburg,” undated, BStU Berlin, MfS-AS 40–55.

67. “Themenplan zur Schulung 1 Sekretäre der Grundorganisationen,” BStU Berlin, MfS-Sekr. d. Min. 1199, s. 194. The titles were as follows: “Die Durchführung der Beschlüsse kontrollieren”; “Jeder Kommunist-ein aktiver Kämpfer für die Durchführung der Parteibeschlüsse”; “Über die Kontrolle bei der Durchführung der Parteibeschlüsse”; “Um die Durchführung der Parteibeschlüsse zu sichern ist die richtige Auswahl,” “Kontrolle der Parteibeschlüsse—unerlässliche Voraussetzung für die Durchführung der Politik der Partei”; “Über die Verantwortlichkeit der Parteimitglieder für die Durchführung der Parteibeschlüsse.”

68. “Maßnahmen zur Verbesserung der organisatorischen Arbeit der Partei: Einschließung des Parteivorstandes der SED,” 3 June 1950, Bestand-Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands Zentralkomitee, Kaderfragen, BA Berlin, DY 30/IV 2/11/120.

69. Weissgerber, Giftige Worte der SED-Diktatur, 163.

70. “Bericht über das Ergebnis der Überprüfung der Parteimitglieder und Kandidaten,” 7 April 1952, Bestand-SED ZK, Büro Walter Ulbricht, BA Berlin, DY 30/3375.

71. “Protokoll in der Sitzung am Minister Dr. Benjamin als Vorsitzende, Generalstaatsanwalt Dr. Mehlsheimer, Generalleutnant Mielke,” 10 February 1956, BStU Berlin, MfS AS Nr. 3/59 Band 1/1.

72. Schumann, Parteierziehung in der Geheimpolizei, 81.

73. Greiner, Suppressed Terror, 69.

74. SED-Kader: die mittlere Ebene: biographisches Lexikon der Sekretäre der Landes-und Bezirksleitungen, der Ministerpräsidenten und der Vorsitzenden der Räte der Bezirke 1946 bis 1989, ed. Mario Niemann and Andreas Herbst (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2010), 47.

75. Paul Cantow, “Erinnerungen und persönliche Erlebnisse vom Prozess der Verschmelzung der beiden Arbeiterparteien KPD und SPD zur SED sowie ihrer Entwicklung zur Partei neuen Typus in der Zeit von 1946 bis einschließlich 1952,” 20 March 1974, BA Berlin, SgY 30–1703, s. 11.

76. Ostermann, ed., Uprising in East Germany, 1953, 104. This number from a total of 120,531 people who left during that period.

77. “Memorandum from General Vasilii Chuikov, Pavel Yudin, and Ivan il’ichev to Georgii Malenkov Critically Assessing the Situation in the GDR,” 18 May 1953, ibid., 99.

78. Ibid., 207.

79. Ibid., 205.

80. Ibid., 207.

81. “Report from KGB Resident in Berlin Col Ivan Fadeikin to Marshal Vasilii Sokolovskii,” 19 June 1953, in ibid., 233–34.

82. Ibid., 20.

83. “Report from Maj. Gen. Sergei Dengin to Vladimir Semyonov, “On the Situation in the Soviet Sector of Berlin,” 8 July 1953, in ibid., 300.

84. “Charakteristik über den Kriminal-Oberkommissar Karl Kreusel,” 3 August 1948, Cadres Akte: Karel Kreusel, BStU Berlin, AKS 56/75.

85. “Wilhelm Enke,” BStU Berlin, MfS KSI 26–84 b. 2.

86. “Abschrift Bobenneukirchen,” 5 September 1949, BStU Berlin, 29832–90.

87. Das MfS-Lexicon: Begriffe, Personen und Strukturen der Staatssicherheit der DDR, ed. Roger Engelmann (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2011), 120.

88. Wer War Wer in der DDR, ed. Müller-Enbergs, 59.

89. Ibid., 100.

90. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter der Staatssicherheit, 95–100. Gieseke defines high-ranking members of the force as heads of departments, regional offices, and branches.

91. Ibid., 62.

92. Ibid., 81.

93. “Fachliche und charakterliche Beurteilung des Kameraden Walter Heinitz,” 12 July 1950, BStU Berlin, Aktenmappe: Walter Heinitz, MfS KSI 04/87, s. 23.

