Customer Reviews

The Unsleeping Eye: Secret Police and Their Victims

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This is a colorful run through the history of the main secret police forces that have preyed on their own citizens. The color in question is red - Stove gives us plenty of blood on the walls of torture chambers. Rightly so - that is what a state run by and for its secret police is all about.

I looked forward to reading this book as the title caught my eye. Secret police topics are a favorite of mine. The author says in the foreword that "secret policing -- that is, governments' surveillance of their own subjects, as distint from espionage, which concentrates on governments' surveillance of others' subjects -- remains a topic about which almost everybody knows a little and almost nobody knows a lot." So domestic surveillance is what the author writes about.

The author explained why five examples are given. The first example of Queen Elizabeth I's surveillance was interesting, but dry and boring. I could not get too excited about that chapter. Here is a clue about the book. Read the foreword and afterword and the review on this site. You will basically know what book contains. Yes, each chapter goes into more detail. But I was unsatisfied with the treatment. The reader is basically told who is arrested by the NKVD or Gestapo -- mostly the "big" names like Bukharin or Admiral Canaris. The book does discuss some of the things that could get the ordinary individual in trouble. I guess I was looking for the experience of "dread" and "fear" that secret policing could induce.

The author, in the foreword, quotes Lenin "'Who whom?' Who gets to arrest, torture, imprison, whom? Who ends up sentencing whom to death?" I am not entirely convinced that the author answered this question.

This book has notes. The notes are in the back of the book. The notes are not numbered. They are listed by page. The bibliography is arranged by chapter.

The author claims that there is a dearth of book about "secret policing." If that is true, then I look forward to the next author who tries to tackle this subject.

I agree with another reviewer on this site: the introduction and summary are the best bits. Mr Stove has an annoying habit of letting his personal politics interfere with the story. This does not come through too badly in the earlier pieces, but his right-wing views become obvious when discussing the 20th century and unnecessarily so.
It is a fascinating topic. I would love to read a better book about it.