Aleksey Georgievich Teplyakov,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
M.P. Schrader’s Memories “Life of the Officer of Secret Police” (Part 5)
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2022-6-17
This publication is another part of the extensive memoirs of the prominent Chekist M.P. Schreider (1902–1978) “The Life of a Chekist Operative”. Mikhail Shreider worked with major Chekists of both the central apparatus of the Cheka-OGPU and the periphery. Considered a valuable operative, Schrader participated in many covert actions of secret police. His memoirs deal with episodes from the specific work of the Chekists, both in relation to political opponents and criminal elements. The author gives a lot of information about the daily life and life of the leaders and rank and file of the secret police under Lenin and Stalin, many of which are still known only from schematic information from official biographies. It is important that Mikhail Shreider writes in detail and claims to be objective, therefore he reports a lot of information about the mercenary and service crimes of the Chekists themselves, and also often critically and ironically tells about his own person. Schrader’s memoirs are written in an absolutely Soviet language, imbued with the worldview of a fanatical communist, but they reveal an extraordinary memory and have undoubted literary merit. It is important that some of the episodes from The Life of a Chekist Operative, both known and still awaiting publication, have now been confirmed by some of the latest documentary publications. In the future, a complete version of Schrader’s memoirs will be of significant help to historians. One fifth of the published text refers to Schrader’s work in the currency group of the Economic Department of the OGPU in the late 1920s.
Publishing: 28/12/2022
The article has been received by the editor on 10/09/2022
How to cite: Teplyakov A.G. M.P. Schrader’s Memories “Life of the Officer of Secret Police” (Part 5) // Historical Courier, 2022, No. 6 (26), pp. 221–250. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2022/ISTKURIER-2022-6-17.pdf]
Links: Issue 6 2022
Keywords: Economic department of the OGPU; currency group; confiscations; Moscow; Prokofiev; Mironov; secret agents