94. Wer War Wer in der DDR, ed. Müller-Enbergs, 387.

95. Helmut Müller-Enbergs, “Die Hälfte des Himmels: Frauen im kommunistischen Nachrichtendienst,” Journal for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies 8 (2014): n. 2, 18–29.

96. Angela Schmole, “Frauen und MfS,” Deutschland-Archiv 29, no. 4 (1996): 512.

97. Wer War Wer in der DDR, ed. Muller-Enbergs, 46.

98. “Beurteilung des VP-Kommandeur Erich Bär,” 29 October 1949, Cadres Akte: Erich Bär, BStU Berlin, MfS KS 31–73, s. 22.

99. Verwaltung Sachsen: Beurteilung des VP-Kdr. Richard Horn,” 7 February 1951, Cadres Akte: Richard Horn, BStU Berlin, MfS KS 286/59.

100. Wer War Wer in der DDR, ed. Müller-Enbergs, 46.

101. “Beurteilung des VP-Kommandeur Wagner,” 28 August 1950, Aktenmappe: Emil Wagner, BStU Berlin, 9985/90.

102. “Charakteristik über den Kommissar Rudolf Hans Mittag,” 17 April 1950, Cadres Akte: Rudolf Mittag, BStU Berlin, 31699/90.

103. “Beurteilung des Kommissar Hennig,” 7 December 1950, Cadres Akte: Werner Hennig, BStU Berlin, MfS-KS 26638–90.

104. “Protokoll Nr. 97 der Sitzung des Politbüros” 11 July 1950, Bestand: SED ZK: Beschlüsse Politbüro, BA Berlin, DY 30/IV 2/2/97.

105. “Beurteilung des Volkspolizei Kommissar Werner Grünert,” 28 June 1949, BStU Berlin, 29832–90.

106. “Abschrift Bobenneukirchen,” 5 September 1949, BStU Berlin, 29832–90.

107. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter der Staatssicherheit, 79.

108. Ibid., 95.

109. “Wilhelm Enke, Betr: Verwandte im Westen,” 28 March 1950, BStU Berlin, MfS KSI 26/84.

110. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter der Staatssicherheit, 121.

111. Gary Bruce, “The Prelude to Nationwide Surveillance in East Germany: Stasi Operations and Threat Perceptions, 1945–1953,” Journal of Cold War Studies 5, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 23.

112. Falco Werkentin, “Die Politik der SED nach der 2. Parteikonferenz im Juli 1952,” in Der Aufbau der ‘Grundlagen des Sozialismus’ in der DDR 1952/53, ed. Falco Werkentin, Schriftenreihe des Berliner Landesbeauftragten für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR, Band 15, Berlin 2007. “USSR Council of Ministers Order ‘On Measures to Improve the Health of the Political Situation in the GDR,’” 2 June 1953, in Ostermann, ed., Uprising in East Germany, 136.

113. Schumann, Parteierziehung in der Geheimpolizei, 52.

114. “Entschließung des Politbüros über die Arbeit des MfS” 18 March 1952, BA Berlin, SAPMO, DY 30, IV 2/2/202, Bl. 82.

115. Schumann, Parteierziehung in der Geheimpolizei, 54.

116. Thomas Auerbach, Matthias Braun, Bernd Eisenfeld, Gesine von Prittwitz, Clemens Vollnhals, MfS Handbuch: Hauptabteilung XX: Staatsapparat, Blockparteien, Kirchen, Kultur, politischer Untergrund, (Berlin: BStU, 2008), 11.

117. Angela Schmole, Anatomie der Staatsicherheit-Hauptabteilung VIII-Beobachtung, Ermittlung, Durchsuchung, Festnahme, 13.

118. Knabe, West-Arbeit des MfS, 69.

119. Auerbach et al., Anatomie der Staatssicherheit, 13.

120. Bruce, Resistance with the People, 3–4. Bruce has pointed out that there is very little material available on either of these groups, making them difficult to study.

121. Ibid., 123.

122. Knabe, West-Arbeit des MfS, 69.

123. Schumann, Parteierziehung in der Geheimpolizei, 23–24.

124. Maria Haendcke-Hoppe-Arndt, Die Hauptabteilung XVIII: Volkswirtschaft (Berlin: Der Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR, 1997), 3.

125. Karel Wilhelm Fricke, Politik und Justiz in der DDR, 234.

126. Kaplan, Největší politický proces M. Horáková a spol, 236.

127. Müller-Enbergs, Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit, 12.

128. Ibid.

129. Ibid., 25.

130. “Regierung der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik Ministerium für Staatssicherheit: Befehl 57/51,” BStU Berlin, MfS-BdL Nr. 000032.

