Images of the Soviet special services in the works of the victims of Stalinism and in modern historical science

The article characterizes the images of the Soviet special services as presented in the memoirs and works of art by citizens who suffered from mass political repressions, and in modern Russian historiography, where conflicting images have been created by civil and departmental historians. The relevance and scientific significance of the study are due to the intensity of discussions on the history of the domestic special services among professional researchers and the fragmentation of the historical consciousness of modern Russians. The essential features of the images of the domestic special services are described, determined by the specifics of their existence in the mass consciousness and by the peculiarities of the activities of the Soviet state security agencies. The source base for the study comprises the memoirs of victims of mass political repressions in the USSR and the works of modern historians. The methodological basis of the study combines the anthropological approach with biographical and comparative-historical methods. Using the anthropological approach and the biographical method, the dependence of the image of the domestic special services on the biographies of the authors who create them is analyzed. The comparative-historical method allowed for the comparison of the available images. This theoretical framework made it possible to address the research problem. The study considers how the negative image of the Soviet special services, created by the victims of Stalinism, significantly influenced the focus of research by civilian historians and continues to foster a negative attitude among the modern general readership toward the security agencies. Also characterized is the incompleteness of the image created in the works of departmental historians, who in their work seek to defend the "honor of the uniform." The author concludes that the artistic and journalistic image of the Soviet special services, created in the works of citizens who suffered from mass political repressions in the USSR, has to a large extent determined not only mass consciousness but also the development of domestic historical science, which, in covering political repulsions, has been influenced by vivid denunciations of the executioners. At present, it has still not been possible to move closer to writing a multidimensional history of the Soviet special services, due to an insufficiently complete source base as well as the ideological sensitivity of the topic, which divides departmental and civilian historians and leads them to produce largely one-sided assessments and conflicting images. A comprehensive study of the Soviet state security agencies will remain one of the most pressing problems in Russian history for the next decade. The results of the study will be useful to specialists in the history of the special services and the Soviet state. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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