"We have executed some twenty or thirty thousand persons, perhaps fifty thousand. They were all spies, traitors, enemies within our ranks, a very small number in proportion to the persons of this kind then in Russia. We instituted the Red Terror at a time of war, when the enemy was marching upon us from without and the enemy within was preparing to help him. Scotland Yard executed spies and traitors also in war time".
- Unnamed Cheka official quoted by an English journalist in 1929.
The
Soviet Secret Police, known as the Cheka (
Chesvychaika), existed between 1917 until its formal
abolition in 1922. Formally named the
Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-revolution and Sabotage, the Cheka was created in December 1917, shortly after the Bolsheviks seized power in
Russia. The
Bolsheviks did not implement the
institution of secret policing, as it had been a tool of the
Tsars, starting with
Ivan the Terrible's
Oprichniki in 1565. The
Oprichnina Horsemen where Tsarist
enforcers, dressed in black riding black horses, brandishing their symbols: The
dog, which sought out treason, and the
broom, which swept it away. All challenges to the Tsars power where dealt with by the brutal
Oprichniki, up until the overthrown of
Tsar Nicholas II.
After the
February 1917 revolution and the abdication of the Tsar, a provisional government was set up, the
Oprichniki was abolished, replaced by
People's Militias across
Russia. The absence of this controlling institution did not last long. In
State and Revolution, written by
Vladimir Lenin during the October revolution, the new role of the police and Army where outlined. This new
doctrine called for a
dictatorship of the proletariat, which needed to be ruthlessly protected from treachery. In December,
Lenin appoints
Felix Dzerzhinsky as
Commissar for
Internal Affairs and head of the
All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-revolution and Sabotage. The Cheka was born.
Tasked by the
Sovnarkom with the same mission as the
Oprichniki Horsemen before him,
Dzerzhinsky carefully divided his organization into departments which dealt with specific matters.
Lenin, arguably paranoid, demanded that the Cheka investigate all counter-revolutionary, and more specifically, counter-Bolshevik activity, "no matter from whom they may come, throughout Russia". The Cheka was also given free reign to "
liquidate" these threats. No political, military or civilian position was
beyond the power of the Cheka. This did not sit well with other security services, notably the People's Commisariat for Interior Affairs (Narodnij Kommisariat Vnutrennih Del or
NKVD), which saw its responsibility for the "rights and duties of the Soviets" under
attack. An uneasy truce was brokered, allowing this
NKVD to maintain control over militias, but not
agents of the Cheka. This agency would later assume the Cheka's role in 1934, when it assumed state security functions from the OGPU.
A centralized power structure that saw local Chekas subordinate to central ones maintained the Bolsheviks tight
control on the organization. Starting off with a modest 23 personnel in 1917, it grew to over 10,000 by the middle of 1918, as activities increased.
In line with the open mandate to liquidate threats, the Cheka setup the infamous
troikas, three-man courts that operated outside the
judicial system. The troikas usurped the power to
investigate,
arrest,
interrogate,
prosecute,
try trials, and proclaim
verdicts from the courts and put it squarely in the hands of the Communist party. The death penalty was also taken from the
state, and placed in the Cheka's hands. It was used extensively during the
mass executions performed during the
Red Terror.
Another tool of Soviet oppression, the
gulag, was created by the Cheka, to deal with "
class enemies", like the
bourgeoisie. This political prison system grew rapidly, and by 1923, 315
slave labor camps from which few ever returned spotted the Russian
wilderness.
1918 saw Russia plunge headfirst into open
civil war. Dzerzhinsky, seeking to bolster the Bolshevik cause, instigated an intensive
witch-hunt against those who opposed
Communist rule.
The Red Terror, as it came to be called, was likely triggered by
Dora Kaplan's attempted assassination of Lenin. Among the first victims of the Red Terror where the sailors arrested during the
Kronstadt Uprising. Over 500 sailors were executed for their part in the rebellion. The Cheka was thus established as a powerful tool through which the
Soviet government, the
Communist party and the
Third International, maintained its dictatorial power. The Cheka grew more and more wide-ranging and
ruthless as the war ground on. The assassination of the
German ambassador to Russia and the murder of the head of the
Petrograd Cheka by a member of another socialist faction drove them to execute more and more "traitors" to the Soviet cause. In reprisal for the assassination of the German ambassador, 350 Social Revolutionaries were shot. The system of mass execution spread to include those who
beliefs and
class origins differed too greatly from the Bolsheviks. Between 100,000 and 500,000 people were executed by the Cheka during the Red Terror. The victims were usually non-Bolshevik radicals, especially Socialists,
Mensheviks, the tsarist nobility and the wealthy "bourgeoisie".
The Cheka was also instrumental in enforcing the bizarre
agricultural centralization policies created by the Bolsheviks, which lead to the
starvation of millions of Russian peasants. Lenin demanded strict adherence to a law that allowed the state to
confiscate all surplus grain harvests at very low prices. Runaway inflation further eroded these prices, and surpluses were being actively sold on a
black market. Cheka teams where sent in to enforce the
will of the party, and they executed anyone caught selling grain. This increased black market prices, so the Cheka was ordered to
seize the grain from those who would not sell to the government. Being found with excess grain was a
death sentence, and the
Bread War saw brutal reprisals meted out, like the execution of entire villages. The Cheka became equated with death, and they were universality
reviled. By the end of the war, even Lenin recognized he needed to rein the Cheka in. He removed its authority over
ordinary crimes and limited its jurisdiction to only the prosecution of
state offences. It was largely a ceremonial restriction, as the Cheka remained a powerful
political tool.
Dzerzhinsky's Cheka was officially
abolished on February 6, 1922 when moved to his new position as
People's Commissar for Transport, which he had been appointed to in 1921. The Cheka was immediately replaced by the
GPU (Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie), the Government Political Militia. Slowly, the GPU regained the Cheka's old mandate, and by 1924, when it was renamed the OGPU, the
Unified State Political Administration, Dzerzhinsky had his old mandate and powers back. Name changes did little to hampered the activities of newly reformed Cheka, which remained an instrument of
militant Communism. It eventually lead to the formation of the
KGB, a name famous in the West. The fear it so carefully cultivated in the hearts of the Russian people kept the
Soviet Union humming along for the next 70 years.
Reference
http://aia.lackland.af.mil/homepages/pa/spokesman/Mar02/heritage.cfm
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Cheka
http://www.historyguide.org/europe/cheka.html
http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/nkvd-letters.html