131. Engelmann and Joestel, Hauptabteilung IX: Untersuchung, 42.

132. Ibid., 43.

133. Ibid., 43–44.

134. “Daten und Fakten zur Entwicklung der Hochschule des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit,” Potsdam, December 1984, BStU Berlin, MfS JHS 23092, l. 5.

135. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter der Staatssicherheit, 138.

136. Günter Förster, Die Juristische Hochschule des MfS (Berlin: Der Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR, 1996), 28.

137. Gary Bruce, The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 42.

138. Wer war wer in der DDR, ed. Müller-Enbergs, 350.

139. Knabe, West-Arbeit des MfS, 63.

140. Ibid.

141. Ibid., 65.

142. Ibid.

143. Hermann Weber, “Schauprozess-Vorbereitungen in der DDR” in Terror: Stalinistische Parteisäuberungen, 1936–1953, ed. Weber and Mählert, 476.

144. Jan Behrends, “Entfernte Verwandte: Stalinismusforschung und DDR-Geschichte,” in Staatssicherheit und Gesellschaft: Studien zum Herrschaftsalltag in der DDR, ed. Jens Gieseke (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2007), 60.

145. Engelmann and Joestel, Hauptabteilung IX: Untersuchung, 55.

146. Ibid., 540.

147. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter der Staatssicherheit, 138.

148. Ibid., 89.

149. “Entschließung des Polit-Büros über die Arbeit des Ministeriums für Staatsicherheit,” 18 March 1952, SAPMO: Berlin Lichterfeld, DY 30-IV 2–2–202.

150. Monika Tantzscher, Hauptabteilung VI: Grenzkontrollen, Reise-und Touristenverkehr (Berlin: BStU, 2005), 42.

151. Ibid., 43.

152. Frank Petzold, “Der Einfluss des MfS aus das DDR-Grenzregime an der Innerdeutschen Grenze,” in Opfer und Täter im SED-Staat, ed. Lothar Mertens and Dieter Voigt (Berlin: Duncker and Humbolt, 1998), 137.

153. Ibid., 140.

154. After the construction of the Berlin wall the border guards answered to the Ministry for National Security, Staatssicherheit: ein Lesebuch zur DDR-Geheimpolizei, ed. Daniela Münkel (Berlin: Der Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR, 2015), 131; Tantzscher, Hauptabteilung VI: Grenzkontrollen, Reise-und Touristenverkehr, 43.

155. Arnd Bauerkämper, “Abweichendes Verhalten in der Diktatur. Problem einer kategorialen Einordnung am Beispiel der Kollektivierung der Landwirtschaft in der DDR,” in Doppelte Zeitgeschichte: Deutsch-deutsche Beziehungen, 1945–1990, eds. Arnd Bauerkämper, Martin Sbrow, Bernd Stöver (Bonn: J. H. W. Dietz, 1998), 298.

156. Ibid.

157. Thomas Lindenberger, “Der ABV als Landwirt,” in Herrschaft und Eigen-Sinn in der Diktatur: Studien zur Gesellschaftsgeschichte der DDR, ed. Thomas Lindenberger (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag GambH, 1999), 170.

158. Dagmar Langenhan, “Halte Dich fern von den Kommunisten, die wollen nicht arbeiten! Kollektivierung der Landwirtschaft und bäuerlicher Eigen-Sinn am Beispiel Niederlausitzer Dörfer,” in Herrschaft und Eigen-Sinn in der Diktatur, ed. Lindenberger, 127.

159. Thomas Lindenberger, “Der ABV als Landwirt,” in Herrschaft und Eigen-Sinn in der Diktatur: Studien zur Gesellschaftsgeschichte der DDR, 128.

160. Ibid., 171.

161. “Memorandum from General Vasilii chuikov, Pavel Yudin, and Ivan il’ichev to Georgii Malenkov Critically Assessing the Situation in the GDR,” in Ostermann, ed., Uprising in East Germany, 18 May 1953, 100–109.

162. Bauerkämper, “Abweichendes Verhalten in der Diktatur. Problem einer kategorialen Einordnung am Beispiel der Kollektivierung der Landwirtschaft in der DDR,” 298.

163. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter der Staatssicherheit, 88.

