The Secret Police and the Religious Underground in Communist and Post-Communist Eastern Europe PDF Download

Author: James A. Kapaló
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000426068
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
This book addresses the complex intersection of secret police operations and the formation of the religious underground in communist-era Eastern Europe. It discusses how religious groups were perceived as dangerous to the totalitarian state whilst also being extremely vulnerable and yet at the same time very resourceful. It explores how this particular dynamic created the concept of the "religious underground" and produced an extremely rich secret police archival record. In a series of studies from across the region, the book explores the historical and legal context of secret police entanglement with religious groups, presents case studies on particular anti-religious operations and groups, offers methodological approaches to the secret police materials for the study of religions, and engages in contemporary ethical and political debates on the legacy and meaning of the archives in post-communism.

Author: Niels A. Uildriks
Publisher: Intersentia nv
ISBN: 9050952992
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Eastern European countries have been involved in a complex transition towards more democratic forms of government. Since the demise of communism, the building up of an independent judiciary and a general reorientation of the police role within society have been key-issues On the basis of three country studies in Russia, Lithuania and Mongolia, this book analyses the present state of policing in a variety of post-communist societies in terms of police-public violence, democratic policing, the rule of law and human rights. It is also complemented by recent comparable and previously unpublished police data for Romania, Bulgaria and Poland. Those studies have been carried out amongst the rank-and-file of the uniform branch in Lithuania and Russia which were commissioned by the Soros Open Society Foundation. They were specifically concerning views and experiences concerning police-public violence and current policing problems in general. A third study was carried in Mongolia amongst criminal investigators, and sought to explore (violent) investigative practices. This book seeks to combine a thorough theoretical analysis with unique empirical data. It analyses the different problems of transition of post-communist societies towards more democratic forms of government with unique data from both outside and inside the police.

Author: Erica Marat
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190861495
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
What does it take to reform a post-Soviet police force? This book explores the conditions in which a meaningful transformation of the police is likely to succeed and when it will fail. Based on the analysis of five post-Soviet countries that have officially embarked on police reform efforts, Erica Marat examines various pathways to transforming how the state relates to society through policing.

Author: Andr s K d r
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9789639241152
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Author: B lint Magyar
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 6155513546
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Having won a two-third majority in Parliament at the 2010 elections, the Hungarian political party Fidesz removed many of the institutional obstacles of exerting power. Just like the party, the state itself was placed under the control of a single individual, who since then has applied the techniques used within his party to enforce submission and obedience onto society as a whole. In a new approach the author characterizes the system as the ?organized over-world?, the ?state employing mafia methods? and the ?adopted political family', applying these categories not as metaphors but elements of a coherent conceptual framework. The actions of the post-communist mafia state model are closely aligned with the interests of power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a small group of insiders. While the traditional mafia channeled wealth and economic players into its spheres of influence by means of direct coercion, the mafia state does the same by means of parliamentary legislation, legal prosecution, tax authority, police forces and secret service. The innovative conceptual framework of the book is important and timely not only for Hungary, but also for other post-communist countries subjected to autocratic rules. ÿ

Author: Olga B. Semukhina
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1439803498
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
Understanding the Modern Russian Police represents the culmination of ten years of research and an ongoing partnership between the Volgograd Academy of Russian Internal Affairs Ministry (VA MVD) and the Volgograd branch of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (VAPA). The book provides a timely and comprehen

Author: Mark Beissinger
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107054176
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
This book takes stock of arguments about the historical legacies of communism that have become common within the study of Russia and East Europe more than two decades after communism's demise and elaborates an empirical approach to the study of historical legacies revolving around relationships and mechanisms rather than correlation and outward similarities. Eleven essays by a distinguished group of scholars assess whether post-communist developments in specific areas continue to be shaped by the experience of communism or, alternatively, by fundamental divergences produced before or after communism. Chapters deal with the variable impact of the communist experience on post-communist societies in such areas as regime trajectories and democratic political values; patterns of regional and sectoral economic development; property ownership within the energy sector; the functioning of the executive branch of government, the police, and courts; the relationship of religion to the state; government language policies; and informal relationships and practices.

Author: David R. Shearer
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300156227
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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

Author: Alexandr Akimov
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811503176
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
The year 2019 marks 30 years since the fall of the Berlin wall. This symbolic event led to German unification and the collapse of communist party rule in countries of the Soviet-led Eastern bloc. Since then, the post-communist countries of Central, Eastern and South-eastern Europe have tied their post-communist transition to deep integration into the West, including EU accession. Most of the states in Central and Eastern Europe have been able to relatively successfully transform their previous communist political and economic systems. In contrast, the non-Baltic post-Soviet states have generally been less successful in doing so. This book, with an internationally respected list of contributors, seeks to address and compare those diverse developments in communist and post-communist countries and their relationship with the West from various angles. The book has three parts. The first part addresses the progress of post-communist transition in comparative terms, including regional focus on Eastern and South Eastern Europe, CIS and Central Asia. The second focuses on Russia and its foreign relationship, and internal politics. The third explores in detail economies and societies in Central Asia. The final part of the book draws some historical comparisons of recent issues in post-communism with the past experiences.

Author: Paul Hagenloh
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
Stalin’s Police offers a new interpretation of the mass repressions associated with the Stalinist terror of the late 1930s. This pioneering study traces the development of professional policing from its pre-revolutionary origins through the late 1930s and early 1940s. Paul Hagenloh argues that the policing methods employed in the late 1930s were the culmination of a set of ideologically driven policies dating back to the previous decade. Hagenloh’s vivid and monumental account is the first to show how Stalin’s peculiar brand of policing—in which criminals, juvenile delinquents, and other marginalized population groups were seen increasingly as threats to the political and social order—supplied the core mechanism of the Great Terror.