The Siloviki: The Party and the People in Uniform

The Bolsheviks created the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage in order to deal with an army of officials who boycotted the new power and sabotaged the orders of the Council of People’s Commissars. But party leaders quickly realized the value of state security agencies as the most important instrument for controlling the country. That’s how the security forces appeared—forces that didn’t exist in old Russia. Leonid Mlechin’s book about the power triangle—party secretaries, military commanders, and heads of special services—consists of three parts. The first two are named after the well-known figures of their time—Henry Yagoda and Lavrenty Beria; the third is de-personalized—“People in Uniform.” Yet the representatives of the security structures described in it did not dissolve into history: people remember them. We offer you precisely this part of the book.