Denunciation and Its Functions in Soviet Governance: A Study of Denunciations and Their Bureaucratic Handling from Soviet Police Archives, 1944-1953

Козлов, В. А.

doi:10.1086/245397

Cited by 38 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…Letter writers in the Soviet Union were able to identify with state ideology, signing off as "one of your own," "partisan," or "Red Army soldier"; in Germany they appealed to the values of the Volksgemeinschaft (the peoples' community). 80 Anonymous denunciations in an occupied country, however, often had a pretext one might think unnecessary, given their anonymity. But the intention was to give the letter more credibility with the recipient and a better chance of being acted upon.…”

Section: Concealmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Denunciation in the German-Occupied Channel Islands, 1940–1945

Smyth¹

2020

J. Br. Stud.

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Over the course of the German occupation of the British Channel Islands from 1940 to 1945, a number of letters of denunciation were sent by islanders to the German authorities, accusing fellow islanders of violations of occupation law or of anti-German activity of one sort or another. The German occupiers were ambivalent toward the denunciations. While recognizing their usefulness in maintaining order and the respect for German rule, they found both the letters and their writers distasteful. The local British authorities in Jersey and Guernsey also found the letters problematic; the consequences for the individuals targeted in the letters could be dire, and the impact on island society as a whole was significant, both during the occupation and beyond liberation in May 1945. The extent and nature of resistance and collaboration have been contentious issues in the historiography of the occupation of the Channel Islands, and these letters have been cited as evidence that islanders were unduly cooperative with the Nazis. This article examines the surviving letters of denunciation, and by placing them into the wider contexts of Nazi Europe and the historiography of denunciation in totalitarian states, argues that denunciation in the Channel Islands, far from being exceptional, was quite typical of the practice throughout the Nazi empire.

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Section: Concealmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Denunciation in the German-Occupied Channel Islands, 1940–1945

Smyth¹

2020

J. Br. Stud.

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“…They became an additional means of control over rural officials that put limits to their arbitrariness. Any unusual accumulation of letters against some officials would lead to the inspection 'from above' endangering the job holders (Kozlov, 1997;Merl, 2012: 93-94). Thus, the letters fulfilled an important valve function in preventing local rebellions and in putting all responsibility for shortcomings on local officials.…”

Section: Key Changes In the Local Administration Under The Collectivimentioning

confidence: 99%

The Pre-1941 Local Administration in the Soviet Countryside: How Effectively It Worked, and What Rules of Political Communication Followed to Prevent Peasant Rebellions

Merl¹

2017

RPS

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When it comes to the local administration in the Soviet countryside, we see a surprisingly uniform picture in the historical research-the so-called "rural undergovernment". In the article, the author questions this perception and shows how strongly it was influenced by the official discourse, i.e. of the 1930s Stalin's interpretation. The author believes that rural administration, on the contrary, functioned as it was designed to, and that its obvious incompetence was the most important part of Stalin's strategy of governance. To understand the functioning of rural administration on the eve of the German occupation, we have to consider the decisive changes in the local management that took place under the collectivization in the 1930s, and the real aims of the state, i.e. Stalin's dictatorship. The local administration was not limited to purely bureaucratic tasks but had to solve specific economic and political problems to keep up political stability. To evaluate the efficiency of rural administration we have to consider first the political priorities of the regime for even economic inefficiency and the abuse of office could be inevitable by-products of a highly efficient system of keeping up the regime. After the German occupation, it became evident that rural administration was not suitable to deliver what the new rulers expected: to deliver just grain. The author starts with a chronology focusing on the significant ruptures affecting the local rural administration between the mid-1920s and the German occupation in 1941. The second part of the article discusses what the state under Stalin really wanted the local administration to achieve. The third part of the article considers the bases of the rural management in the second half of the 1930s to reveal the intersection of the Party, the state and state security apparatus interests in the countryside. In the conclusion, the author presents his general findings, pointing out as well why the German Occupational Regime failed to take as much grain as Stalin's administration before.

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“…Historical studies on denunciation in totalitarian states have shown how the security apparatuses depended on denunciations. In turn, some persons under surveillance made opportunistic use of the government’s craving for knowledge (Gellately ; Kozlov ): even a totalitarian surveillance state depends on its subjects to satisfy its desire to know, and even here people find ways to exploit that desire.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigative ignorance in international investigations: how United Nations Panels of Experts create new relations of power by seeking information

Niederberger

2018

British Journal of Sociology

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How do political investigations affect relations of power? Earlier studies have focused on the empowering effects of political knowledge – in contrast, I analyse how the pursuit of such knowledge makes the investigator dependent on others. I hypothesize that where the will to know empowers others, ignorance becomes a strategic alternative. This mechanism should play out strongly at the intersection of global governance and local political crises: here, global governance actors lack knowledge, investigations often constitute the first direct interaction between actors from both sides, and solidification of power (instead of empowering others) should be a central interest of global governance actors. I first explore the hypothesized mechanisms theoretically and develop a framework to analyse dependencies between investigators and their interlocutors. This framework then facilitates a within‐case comparison of investigative approaches of United Nations Panels of Experts. The results support and elucidate the hypothesized mechanisms. The study shows how the analysis of social interaction can create new views of the much‐studied relationship between knowledge and power.

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Denunciation and Its Functions in Soviet Governance: A Study of Denunciations and Their Bureaucratic Handling from Soviet Police Archives, 1944-1953

Cited by 38 publications

References 0 publications

Denunciation in the German-Occupied Channel Islands, 1940–1945

Denunciation in the German-Occupied Channel Islands, 1940–1945

The Pre-1941 Local Administration in the Soviet Countryside: How Effectively It Worked, and What Rules of Political Communication Followed to Prevent Peasant Rebellions

Investigative ignorance in international investigations: how United Nations Panels of Experts create new relations of power by seeking information

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