Mark Harrison's rich, thoughtful, and important book chronicles everyday lives in the Soviet police state and illuminates the many comic, sad, and bizarre aspects of Soviet life in the 1930s through the 1970s. Harrison culled these stories from Soviet Lithuania's State Security Committee (KGB) files as a corrective to the human tendency to glamorize the past. Too many Russians regard the Soviet government as “caring” and “comfortable.” The stories Harrison brings to light are a reminder that life was pretty miserable in the empire and that memory cannot be relied on to tell the truth.
To make sense of the crazy, convoluted, and time-consuming spying that these chapters describe, Harrison helpfully provides seven working principles that any police state must observe if it is to stop its subjects from straying: (1) Your enemy is hiding; (2) Start from the usual suspects; (3); Study the young; (4) Stop the laughing; (5)...