Editor’s Note

This issue is shorter than usual because of MIT Press’s limits on total pages for the latest four-issue cycle. The next issue (and subsequent issues) will be back to the usual length.

The issue begins with an article by Martin K. Dimitrov and Joseph Sassoon comparing the State Security (Durzhavna Signurnost, or DS) apparatus in Communist-era Bulgaria with the Special Security Organization (SSO) of Iraq under Saddam Hussein. They focus on two key issues that are of much wider relevance for the study of autocratic regimes: how the state security organs in these countries gathered information through the recruitment of informants, and how they used this information to preserve autocratic rule. Bulgaria during its early, Stalinist period of Communist rule experienced extreme levels of violent repression, but after de-Stalinization began in the mid-1950s the extent of repression gradually abated and became more predictable. In the post-Stalin period, the DS came to rely primarily on mass surveillance and preventive arrests rather than mass violent terror. In Iraq, by contrast, extreme violence, including gruesome torture and mass executions, remained a core feature of Saddam Hussein’s regime and security apparatus until the very end. The Iraqi SSO recruited large numbers of informants but used the information to eliminate all perceived enemies at home and abroad. Dimitrov and Sassoon explain this divergence by highlighting the different external environments of the two countries. The Bulgarian DS was heavily affected by trends in the Soviet Union, especially the inception of de-Stalinization. Iraq had no such moderating external influence. Hence, the Iraqi security forces never relented in their grisly repression.

The next article, by Alessandro Iandolo, examines the Soviet Union’s role in the Congo crisis of 1960–1961. The outbreak of the crisis posed a challenge not only for the United Nations but also for the two superpowers against the backdrop of the Cold War. Under Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union had taken an active role in the Third World from the mid-1950s on and was striving to increase its influence. However, the Congo crisis, despite presenting a valuable opportunity, ultimately revealed the limits on Soviet intervention capabilities. Soviet leaders had to watch as U.S.-supported forces overthrew and executed the Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, who had relied on the USSR. The crisis, by underscoring the constraints on Soviet power in distant regions of the Third World, became a turning point in Soviet foreign policy. Khrushchev and especially his successors set out to acquire the military capacity to project power in Africa and to defend Soviet clients against regimes, factions, and guerrillas backed by the United States.

The next article, by Klaus Storkmann, discusses the military assistance provided by the GDR to Nicaragua in the 1980s after the pro-Soviet Sandinistas had seized power in Managua in mid-1979. Throughout the 1980s, East Germany supplied weapons, training, and equipment to many Third World countries, a task pursued in close coordination with the Soviet Union. Nicaragua was at or near the top of the list of recipients of East German military assistance during the entire decade, indicating the importance of Nicaragua’s Marxist regime in Soviet-bloc efforts to combat Western “imperialism.” Nicaraguan officials were eager to work closely with the East Germans and the Soviet Union not only to defend their own regime in Nicaragua against possible encroachments by the United States (or by U.S.-backed forces) but also to promote revolutionary armed struggle in neighboring Central American countries.

The next article, by Giles Scott-Smith, explores the role of the Free Europe University in Exile (FEUE) in U.S. political warfare against the Soviet bloc. The FEUE, set up in Strasbourg in 1951 under the auspices of the National Committee for a Free Europe (renamed the next year as the Free Europe Committee, or FEC), was designed to train exiles and to preserve the riches of European culture until Communist rule in Eastern Europe could be overthrown. The “rollback” and “liberation” rhetoric used by officials and commentators in the United States during both the Truman and the Eisenhower administrations provided the backdrop for the FEC’s activities, including...