164. Ibid.

165. Haendcke-Hoppe-Arndt, Die Hauptabteilung XVIII: Volkswirtschaft, 15.

166. Ibid.

167. Bauerkämper, “Abweichendes Verhalten in der Diktatur. Problem einer kategorialen Einordnung am Beispiel der Kollektivierung der Landwirtschaft in der DDR,” 298.

168. “Bericht über die Lage auf dem Lande,” BStU Berlin, Archiv der Zentralstelle, MfS-SdM, Nr. 249, l. 95.

169. Stephan Wolf, “Die ‘Bearbeitung’ der Kirchen in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone und der DDR durch die politische Polizei und das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit bis 1953,” in Die Ohnmacht der Allmächtigen: Geheimdienste und politische Polizei in der modernen Gesellschaft, ed. Bernd Florath, Armin Mitter, and Stefan Wolle (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1992), 192.

170. Weissgerber, Giftige Worte der SED-Diktatur, 167.

171. Wolf, “Die ‘Bearbeitung’ der Kirchen in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone und der DDR durch die politische Polizei und das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit bis 1953,” 184–85.

172. Ibid., 185.

173. Ibid.

174. Ibid., 201.

175. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter der Staatssicherheit, 87.

176. Bruce, “The Prelude to Nationwide Surveillance in East Germany,” 18.

177. “Report from Vasilii Sokolovskii, Vladimir Semyonov, and Pavel Yudin, “On the Events of 17–19 June 1953 in Berlin and the GDR and Certain Conclusions from those Events,” 24 June 1953, from Ostermann, ed., Uprising in East Germany, 1953, 273.

178. Haendcke-Hoppe-Arndt, Die Hauptabteilung XVIII: Volkswirtschaft, 14.

179. Ibid., 15.

180. Engelmann and Joestel, Hauptabteilung IX: Untersuchung, 48.

181. Ibid., 48.

182. Ibid.

183. Ibid., 54.

184. Ibid., 48.

185. Ibid., 49.

186. Fricke, Politik und Justiz in der DDR, 162; Falco Werentinm, “Die Politik der SED nach der 2. Parteikonferenz im Juli 1952” in Der Aufbau der Grundlagen der Sozialismuz in der DDR 1952/53, ed. Falco Werkentin (Berlin: BStU, 2002), 56.

187. Fricke, Politik und Justiz in der DDR, 161.

188. Ibid., 56.

189. “Regierung der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik-Ministerium für Staatssicherheit: Abschrift, Berlin: Befehl Nr. 228/52,” 22 November 1952, BStU Berlin, MfS-BdL/Dok Nr. 000102.

190. Ibid.

191. “Unser Kampf für die Festigung der Moral und Disziplin und die Hebung der revolutionären Wachsamkeit,” 17 March 1953, BStU Berlin, Archiv der Zentralstelle, MfS BdL, Nr. 005797.

192. Schumann, Parteierziehung in der Geheimpolizei, 54.

193. Ibid., 83–84.

194. Ostermann, ed., Uprising in East Germany, 1953, 3.

195. “Memorandum from the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs to Vladimir Semyonov: ‘On the Question of Preventing the Defection of Inhabitants from the GDR to West Germany,’” 15 May 1953, in ibid., 97.

196. Ibid., 98.

197. Ibid., 98–99.

198. “Stimmungsberichte zum Kommuniqué des ZK der SED,” BStU Berlin, Archiv der Zentralstelle, MfS-SdM, Nr. 249.

199. Ibid., l. 101.

200. Ibid., l. 99.

201. “Situation Report from Andrei Grechko and A. Tarasov to Nikolai Bulganin, 17 June 1953–6:30pm,” in Ostermann, ed., Uprising in East Germany, 1953, 196.

202. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 157.

203. Ibid.

204. Murphy, Kondrashev, and Bailey, Battleground Berlin, 171–72.

205. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 161.

206. Karl Wilhelm Fricke and Roger Engelmann, Der ‘Tag X’ und die Staatssicherheit: 17 Juni 1953: Reaktionen und Konsequenzen im DDR-Machtapparat (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 2003), 368.

207. “Forum der Bezirksleitung, 15 Tagung des Zentralkomitees,” 29 July 1953, BStU Berlin, SDM 1199.

208. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 165.

209. Ibid.

210. Fricke and Engelmann, Der ‘Tag X’ und die Staatssicherheit, 179.

211. Müller-Enbergs, Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit, 35.

212. This biographical material on Wollweber is from Karl Wilhelm Fricke and Roger Engelmann, Konzentrierte Schläge: Staatssicherheitsaktionen und politische Prozesse in der DDR, 1953–1956 (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1998), 31.

