"Groundbreaking. In the first detailed description of Stalin's mass terror, Vatlin unfolds the day-to-day working of the Soviet political police who carried out orders to select, arrest, interrogate, and often murder their fellow citizens. An absorbing, heartrending account."—David Shearer, author of Policing Stalin's Socialism —David Shearer, author of Policing Stalin's Socialism
"Only a handful of case studies consider how the purges took place at the grassroots level. One can only hope that Agents of Terror will inspire more research on the purges' perpetrators and victims as well as on the broader sociology of this brutal period." —David Brandenberger, author of Propaganda State in Crisis
"A sensationally significant, detailed microhistory, based on the criminal files of NKVD agents who were arrested as scapegoats at the end of the terror—what some historians have called the purge of the purgers." —Lynne Viola, author of The Unknown Gulag