[.ca] Privatizing the Police-State: The Case of Poland (ISBN 0312231504)

Excellent and provocative:
For people interested in Central-Eastern European politics this book is a must-read. It provides a reader with a thorough and provocative insight into the murky mechanisms of the use of secret police to control the transition process in former communist states, and Poland in particular. As the authors show, the former communist secret services have not really lost their influence on the post-1989 politics. They were also instrumental in providing intelligence and security that enabled the party apparatchics to profit from the transformation and impose their own rules on the changing environment. It is so far the only book that documents and explains the processes through which the personnel and resources of the police-state apparatus have in good part been privatized through the creation of a powerful private security sector linked to the former communist elite. From this vantage, this publication is a valuable and unique guide to understanding of Eastern European socio-political reality. Gary T. Marx comments in his Foreword: "Los and Zybertowicz thoughtfully and creatively probe beneath the veneer of reality constructed by those who were (and some who remain) masters of deception. This study is a model of what scholarship on secrecy-enshrouded topics should be".