After taking control of the Communist Party in 1923 and later becoming de facto dictator of the Soviet Union, Stalin used the OGPU to implement mass collectivisation and deportations of the wealthy peasants. This book charts Stalin's use of the re-named NKVD to carry out the purges of the 1930s in which millions were arrested and ended their lives in forced-labour camps, and countless other millions were executed outright. This book looks at the organisation of the state's secret police in Russia during this time, its vast network of spies and informers, its units within the Red Army, as well as the dozens of special prisons and camps.

It details the oppression carried out against Stalin's opponents during World War II, when hundreds of thousands of Cossacks and White Russians were killed outright as soon as they fell into Soviet hands as the Red Army advanced towards Germany. Following the end of the war, Stalin tightened his grip over the secret police, and the final incarnation of his secret police, the KGB, became an agency for spreading Soviet influence throughout the world. This book contains eye witness accounts of Soviet secret police terror and oppression and includes many rare and previously unpublished photographs.