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Stalin's Double-Edged Game

Soviet Bureaucracy and the Raoul Wallenberg Case, 1945–1952

Johan Matz

Raoul Wallenberg, the courageous Swedish financier and trade executive turned diplomat who saved thousands of Jews in Hungary in 1944, was arrested in January 1945 by the Soviet military counterintelligence, incarcerated in the Lubianka prison in Moscow, and later executed for reasons that remain obscure to this day. Drawing on recently declassified Soviet encrypted cables and a wide array of Soviet, Swedish, and U.S. archival sources, Stalin’s Double-Edged Game: Soviet Bureaucracy and the Raoul Wallenberg Case, 1945–1952 offers the first comprehensive analysis of the inner workings and interdepartmental communication of the Soviet foreign and state security ministries in relation to Wallenberg’s case. The way these branches of the Soviet apparatus reacted to Swedish diplomatic approaches because of Wallenberg in the years 1945 through 1948 indicate that Stalin never had any plan for Wallenberg other than to have him murdered and to make the Swedes believe that he died in Hungary shortly after the fall of Budapest. This book thereby challenges prevailing hypotheses about the Soviet leader’s motives in regard to Wallenberg.

Lexington Books

Pages: 344 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-1-7936-0919-9 • Hardback • November 2019 • $142.00 • (£109.00)

978-1-7936-0920-5 • eBook • November 2019 • $134.50 • (£104.00)

Series: The Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series

Subjects: History / Europe / Russia & the Former Soviet Union

Stalin's Double-Edged Game

Soviet Bureaucracy and the Raoul Wallenberg Case, 1945–1952

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Raoul Wallenberg, the courageous Swedish financier and trade executive turned diplomat who saved thousands of Jews in Hungary in 1944, was arrested in January 1945 by the Soviet military counterintelligence, incarcerated in the Lubianka prison in Moscow, and later executed for reasons that remain obscure to this day. Drawing on recently declassified Soviet encrypted cables and a wide array of Soviet, Swedish, and U.S. archival sources, Stalin’s Double-Edged Game: Soviet Bureaucracy and the Raoul Wallenberg Case, 1945–1952 offers the first comprehensive analysis of the inner workings and interdepartmental communication of the Soviet foreign and state security ministries in relation to Wallenberg’s case. The way these branches of the Soviet apparatus reacted to Swedish diplomatic approaches because of Wallenberg in the years 1945 through 1948 indicate that Stalin never had any plan for Wallenberg other than to have him murdered and to make the Swedes believe that he died in Hungary shortly after the fall of Budapest. This book thereby challenges prevailing hypotheses about the Soviet leader’s motives in regard to Wallenberg.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 344 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-1-7936-0919-9 • Hardback • November 2019 • $142.00 • (£109.00)

978-1-7936-0920-5 • eBook • November 2019 • $134.50 • (£104.00)

Series: The Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series

Subjects: History / Europe / Russia & the Former Soviet Union

Author

Johan Matz is senior lecturer at Lund University.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 2: Two Fields of Inquiry

Chapter 3: The First Field of Inquiry: Diplomacy

Chapter 4: The Second Field of Inquiry: Covert Action

Chapter 5: Full Causal Chains, Counter Narratives, and the Origins of the Vyshinskii Note

Chapter 6: “Narrative Voids,” Analogical Reasoning, and the Timing of the Vyshinskii Note

Chapter 7: Concluding Remarks

Reviews

Johan Matz's deeply-researched book offers valuable new insights into the enduring mysteries of the Wallenberg case.
— Amy Knight, author of Orders to Kill: The Putin Regime and Political Murder

Stalin's Double-Edged Game

Soviet Bureaucracy and the Raoul Wallenberg Case, 1945–1952

Johan Matz

Stalin's Double-Edged Game

Soviet Bureaucracy and the Raoul Wallenberg Case, 1945–1952

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