M.P. Schrader's Memories "Life of the officer of secret police"
The first part of extensive memoirs of a prominent security officer M.P. Shreyder (1902-1978) "Life of the officer of secret police" is published. These memoirs are known to the general reader by a large fragment published in 1995 as a separate book relating to events of the 1930th years. Now it is time to publish the main body of Shreyder's memoirs, covering the period from 1920 to 1938. During this time the young Komsomol member rose from an ordinary security officer to the deputy people's commissar of internal affairs of Kazakhstan. His memoirs run to about 650 pages of typewritten text. They are characterized by vividness and a very detailed depiction of internal life of the Soviet punitive machine. Mikhail Shreyder worked in many regions of the country, was close to some high-ranking security officers. He remembered a set of episodes from concrete work of Cheka-OGPU-NKVD concerning political opponents and criminal elements, as well as everyday life of leadership team of Stalin secret police. Another valuable aspect of these memoirs - a large number of portraits of functionaries of state security, and this is the only source of information about many of them. During his lifetime Shreyder, apart from security officers, met with prominent political, scientific and cultural figures. His memoirs are characterized by a high degree of objectivity, they provide a lot of data on mercenary and official crimes of security officers. At the same time the author quite often criticizes his own acts. Shreyder's memoirs are written in typical Soviet language, but have literary advantages and are deprived of didacticism. Some episodes from "Life of the officer of secret police" have been confirmed in the recent documentary publications. A rather complete version of memoirs of Shreyder will allow to cover in a new way many events from the Soviet era and will help historians significantly. The first part of the published text belongs deals with Shreyder's work in special departments of the West of Russia and also Belarus and Georgia in 1920-1922.