The "Special" World: Stalin’s Power Apparatus and the Soviet System’s Secret Structures of Communication Volume 1

CONTENTS
Previous studies
The original material
The strength of the material
The present challenge
The central problem
Possibilities and limitations
The scholarly literature
Key categories of sources
General problems
The concept of \"control\"
Fundamental dilemmas
The nature of power - the administration of power
 - the prerequisites of power
A question of information
65 II. SECRECY: PRINCIPLES AND PROCEDURES
 The general significance of \"conspiracy\"
The first steps
The overall pattern
The core of the conspiracy
The dynamics of escalation
The bureaucratic system
The main categories of material and their recipients
The daily jigsaw
The return and destruction of material
The messengers
The special coded communications
The storage of classified materials
Clearance and control of cadres
Basic characteristics of the secret system
Ill. THE TOP OF THE PYRAMID  The background
The secret Party chancellery: identifying the object of
 research
New sources and problems of interpretation
Stalin and the secret apparatus
The original model 1
The secret staff: size and structure 1
The secret staff: the concentration of information 1
The secret staff: qualifications and codes of conduct
The basic service apparatus
The technical chancellery
Ramifications in the ordinary Central Committee apparatus
The especially secret structures
The role of the Code Bureau
The apparatuses of the Politburo and the Organisation
 Bureau
The assistants and their individual tasks
The Secretary General\'s men and women
The innermost circle
The top leadership
Other employees in the secret apparatus 1
The staff of the Politburo and the Organisation Bureau
Supplementary evidence
The secret apparatus seen from inside
The structure and nature of the work
The importance of the work
The Information Bureau
Stasova, Stalin and the outside world
Radek, Tivel\' and Borovich - and the Bureau of International
 Information
The foreign press
Forming the nomenklatura\'s worldview
Servicing the decision-makers
Varga and the Institute of World Economics and World
 Politics
Summing up
Control of cadres
The allocation of cadres
Security clearances
The key features of the secret chancellery
Internal disputes over authority
The Kremlin offices
Tightening up the controls on information and implementation
On the threshold of the new decade
Mobilisation preparedness and consolidation of the 11rear
The road to maximum mobilisation preparedness
Problems of control and authority
The special departments
The \"untouchable reserves\" and the Committee for Reserves
The mobilisation apparatus as a whole
The state security service and the mobilisation stockpiles
Mobilisation preparedness and the Communist Party\'s
 secret apparatus
Mobilisation correspondence
Mobilisation activities within the Central Committee apparatus
 itself
Mobilisation responsibility
A \"special\" Party office
V. THE SPECIAL SECTOR AND ITS SISTER INSTITUTIONS  The prelude
The first clues
Secret moving plans
The divorce
The tightening of security controls in the Kremlin
The Special Sector in action
The Politburo\'s area of work and Stalin\'s special priorities
Poskrebyshev and the Special Sector
Letters to Stalin
Parallels at the local level
Supplementary control organs
The picture of the Special Sector and the emigre reports
The internal structure of the Special Sector
Important sub-departments
The question of Stalin\'s personal secretariat and archive
The Organisation Bureau\'s technical secretariat
Basic service functions
Security control on Old Square and elsewhere
Structure and size
The Bureau of International Information - and the
 institutional context
Continued activities
Foreign policy communications: the interwar period
Foreign policy communications: the postwar period
A pattern with variations
Connections with the intelligence service: the overall picture
Organisational innovations
The secret Party apparatus and the organisation
 of the Terror
The special judicial system
The primary purpose of the Terror
The culmination of the Terror and the pressure on the central
 bureaucracy
Sporadic evidence of secret structures
A source of particular interest
The top of the Terror apparatus
Old and new faces
Archive-based material
Narrative sources and more indirect evidence
Evidence concerning external advisers to Stalin
Changes in the secret apparatus
New departures
Poskrebyshev\'s fate
Stalin\'s death and the secret Party chancellery
The continuing power struggle and the secret Party chancellery
The General Department\'s functions
The Secretary General\'s sources of information
The structure of the General Department
The red threads
VI. PATTERNS IN THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS  The framework
The decline of the official leadership organs
Commissions, bureaus and ad hoc meetings
New and old forums
The decision-making structures in the postwar period
The 1930s, the 1940s, the 1950s
The decision-making
Stalin and the Politburo
Patterns of behaviour in the inner circle 51
Various decision-making contexts
Underlying mechanisms
The nature of the bureaucratic work
The government apparatus versus the Special Sector:
 developments
The government chancellery in the 1 930s
The handling of defence and security policy matters
 after the Great Terror
Stalin, the state administration and the Party chancellery
Poskrebyshev: still on the spot
The expansion of the government apparatus versus the Party\'s
 basic functions
The pattern of the Politburo\'s activities in the second half of
 the 1940s
The government apparatus versus the Special Sector:
 endgame
Along familiar bureaucratic tracks - more or less
The overall defence and security policy perspective
The blurred picture of the 1950s
The new Party commissions and their apparatuses
The Communist Party and the state security service
The Party Presidium\'s new bureau
The overall picture