Featured Event
Thursday, April 24, 2025, at 5:30 PM PDT/MST
Durham Hall, Room 240
Watching the Watchers: Communist Elites, the Secret Police and Social Order in Cold War Europe | a book discussion
"Throughout history, dictators have constructed secret police agencies to neutralize rivals and enforce social order. But the same agencies can become disloyal and threatening. This book explores how eight communist regimes in Cold War Europe confronted this dilemma.
Divergent strategies caused differences in regimes of repression, with consequences for social order and political stability. Surviving the shock of Josef Stalin's death, elites in East Germany and Romania retained control over the secret police. They grew their coercive institutions to effectively suppress dissent via surveillance and targeted repression. Elsewhere, ruling coalitions were thrown into turmoil after Stalin's death, changing personnel and losing control of the security apparatus. Post-Stalinist transitions led elites to restrict the capacity of the secret police and risk social disorder." cambridge.org
Author:
Henry Thomson, Associate Professor in ASU School of Politics and Global Studies.
Discussants:
Keith Brown, Professor, School of Politics and Global Studies, and Director, Melikian Center, whose research has focused primarily on politics, culture and identity in the Balkans, and has followed collaboration across scholarly and professional boundaries on civil and military forms of international intervention.
Neil Thomas, Fellow, Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis, where he studies elite politics, political economy, and foreign policy. He has also served a lecturer at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy.
Co-sponsored by the ASU Melikian Center: Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies with the Phoenix Committee on Foreign Relations (PCFR)