Russia and the Cult of State Security

Julie Fedor is a Research Associate on the project 'Memory at War: Cultural Dynamics in Poland, Russia and Ukraine', in the Department of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge. She has taught modern Russian history at the Universities of Birmingham, Cambridge, Melbourne and St Andrews, and has a PhD from King's College, Cambridge, where she was a Gates Scholar.

• Introduction Part 1: Soviet Chekism 1. Dzerzhinsky’s Commandments 2. Late Soviet Chekism: The Changing Face of Repression under Khrushchev and Beyond 3. Screening the Historical Chekist 4. Screening the Contemporary Chekist Part 2: Post-Soviet Chekism Introduction 5. Re-Inventing Chekist Traditions 6. The Cult of Andropov 7. Securitizing the Russian Soul. Conclusion

"Fedor’s study also makes inroads into the subject of historiography and Putin’s fierce desire to rewrite history. It demonstrates why an authoritarian regime needs to forge a past and a memory, and impose it on the narod, ‘the people’, kept under pressure to be Russian, orthodox and loyal to Putin. The motivations for the Pussy Riot singers’ trial and conviction in 2012 are all exposed in this book … written before the actual event." -Marie Mendras, Sciences Po, France; International Affairs 89: 1, 2013."Julie Fedor’s extremely informative and detailed analysis of the role and status of the security apparatus in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia is, of course, most timely since the election for a third presidential term of Vladimir Putin in March 2012... This is an excellent book, well researched, cogently argued, and articulately presented. The author explains, illustrates, and analyses the importance of the notion of “security” in Russia of the past hundred years or so, and with an intelligence and a wit that are constantly alive to the discrepancies and occasional inanities in the official narrative." - David Gillespie, University of Bath, UK; The Russian Review 72:1 (January 2013)'a unique and absorbing look into the history of Russia’s intelligence profession, with some disturbing conclusions about its future. A very valuable contribution’ - Hayden Peake, ‘Intelligence Officer’s Bookshelf’, Studies in Intelligence 57:2 (2013)‘Fedor’s book has filled a historiographical gap… The author gives us the keys necessary for decoding these… discourses and, beyond that, the worldview of these men, an indispensable method for gaining knowledge of the Soviet past but also, in Putin’s Russia, for understanding the Russian present’ - Andrei Kozovoi, University of Lille 3, France; Cahiers du monde russe 52:4 (2012)‘attentive [and] thoughtful… Many of the themes touched upon in the book open up interesting research perspectives’ - Andriy Portnov, Neprikosnovennyi zapas, Russia, 81:1 (2012)