Soviet Secret Police Chiefs, 1926–1953. Commissars of Fear is a combined edition of two works by Boris V. Sokolov, detailing the lives and careers of the six Soviet secret police heads from Dzerzhinskii to Abakumov. The book brings together The People’s Commissars of Fear and its expanded version The People’s Commissars of Terror, offering a comprehensive view of the men who led Stalin’s apparatus of repression. This reflection on the Soviet era, particularly from the 1920s to the 1950s under Stalin, challenges romanticized views of the past by revealing it as a grim and tragic period. The fates of the six Soviet secret police chiefs—once powerful figures of state repression—serve as stark illustrations. These men, who were responsible for countless deaths during the Great Terror, ultimately shared the fate of their victims, executed by the same regime they served. The author stresses that they were not inherently monstrous but ordinary individuals shaped—and corrupted—by a criminal