Book Discussion: The Lives of Soviet Secret Agents: Religion and Police Surveillance in the USSR, by eds. Tatiana Vagramenko and Nadezhda Beliakova

Session Submission Type: Book Discussion Roundtable

Brief Description

The Lives of Soviet Secret Agents draws on previously untapped materials from KGB archives across the former USSR, offering new insights into the surveillance apparatus and its impact on religious communities. It explores the covert world of secret police surveillance within the Soviet Union, delving into lesser-known grassroots religious life and the collusion of religious communities with the Soviet secret police. This book reconstructs the stories of insider agents, focusing on the entanglements and ambiguities of collaboration and secret police surveillance in the Soviet era.

The case studies come from Ukraine, Latvia, Kazakhstan, and Russia, spanning from the Central Black-Earth region to the Bashkir and Udmurt regions. Several contributing authors have served on state commissions for the declassification of Soviet secret police archives in their respective countries, granting them unique access to archival sources.

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Chair

• Amir Weiner, Stanford U

Roundtable Speakers

• Andriy Kohut, Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine (Ukraine)

• Katya Tolstoj, Vrije U Amsterdam (Netherlands)

• Tatiana Vagramenko, U College Cork (Ireland)

• Cristina Vatulescu, New York U