Soviet Secret Police Chiefs, 1926?1953. Commissars of Fear is a combined edition of two works by Boris V. Sokolov, detailing the lives and careers of the six Soviet secret police heads from Dzerzhinskii to Abakumov. The book brings together The People's Commissars of Fear and its expanded version The People's Commissars of Terror, offering a comprehensive view of the men who led Stalin's apparatus of repression. This reflection on the Soviet era, particularly from the 1920s to the 1950s under Stalin, challenges romanticized views of the past by revealing it as a grim and tragic period. The fates of the six Soviet secret police chiefs-once powerful figures of state repression-serve as stark illustrations. These men, who were responsible for countless deaths during the Great Terror, ultimately shared the fate of their victims, executed by the same regime they served. The author stresses that they were not inherently monstrous but ordinary individuals shaped-and corrupted-by a criminal system. Had historical circumstances differed, they might have lived quiet lives. The positions they held sealed their destinies, making them too dangerous for the regime to keep alive due to the blood they had on their hands, which mirrored that of the top party leadership. Their tragic end highlights how power not only corrupted but consumed its own agents. The author concludes that it was not personal evil but the systemic, criminal nature of Soviet power that transformed these otherwise mediocre men into enduring symbols of terror. A note of gratitude is extended to individuals and institutions who supported the book's research, especially the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI). AUTHOR: Author Boris Sokolov is a military historian, geographer and anthropologist and an expert in Russian literature. He has written studies of Gogol, Sergei Yesenin and Mikhail Bulgakov. For the last twenty years he has concentrated on Soviet twentieth-century history, writing about Lavrentiy Beria, Joseph Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov and Leonid Brezhnev. He has also played a leading role in the struggle to reveal the reality behind the myths about the Soviet Union in the Second World War. Editor and translator Richard Harrison is a writer, editor and translator specializing in Russian military history. He has also taught Russian history and military history at the college and university level. Among his publications are several translations of the studies compiled by the Soviet Army General Staff on Red Army operations during the Second World War.
