| From the outside, the operation of political control in the Soviet Union appears relatively easy to account for, largely a matter of a ruthless dictator and a lockstep police force. This dissertation complicates any such analysis, however, by examining the practice of repression from the inside, venturing within the Soviet police-state apparatus to reveal its deep investment in, dependence on, and frequent vulnerability to mass participation in projects of investigation, prosecution, and surveillance over the course of the 1920's and 30's.; This phenomenon of so-called popular control was tied to both the ideology and the institutional structure of the Communist Party. Party cells were embedded inside each and every Soviet workplace, where they played a watchdog role. Charged with ensuring managers' disinterested fulfillment of central decrees, these groups continually mobilized members of the rank-and-file in efforts to monitor the actions of their superiors.; Party-stimulated popular control took many forms, with millions of citizens serving as amateur undercover reporters, taking part in public “show trials,” staffing community complaint bureaus, and/or spying for the political police. Often, particularly during the Great Terror of 1934–39, these activities spun out of the grasp of their official “overseers,” leaving police officers open to attacks from their underlings, party members susceptible to denunciation from non-party “outsiders.” This dissertation explores the modes and consequences of Soviet popular control prior to WWII, and contrasts them to the shape of state-society relations inside the Nazi regime. It shows how Soviet leaders succeeded in reducing political violence after 1939 only by also limiting popular rights of protest, criticism, and appeal and by re-emphasizing hierarchy and institutional discipline—in other words, by creating a state much more similar to that of Nazi Germany than had previously been the case.; The dissertation's final chapter looks at efforts to reassess the Terror, “rehabilitate” the Communist Party, and reconfigure modes of popular participation in the Soviet regime under Nikita Khrushchev. Finally, it compares popular and official struggles to “come to terms with the past” in the 1950's USSR to those which took place in the FRG during the Adenauer era. |
