A-Infos (en) France, Monde Libertaire - History Pages No. 132: Widespread Surveillance in Communist Countries (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Several works demonstrate how, regardless of the period or country, 
communists sought to control the population. Jean-Louis Montesquiou's 
book on the Stasi provides a useful overview of the establishment and 
subsequent methods by which this internal and external security service 
succeeded in creating a regime of widespread surveillance and terror. 
Officially established in 1950, the organization, supported by Soviet 
intelligence services, implemented a policy of open repression. This was 
entrusted to trusted men, initially Wilhelm Zaisser, a former leader of 
the Communist International who had participated in the repression of 
anarchists in Republican Spain. He was overthrown in 1953, as he was 
considered too close to the head of the NKVD, Beria, who had himself 
just been purged. Then came Ernest Wollweber, a former Comintern 
official with direct links to the Soviet services, and Erich Mielke, 
another former Comintern official. As in the USSR, prison camps and 
summary executions took place, affecting approximately 15,000 Germans.

These individuals led the repression of the Berlin workers' uprising, 
which spread throughout the country, resulting in dozens of deaths and 
over 30,000 arrests. However, some time after Stalin's death, the 
organization slightly altered its methods. Coercion became insidious; 
citizens were required to cooperate and provide information under threat 
of losing everything. In total, the organization had 90,000 active 
agents and nearly 200,000 informants.

The Stasi is estimated to have opened several million files, arresting 
over 25,000 people in total. A glimmer of hope remains: despite this 
surveillance that encouraged denunciation and this widespread control, 
the political police were unable to prevent the 1989 civic uprising that 
brought down the regime.

According to Ariane Ollier-Malaterre's compelling book, fear remains the 
quintessential system of government, even if it does reveal some 
glimmers of hope. While the Chinese population employs methods to 
circumvent surveillance, traveling without phones or turning them off in 
refrigerators, and blocking digital codes with tape, the Ministry of 
State Security remains all-powerful and has developed its capabilities 
through new technologies (the internet, video surveillance, and 
artificial intelligence). The author bases her work on interviews with 
Chinese and Taiwanese people who explain how they are monitored, but 
also shows how this surveillance system is internalized by a segment of 
the population who, through relentless propaganda, accept the control or 
at least resign themselves to it. She also emphasizes that the system 
has shortcomings; data often remains at the local level, with the state 
failing to centralize everything. The book is both fascinating and 
disturbing.

Finally, regarding Vietnam, the book is a synthesis published by one of 
the country's leading experts, Benoît de Trégolé. It is not limited to 
this aspect but includes an entire section on the subject. The author 
shows that here too, security and control policies are omnipresent. Doi 
Moi, police surveillance, plays the same role as State Security, with a 
similar system of local networks. Since 2019, the cybersecurity law has 
allowed for the proliferation of control and surveillance methods, 
punishing the few existing forms of dissent.

History of the Stasi
Jean-Louis Montesquiou
Perrin 2026 256 pp. EUR21

Living with Digital Surveillance in China
Ariane Ollier-Malaterre
CNRS Editions 2026 400 pp. EUR26

Vietnam in 100 Questions
Benoît de Trégolé
Tallandier 2026 320 pp. EUR20.90

https://monde-libertaire.net/?articlen=9068
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