ABSTRACT
European states have been producing surveillance reports since the early modern period. In the nineteenth century, they increasingly standardised the methods of compiling and summarising relevant information. The surveillance of attitudes was significantly expanded during the First World War and became part of the modern state’s efforts to transform the hearts and minds of the populace. The dictatorships of the twentieth century continued these existing surveillance practices while creating new agencies and ideological perspectives. What insights can we derive from these reports? Can they tell us something about popular opinion or rather about the mindsets of their authors and the shifting contexts of state surveillance? Historians have given different answers to this question. For their interpretation of surveillance reports, Nazi Germany and Bolshevik Russia have been particularly important testing grounds.