213. Ibid., 37.

214. Ibid.

215. “Transcript of the CPSU CC Plenum Meetings Regarding Beria’s Views on the German Question in Spring 1953,” 2–3 July 1953, Ostermann, ed., Uprising in East Germany, 1953, 158.

216. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 550.

217. Ibid., 293.

218. Ibid.

CHAPTER 7. THE SECRET POLICE: HISTORY AND LEGACY

1. Mówi Józef Światło, 25.

2. Norman Naimark, Stalin’s Genocides (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 109.

3. David Shearer, Policing Stalin’s Socialism: Repression and Social Order in the Soviet Union, 1924–1953 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

4. Shore, Caviar and Ashes.

5. “Stíhání některých protistátních trestných činů,” 12 November 1947, ABS Prague, f. 310, a.č. 310–25–10, l. 13–30.

6. Grzegorz Wołk, “Prace dyplomowe absolwentów Wyższej Szkoły Oficerskiej MSW im. Feliksa Dzierżyńskiego w Legionowie-przyczynek do bibliografii,” Instytut Historii (Uniwersytet Jagielloński: BUiAD IPN Warszawa), 217; “Záznam o pohovoru se s. Vladimírem Kohoutkem,” 1 July 1955, HIA, Jiří Šetina Collection, box 35, folder 4, nonpaginated.

7. Kaplan, Největší politický proces M. Horáková a spol, 8.

8. Weissgerber, Giftige Worte der SED-Diktatur, 142.

9. Oto Ulč, The Judge in a Communist State: A View from Within (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1972); Inga Markovits, Justice in Luritz: Experiencing Socialist Law in East Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

10. Kaplan, Národní fronta, 65.

11. Lauren Crump, The Warsaw Pact Reconsidered: International Relations in Eastern Europe, 1955–1969 (London: Routledge, 2015). Connections that continued into the Cold War era are described in Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999); Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB and the World (New York: Penguin, 2014).

12. Fijałkowska, Borejsza I Różański, 210.

13. Wojtyniak, “Wspomnienia z życia i pracy w PUBP-Poznań, Krosno-Ðdrzańskie, WUBP Zielona Góra i PUBP-Szprotawa w latach 1945–1956,” 57.

14. Machcewicz, Rebellious Satellite: Poland 1956, 65.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid., 28.

17. Jerzy Eisler, Polski rok 1968 (Warsaw: IPN, 2006), 390.

18. Kaplan, Mocní a bezmocní, 422.

19. Ulč, The Judge in a Communist State, 34.

20. Kaplan, Mocní a bezmocní, 422.

21. Jacques Rupnik, “The Roots of Czech Stalinism,” in Culture, Ideology, and Politics, ed. Raphael Samuel and Gareth Stedman Jones (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), 302.

22. The best account of this is Milan Šimečka, The Restoration of Order: The Normalization of Czechoslovakia, 1969–1976 (London: Verso, 1984).

23. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit, 174–75.

24. “Beschlußvorlage an das Sekretariat des Zentralkomitees der SED,” Berlin, 23 November 1956, BA Berlin, Bestand SED ZK, Büro Walter Ulbricht, DY 30/3377.

25. Wer War Wer in the DDR, ed. Müller-Enbergs, 260.

26. Ibid., 689–90.

27. Ibid., 350.

28. Ibid., 387.

29. Ibid., 46.

Bibliography

ARCHIVES

Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (IPN) [Institute of National Remembrance], Warsaw

Archiwum Akt Nowych (AAN) [Archive of Modern Records], Warsaw

Archiv bezpečnostních složek (ABS) [Archive of the Security Services], Prague

Národní Archiv (NA) [National Archive], Prague

Hoover Institution Archive (HIA), Jiří Šetina Collection

Bundesarchiv (BA) [Federal Archives at Berlin-Lichterfelde], Berlin

Der Bundesbeauftragter für die Unterlagen des Staatsicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (BStU) [Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic], Berlin

Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR (SAPMO) [Archive of the Parties and Mass Organizations of the GDR], Berlin

BOOKS AND ARTICLES

Abrams, Bradley. “The Second World War and the East European Revolution.” East European Politics and Societies 16, no. 3 (August 2002): 623–64.

        . The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004.

