Authors

Sophia Kalashnikova Horowitz¹;  ¹ Harvard University, United States

Discussion

Despite the fact that the Soviet political police (MGB-KGB) allegedly attempted to keep informer recruitment and presence as secretive and obscure for outsiders as possible, many sources, including police files and personal narratives, hint that many people suspected that they could be asked to collaborate with the police for some time before they were approached by a recruiter. After 1952, and especially after 1959, political police orders foregrounded the motivations, preconceptions, and biases of an informer about the political police and the concept of informer service in discussions about effective recruitment. The increasing specialization of informers which began after 1952 and accelerated in the mid-late 1950s, the diversification of information-gathering by the MGB-KGB throughout this period, and the changes in the political police perception of Soviet society produced a process of recruitment (theoretically) focused on negotiation and persuasion. While recruitment remained an anxiety-producing proposition for many potential informers, the changes in policing work in this period permitted them to exercise new strategies of compromise, negotiation, and resistance during the recruitment process.