Local Factors Matter

Abstract

Local Factors Matter Paweł Sowiński Molly Pucci, Security Empire: The Secret Police in Communist Eastern Europe. 378 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020. ISBN-13 978-0300242577. $65.00. The most fascinating thing about the book by Molly Pucci is her enthusiasm for the comparative perspective on the communist security forces in Eastern Europe before 1956. The topic has already been researched, but unlike most of the previous investigations, Pucci's contribution does not focus on one national case but provides us with a wider perspective on three countries—Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and Poland.1 Each case is to some extent unique, Pucci claims, but all have common elements that make such a comparison both justified and stimulating. Take, for example, the shared fate of the three countries being dependent on the Soviet Union and forcefully transformed into totalitarian states. Pucci deserves praise for taking a real transnational perspective on the security police in the region. In addition, she uses a variety of sources in the book to minimize the distortions of the past: for instance, the risk of being trapped by the dominant narrative of party and government sources, which are very numerous but tell only one side of the story. This approach offers, most of all, a historical perspective on the subject. Pucci is well aware of some more general concepts but does not gather them in a separate chapter on theoretical frames. Instead, she demonstrates the great [End Page 656] ability to mine the archival material and produce a historical narrative that is interwoven with references to larger themes and covers the broader sociopolitical canvas of communist security.2 Taking into consideration the wide scope of the subject, the linguistic obstacles, and a plethora of documents to choose from, Pucci carried out really in-depth research to capture the most defining moments in the history of communist security forces. She makes wide use of East European literature. The book does a good job of bridging Western and Eastern scholarly communities.3 Pucci draws from both Western and Eastern scholars to provide us with a more nuanced picture of what she calls the security empire of the secret police in communist Eastern Europe. In the first chapters, Pucci offers fascinating insights into the diversity of institutional models in all three countries. In the Polish case, the security forces quickly loomed large and produced a repressive political environment. Pucci dwells on inner tensions in the security units, which led to many disruptions and, as a result, generated even more violence in postwar Polish society. The emotional climate of the work in the security community is excellently marked in the book by the stress, fatigue, and growing paranoia of the "hidden enemy" inside and outside the secret police. What distinguishes the Polish from the Czechoslovak experience is that the Czechoslovak secret service was built more bottom-up than top-down. The building of the security infrastructure was less dependent on the Soviet model. As a consequence, the Czechoslovak police developed its own model—more rooted in the tradition of the Czechoslovak prewar state. Pucci reflects extensively on early communist East Germany, which was the most dramatic case in the postwar reality of Central-Eastern Europe. Since East Germany was declared a war zone ruled by the Red Army, the German population suffered most from Soviet military and security personnel. Brutality, fear, and chaos were omnipresent in the pre-GDR realm as local stories—quoted by the author—strongly suggested. The state of war over this [End Page 657] territory was lifted as late as 1955. The occupation zone gave no shelter to civilians from harassment by Soviet forces, while Poland and Czechoslovakia, although also badly affected by the tough reality, functioned to a greater extent as separate entities with stronger domestic authorities, local norms, and laws. In the German case, the Soviets' power was limitless, and local communities were outlawed. Yet despite the German zone's heavy reliance on the Soviets, the engagement of Germans in the rebuilding of German life soon became inevitable. This process led to the formation of the German secret police. As Pucci argues, influences from Soviet officers and advisers remained...