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

CONTENTS
The Special Department for coded communications and secret administration
The Special Department\'s basic functions
The Special Department\'s mobilisation tasks
The Special Department\'s extraordinary status
The Special Department and the secret Party apparatus
The Special Department and the state apparatus
The Special Department\'s overall importance
The head of the Special Department
Hectic changes of name and reorganisations
Structure and function under the new conditions
The Main Directorate for the Special Service attached to the
 Communist Party\'s Central Committee
The Stalinist era - the post-Stalinist era
The First Special Department
The Department\'s changing identities
Central fields of responsibility: registration of anti-Soviet
 elements
Central fields of responsibility: registration of agents and
 informers
Central fields of responsibility: registration and implementation of
 extra-judicial sentences
The division of labour over time
The more specific manifestations of the work
The Department\'s special characteristics
The Second Special Department (for operative techniques)
 and the Fourth Special Department (for laboratories
The Second Special Department: main tasks and shifting
 identities
Interlude: the Fourth Special Department (the laboratory
 department) 1
The Second Special Department and its successors 1
Other special departments
The Third Special Department (the Operative Department) and its
 various identities 1
Special departments with more restricted fields of work 11
Points of similarity
Other \"special\" apparatuses
Analytic work: the Special Bureau 1
Operations in the field: the Department for Special Tasks and the
 Special Group 1
Later reorganisations of Pavel Sudoplatov\'s special
 apparatus
Departments with alphabetical designations
The Mobilisation Department
The position of the special departments
A related apparatus: the state security service\'s First
 Department (the Special Section
Names and identities in the interwar period
New restructurings
The Main Directorate for the Guard Corps - as described by a
 former officer
Continuous centralisation and isolation
Cracks in Stalin\'s power apparatus
The total complex
169 VIII. THE COMINTERN\'S SECRET APPARATUS
 The basic rules for conspiracy
Communication on enemy soil
Behavioural norms for illegal work
Concrete manifestations of the illegal work
Central chancellery functions at Comintern
 headquarters
The \"Bureau of the Secretariat\": definition and main tasks
The head of the chancellery\'s general position
Correspondence and archival functions
Control of security procedures and secret administration
The Bureau of the Secretariat and the Comintern\'s top
 leadership
Osip Pyatnitskii\'s growing role
Continued ambiguities in the power structure
New reorganisations
Changed distribution of power in the Comintern leadership 21
The secret international communications apparatus
The OMS\'s early development and structure
Pyatnitskii and his men
The OMS\'s special status
The network
Security breaches and bureaucratic counter-measures
Intensified conspiracy and militarisation
Tremors in the central OMS apparatus
The Communications Service\'s main tasks after the mass
 purges
Two deputy heads - two fates
Continued reorganisations
The main features of the Comintern\'s secret communications
 apparatus
The \"Secret Department\" and the \"Special
 Department
Secret archive and chancellery structures
The OMS\'s Secret Instruction Section
The Comintern\'s Special Department
The Cadres Department\'s special security tasks
The concept of \"special department\" in other Communist
 parties
The foreign special departments versus Comintern
 headquarters
The connection with the Soviet state security service\'s own special
 departments
The Comintern\'s Special Department and the narrative
 sources
Basic features of the Comintern\'s secret apparatus
CONCLUSION
Control
Secretiveness
The secret Party chancellery
The decision-making process 31
The state security service
The Communist International
The quintessence
THE CENTRAL STRUCTURES
THE \"SPECIAL\" LIST
SUMMARY IN DANISH
NOTES
Notes I. Introduction
Notes II. Secrecy: Principles and Procedures
Notes Ill. The Top of the Pyramid
Notes IV. New Bureaucratic Constellations
Notes V. The Special Sector and its Sister Institutions
Notes VI. Patterns in the Decision-making Process
Notes VI I. Special Departments and Other Special Organs at the
 Headquarters of the State Security Service
Notes VIII. The Comintern\'s Secret Apparatus
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC ADDENDUM
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
INDEX OF NAMES