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Index

Abakumov, Viktor, 41, 120, 121, 122

Ackermann, Anton, 119, 128, 255

Action Committees (Czechoslovakia), 20, 27, 99–106, 108, 112–117, 162, 216, 243, 289, 293

Anti-Semitism, 12, 30, 191, 192, 292

Beneš, Edvard, 26, 99, 112

Beria, Lavrentiy, 41, 43, 47, 255

Berling Army, 34, 35–37, 49, 83

Berman, Jakub, 8, 9, 55, 164, 179, 191, 194, 291

Bierut, Bołesław, 42, 49, 55, 152, 158, 164, 193, 293

Brystiger, Julia, 8, 47, 49, 158, 168, 180, 291

Campaign to Build Socialism (in East Germany, 1952), 21, 252, 271, 277, 281 erný, Karel, 80, 108, 201, 202, 247

Churches, persecution of: in Czechoslovakia, 15, 78, 90, 111, 198, 205, 206, 207, 228, 237; in East Germany, 268, 271, 272, 275, 278, 285; in Poland, 73, 167, 168, 180, 181, 184, 187

Citizens’ Militia (in Poland), 30, 34, 63, 170

Class justice, 153, 155, 184, 228, 247

Class struggle, 10, 110, 111, 138, 158, 162, 172, 174, 177, 178, 198, 205, 207, 214, 216, 226, 227, 228, 237. See also Class warfare

Class warfare, 12, 30, 75, 122, 214, 225. See also Class struggle

Cominform, 99, 106, 110, 138, 147, 152, 153, 158, 172, 213, 214, 256

Comintern, 7, 8, 9, 45, 49, 80, 123, 131, 141

Criticism/self-criticism sessions, 11, 21, 131, 154, 158, 163, 168, 170, 188, 189, 200, 201, 209, 229, 242, 243, 249, 255, 256, 259, 277

Denazification, order 201 (in eastern Germany), 140, 143–147, 265, 267

Department for Fighting Banditism (in Poland), 4, 43, 50, 56, 57

Department X (in Poland), 168, 189–193, 196

Doubek, Bohumil, 16, 233, 246, 248

Elections: in Czechoslovakia in May 1946, 6, 78, 79, 80, 88–91; in eastern Germany in 1946, 130, 261; in Poland in January 1947, 69, 72, 73; in Poland in June 1946, 59, 64–69, 72

Fejgin, Anatol, 14, 15, 190, 191, 194, 291

Field, Noel, 153, 258

1st Czechoslovak Army Corps, 83, 84, 87, 96

First Infantry Division named for Tadeusz Kościuszko, 34–37, 49, 83

First Polish Military, 34–37, 49, 83. See also Berling Army

Gomułka, Władysław, 15, 31, 34, 54, 55, 70, 160, 164, 175, 179, 190, 192, 193, 243, 262, 271

Gottwald, Klement, 84, 87, 96, 99, 100, 162, 209, 210, 212, 213, 216, 217, 242, 293, 284, 287

Great Terror (in the Soviet Union, 1936–1938), 4, 7, 31, 40, 42, 48, 122, 127, 129, 180, 218, 284, 287

Grzybowski, Faustyn, 48, 49, 161

Gutsche, Rudolf, 141, 268, 270, 293

Home Army (AK), 6, 20, 24, 26, 30, 35, 38, 40, 41, 43, 48, 55, 57, 58, 60, 68, 160, 287, 288, 291

Hora, Jan, 98, 104, 106, 107, 199

Horáková, Milada, trial of, 198, 228, 269

Instructor division (Czechoslovakia). See Instructors

Instructors, 21, 115, 202–207, 209, 211, 213, 220–224, 231, 240, 243, 250

Internal Security Corps (in Poland), 30, 34, 48, 170, 196

International Brigades, 7, 9, 112, 151, 264

Interrogations: methods, 10, 12, 13, 16, 152, 155, 172, 173, 174, 194, 219, 227, 269, 284; personnel, 14, 45, 50, 157, 202, 235; protocols, 18, 186, 238, 239, 240, 290; training, 145, 198, 218, 228, 233, 266

