Secret Police
Introduction to Secret Police
Secret Police, special police force organized by autocratic or totalitarian regimes in defense against their enemies.
Secret police were known in ancient Greece and Rome, in the Muslim caliphates, and in premodern monarchies, and they continue to function in modern republics. Early modern examples were the secret service organized by Joseph Fouché for Napoleon and Prince Klemens von Metternich’s conservative spying system in Austria after 1819. They were, however, essentially intelligence services. The first truly modern model, adding full judiciary and executive powers (arrest, trial, punishment), was the Okhrana (Russian “protection”) in tsarist Russia, established in 1825. In the 20th century the Okhrana has had numerous successors. The Soviet varieties (see KGB) and their parallels in Fascist Italy (OVRA) and Nazi Germany (see Gestapo) are the best known but by no means the only examples; notorious ones established in the second half of the 20th century are Augusto Pinochet Ugarte’s secret police (DINA) in Chile and the Savak of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran. The methods of all these forces have been similar, relying heavily on torture for investigative purposes and detention or concentration camps for isolating prisoners.
Its techniques perfected and temptingly effective, the secret police system may survive the fall of an oppressive regime to be reinstated by those who were once its victims, as was the case after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia (1917) and the Islamic revolution in Iran (1979).” (1)
Resources
Notes and References
- Information about Secret Police in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia
Guide to Secret Police
Totalitarianism The Party and its Tools The Secret Police
Introduction to Secret Police
The secret-police apparatus employs the theories and techniques of scientific crime detection and modern psychology. It terrorizes the population in ways radically different from and much crueler than those of the police systems of earlier autocracies. The totalitarian secret police employs institutions and devices such as the concentration camp, predetermined trials, and public confessions. One of the dangers inherent in the totalitarian dictatorship is the possibility that the secret police might seize control of the party itself.” (1)
Resources
Notes and References
- Information about Secret Police in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia
Leave a Reply