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1917-12-20: Establishment of the Cheka, the Russian Bolshevik secret police - HiPo > .24-5-14 Calder Walton's "Spies": Century-long East-West Espionage War - SiCu > .
Chekism ..
Established following a decree by Lenin on 19 December, the Cheka’s focus was on defending the revolution by removing internal threats to the communist regime. Lenin’s decree was purposefully vague, and this enabled the Cheka’s leader, Felix Dzerzhinsky, to recruit and direct his Chekist agents in whatever way he saw best. With virtually unlimited powers, the growing number of agents soon began rounding up anyone identified as an ‘enemy of the people’. Although often referred to as the Bolshevik secret police, the Chekists were easily identifiable from their long leather coats, and a number of their activities were reported in official Soviet newspapers Pravda and Izvestia.
The organisation’s name was derived from the Russian initials for its original full name – The All-Russian Emergency Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage. Hundreds of Cheka committees were formed across Russia, and these went on to arrest, torture or execute many thousands of dissidents, deserters and other enemies of the state.
Known as the Red Terror, the Cheka’s campaign of mass killings, torture, and systematic oppression grew more fierce as the Russian Civil War progressed. Its activities included a number of atrocities using torture methods that respected historian Orlando Figes says were ‘matched only by the Spanish Inquisition’.
Official Soviet figures placed the total number of Cheka victims at 12,733. However, in reality the figure is probably significantly higher. Some historians place the actual number of people killed by the Cheka at 200,000 or more.
The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (Всеросси́йская чрезвыча́йная коми́ссия, tr. Vserossíyskaya chrezvycháynaya komíssiya, abbreviated as VChK (Russian: ВЧК, and commonly known as Cheka (Russian: Чека, from the initialism ЧК, ChK), was the first of a succession of Soviet secret-police organizations. Established on December 5 (Old Style) 1917 by the Sovnarkom, it came under the leadership of Felix Dzerzhinsky, a Polish aristocrat-turned-Bolshevik. By late 1918, hundreds of Cheka committees had sprung up in the RSFSR at the oblast, guberniya, raion, uyezd, and volost levels.
Ostensibly set up to protect the revolution from reactionary forces, i.e., "class enemies" such as the bourgeoisie and members of the clergy, it soon became the repression tool against all political opponents of the communist regime. At the direction of Lenin, the Cheka performed mass arrests, imprisonments, torture, and executions without trial.
In 1921, the Troops for the Internal Defense of the Republic (a branch of the Cheka) numbered at least 200,000. They policed labor camps, ran the Gulag system, conducted requisitions of food, put down rebellions and riots by workers and peasants, and mutinies in the Red Army.
The organization was dissolved in 1922 and succeeded by the State Political Directorate or GPU, which acted with similar aims but more restraint.
On the 20th of December 1917, the Russian Bolshevik secret police, known as the Cheka, was established.
The organisation’s name was derived from the Russian initials for its original full name – The All-Russian Emergency Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage. Hundreds of Cheka committees were formed across Russia, and these went on to arrest, torture or execute many thousands of dissidents, deserters and other enemies of the state.
Known as the Red Terror, the Cheka’s campaign of mass killings, torture, and systematic oppression grew more fierce as the Russian Civil War progressed. Its activities included a number of atrocities using torture methods that respected historian Orlando Figes says were ‘matched only by the Spanish Inquisition’.
Official Soviet figures placed the total number of Cheka victims at 12,733. However, in reality the figure is probably significantly higher. Some historians place the actual number of people killed by the Cheka at 200,000 or more.
Ostensibly set up to protect the revolution from reactionary forces, i.e., "class enemies" such as the bourgeoisie and members of the clergy, it soon became the repression tool against all political opponents of the communist regime. At the direction of Lenin, the Cheka performed mass arrests, imprisonments, torture, and executions without trial.
In 1921, the Troops for the Internal Defense of the Republic (a branch of the Cheka) numbered at least 200,000. They policed labor camps, ran the Gulag system, conducted requisitions of food, put down rebellions and riots by workers and peasants, and mutinies in the Red Army.
The organization was dissolved in 1922 and succeeded by the State Political Directorate or GPU, which acted with similar aims but more restraint.
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