Jamin, Erich, 141

Jan Hus Partisan Brigade, 85

June 1946 referendum (in Poland), 59, 64–69, 72

Katyń massacre, 40, 43, 182, 291

Khrushchev, Nikita, 254, 281

Kohoutek, Vladimír, 16, 235, 236, 246, 248

KSČ (Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Komunistická strana Č eskoslovenska), 6, 17, 77, 288; Action Committees, 20, 100–105, 114, 117, 162; elections in May 1946, 88, 89; intelligence networks, 13, 84, 90, 91, 94, 95, 97, 98, 107–112, 202; National Front politics, 80, 82, 86, 87; party organizations, 198, 199, 210; political education officers, 86; repression in, 21, 152, 215, 216, 221, 229, 242, 244

KSS (Slovak Communist Party, Komunistická strana Slovenska), 6, 87, 90, 100

Laws: on the Defense of the Republic (in Czechoslovakia), 94, 113; on Labor Camps (in Czechoslovakia), 112, 113; on national security (in Czechoslovakia, 1945, 1947, 1948), 94, 111; on the Protection of National Property (in East Germany, 1952), 272, 275; retribution decrees (Great Decree and Small Decree, in Czechoslovakia), 26, 94, 102, 104, 117; Stalinist Penal Code, 115, 127, 292; on unconditional surrender (in Germany), 118, 119

Lechowicz, Włodzimierz, 163, 174

London, Artur, 152, 234, 236, 246

Main Department for the Protection of the Economy (eastern Germany), 147, 148, 266

Mielke, Erich, 9, 131, 145, 146, 275

Mietkowski, Mieczysław, 164

Mikołajczyk, Stanisław, vii, 29, 31, 41, 68

Milén, Ivo, 80, 152, 206, 216, 229, 231, 232, 247

Military tribunals: in eastern Germany, 126, 127, 153, 253, 261, 270, 276, 293; in Poland, 195, 196

Minc, Hilary, 31, 55, 164, 180

Ministry for National Security (Czechoslovakia, May 1950), 227

Moczar, Mieczysław, 48, 191, 292

moučka, Milan, 90, 202, 233

National committees (Czechoslovakia), 79, 82, 83, 85–87, 96, 97, 102, 103, 104, 108, 114, 115, 117, 215, 218

National Front (in Czechoslovakia), 6, 77–82, 86, 87, 89–92, 94, 99–102, 108, 109, 116, 201, 216, 235, 236, 243

National roads to socialism, 79, 128, 213, 256, 292

National Socialist Party (in Czechoslovakia), 91, 98, 99, 103, 106, 228

NKGB (People’s Commissariat for State Security), 4, 120–126, 149, 150, 253

NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs): in Czechoslovakia, 84, 85, 216, 218, 228; in Eastern Europe, 4, 10, 14, 19, 25, 285; in eastern Germany, 26, 120–123, 126, 127, 131, 133, 135, 136, 149, 150, 253, 258, 284, 289; in Poland, 35, 38, 40, 41, 42, 47, 48, 55, 180

Nosek, Václav, 80, 104, 111

Novotný, Antonín, 243

Orechwa, Mikołaj, 8, 45, 46, 49, 51, 163, 176, 190, 291

Party Control Commissions: in Czechoslovakia, 100, 104, 204, 215, 231, 233; in eastern Germany, 153, 256, 258; in Poland, 71, 170, 180

Party of a New Type (SED), 120, 127, 129, 147, 153, 155, 251–264, 267, 268, 269, 271, 273, 274, 275, 277, 278, 279, 280, 282, 289

Party verification campaigns: in Czechoslovakia, 88, 199, 200, 211, 221; in East Germany, 153, 252, 256; in Poland, 162, 163, 176

Pavel, Josef, 9, 80, 81, 92, 102, 111, 201, 229, 232, 248

People’s Guard (in Poland), 34

People’s Militia (in Czechoslovakia), 102, 108, 115, 185, 196, 233, 234, 250

People’s Police (in eastern Germany), 120, 128, 134, 135, 136, 138, 141, 142, 143, 145, 147, 149, 251, 252, 254, 266, 272–275, 278

Pich-Tůma, Miroslav, 84, 85, 234, 244, 247, 248

Pieck, Wilhelm, 119, 129, 253

PKWN (Polish Committee for National Liberation), 5, 30, 31, 34, 36, 38, 41, 42, 45, 47, 49, 61, 65

Plaček, Štépán, 1, 6, 8, 77, 80, 91, 94, 95, 98, 105, 108, 109, 110, 197, 218, 245

Pokorný, Bedřich, 83, 92–96, 98, 108, 113, 218, 225, 232, 239, 244, 247, 248

Polish Committee for National Liberation (PKWN), 5, 30, 31, 34, 36, 38, 41, 42, 45, 47, 49, 61, 65

