Informers Quotes

“People change sides. You’ve always been a dirty piece of shit cop. You can be bought, Verner!”
“Just like you, Ingrid. Just like you.”

Conversation between ‘Alis K’ and ‘Jens’
in the novel 'The Informer' by Steen Langstrup”
― Steen Langstrup, The Informer

“Informer'... means one who gives information. It means what 'journalist' ought to mean. The only difference is that the Common Informer may be paid if he tells the truth. The common journalist will be ruined if he does.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Utopia of Usurers

“To my mind, there is something warmer and more human about the carnality of other dictatorships, say in Latin America. One can more easily understand a desire for cases stuffed with money and drugs, for women and weapons and blood. These obedient grey men doing it with their underpaid informers on a weekly basis seem at once more stupid and more sinister. Betrayal clearly has its own reward: the small deep human satisfaction of having one up on someone else. It is the psychology of the mistress, and this regime used it as fuel.”
― Anna Funder, Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

“He begins by telling me people who here used to say that the walls have ears, but later found out that are deaf. The ears we fear belong to people among us, 'But they are just weak souls', he says.”
― Samer, The Raqqa Diaries: Escape from Islamic State

“Operational inquiry has established that Danylo Shablia assisted in the espionage activities of his son, Peter Shablia, helping him organize an anti-Soviet network in the settlement of Tomakivka at his place of residence.”
Peter read the paragraph in the middle of the page.
“As you can see, the document is signed, stamped, and fully prepared for dispatch. Your choice, therefore, is limited. You understand perfectly well what consequences such a response will have for your father,” the NKVD operative Kidman added smoothly.
Inwardly, he was triumphant. The fabricated report had worked exactly as intended. The staged performance had exceeded expectations—he could read it on Peter’s face.
Now I must not lose the initiative, the operative thought, careful not to betray his satisfaction.
“Well? Surely you understand that you have no alternative,” he pressed.
Peter understood. From fellow prisoners who had endured the brutal interrogations of Soviet counterintelligence, he knew what such accusations meant for a former prisoner of war: almost certainly execution.
But he also knew something else. He would never be able to live with himself as a secret informant for the NKVD. That, to him, was worse than death.
He felt it physically—the sense of being driven into a corner. As had happened before in moments of moral extremity, a red haze clouded his mind. Some uncontrollable mechanism inside him broke loose, awakening a furious force that swept aside calculation and fear.
“To hell with you and your threats!” he shouted, hurling the papers into the operative’s face. “I want no part of your methods—or your masters!”
He leapt to his feet, seized a chair, and flung it toward Kidman.
“Cut me to pieces if you must—but I will not become an informer! You’ll drag me back here only as a corpse!”
He stormed out, slamming the door so hard it echoed down the corridor. A group of startled onlookers scattered as he made his way back to the barracks
— Volodymyr Shablia, Stone. Book Four


Context note:
Set in 1942 during World War II, this scene portrays one of the coercive methods used by the NKVD—the Soviet secret police—to recruit forced informants inside labor camps. Prisoners were often threatened with fabricated charges against their relatives, including accusations of espionage or anti-Soviet activity, which could result in execution. By exploiting family loyalty and fear, the system sought to turn inmates into secret collaborators tasked with informing on fellow prisoners. The episode reflects the psychological warfare and moral pressure that defined Stalinist repression in Soviet labor camps.”
― Володимир Шабля, Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга четверта. Перелам.: Єдність і боротьба протилежностей.