The Admonitory State: KGB Surveillance, Prophylactic Policing, and Political Control in the Late Soviet Union

Between 1953 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens were summoned to the offices of the KGB for so-called "prophylactic chats," where they were accused of low-level political crimes, lectured about Soviet values, questioned about their behavior and their attitudes toward the regime, and warned that they would be seriously punished if they broke the law again. This presentation, based on oral history interviews and research in KGB archives in the Baltic republics, challenges the idea that the term "chat" was a simple euphemism for an interrogation, instead situating the KGB's use of "chats" and "conversations" in its broader context. After all, the "chat" was a tactic and form of discipline used by Soviet authorities beyond the KGB (including army units and tourist groups), and KGB officers used informal "chats" and warnings in contexts that went beyond a formal "prophylactic chat." These diverse efforts by the late Soviet regime to shape citizens' behavior through the power of "chats," I argue, was indicative of a larger movement toward shaping behavior through warnings, admonitions, and nudges that characterized the late USSR.

Edward Cohn is a professor of history at Grinnell College. After completing his PhD in Soviet history at the University of Chicago in 2007, he published his first book--The High Title of a Communist--with Northern Illinois University Press in 2015. He has published in The Russian Review, Europe-Asia Studies, and Kritika, and he has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, and the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research for his current book project, The Admonitory State: KGB Surveillance, Prophylactic Policing, and Political Control in the Late USSR.

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