Polish Peasants’ Party (PSL), 29, 31, 41, 59, 67, 68, 69

Polish underground. See Home Army (AK)

Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR), 158, 161–164, 166, 168, 185, 193, 243, 283, 291; disciplinary measures in, 188, 195, 196; repression in, 177, 178, 189, 190, 192, 194; standards of membership in, 171, 172, 176

POW camps, 25, 134, 135, 141, 254, 270, 285

Radkiewicz, Stanisław, 35, 49, 57, 59, 160, 164, 170, 174, 192, 193, 194, 291

Rajk, László, show trial of, 13, 14, 151, 152, 155, 176, 177, 179, 215, 216, 217, 221, 222, 231, 253, 258, 264

Red Army, 1, 4, 24, 25, 34, 35, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43, 45, 48, 65, 85, 89, 119, 120, 122, 123, 125, 134, 179, 183, 245, 280, 288

Referendum, of June 1946 (in Poland), 41, 59, 65–70, 72, 73, 169, 174, 187, 291

Romkowski, Roman, 14, 15, 152, 164, 190, 191, 193, 194, 291

Różański, Józef, vii, 8, 12, 14, 15, 35, 45–47, 49, 172–174, 182, 193, 194, 291

Serov, Ivan (from Soviet NKVD), 14, 19, 40, 41, 42, 43, 119–123, 258

Slánský, Rudolf, 77, 80, 100, 103, 105, 106, 111, 114, 152, 171, 197, 198, 216, 217, 223, 231, 234, 236, 237, 242, 243, 244, 247, 253, 262, 271; trial of, 152, 231, 234, 236, 237, 244, 253

Šling, Otto, 100, 215, 229, 230, 231, 235

Socialist Unity Party (SED), 120, 127, 129, 147, 153, 155, 251–264, 267, 268, 269, 271, 273, 274, 275, 277, 278, 279, 280, 282, 289

Soviet advisers, 5, 13, 14, 15; in Czechoslovakia, 6, 21, 117, 152, 154, 198, 216–219, 227, 228, 229, 235, 237, 245, 246, 247; in eastern Germany, 118, 125, 126, 130, 133, 137, 149, 254, 269, 271, 273, 288; in Poland, 12, 41–43, 57, 68, 74, 75, 78, 178, 179, 192, 194, 195

Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SVAG/SMAD), 119, 129, 130, 132, 135, 136, 142, 252, 256

Spanish Civil War (veterans of), 7, 9, 18, 34, 54, 81, 146, 151, 217, 242, 245, 264, 280, 284

Special Camps (in eastern Germany), 121, 253, 289

Stalin, Josef, 7, 38, 41, 106, 120, 129, 147, 148, 164, 184, 210, 214, 218, 255, 281, 285, 291; death of, 14, 21, 27, 127, 178, 193, 255, 275, 282, 286, 289, 290, 291, 294

Šváb, Karel, 9, 77, 78, 80, 89, 92, 94, 95, 108, 152, 201, 216, 217, 229, 233, 246, 247, 249

Švermová, Marie, 89, 95, 100

wiatło, Józef, 35, 42, 74, 152, 164, 176, 177, 181, 186, 190, 191, 193, 196, 283

T-43, campaign in Czechoslovakia, 216, 224, 225, 289

Taussigová, Jarmila, 100, 215, 231

Trotsky, Leon, 3, 38

Ulbricht, Walter, 119, 129, 137, 153, 253, 255, 261, 262, 271, 279, 281, 293

Uprising in East Germany (June 1953), 21, 27, 127, 251, 252, 255, 262, 264, 275, 278, 279, 280, 290, 291

Veselý, Jindřich, 80, 90, 97, 108, 111, 115, 201, 206, 207, 208, 210, 216, 224, 227, 248

Vigilance Plenum in Poland (November 1949), 19, 172, 179

Vyshinsky, Andrei, 217, 247

War on criminality in the security forces (in Poland), 21, 157, 160, 196

Wolf, Markus, 143

Wollweber, Ernst, 9, 131, 280, 281

Women in the security forces, 47, 50, 51, 112, 135, 168, 210, 211, 230, 266

Zaisser, Wilhelm, 9, 131, 264, 279, 280, 293

Zápotocký, Antonín, 100, 101, 102

Závodský, Osvald, 9, 78, 80, 112, 201, 231, 232, 234, 235, 247, 248