The Origins of the Cheka

[Taz]

Chuck,
Thank you very much for the kind words.
I am also a History fanatic, of all periods.
When I was younger I concentrated on British History, The War of the roses, Civil War etc. But since I have been living abroad Russian/Soviet History has always fasinated me.

Over there in Georgia it sounds as though you get to meet some very interesting characters. No doubt you could write a few books with all the information and stories you have heard over the last few years.

The articles I have posted are not all written by me though, I add pieces of infomation and delate some parts as nessesary but most of the hard work has already been done, so I should and must not take the credit for some of these fasinating subjects.

Eddie.

[Taz]

The State Political Administration or GRU (Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie).
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On January of 1922 the Bolshevik government decided that reform was needed and the Cheka was competely restructured and renamed as the GPU(State Political Administration). Dzerzhinsky remained in office as chairman eventhough the GPU was not as powerful as its predecessor and its powers were greatly reduced, this was not to last. Within the relative short time span of a year, the GPU gained all the power that the Cheka had enjoyed and as a matter of fact the GPU became more powerful than the Cheka by extending its powers. In 1923 the OGPU(1923-1924...United State Political Administration) was created and replaced the GPU, the OGPU's jurisdiction covered all of the Soviet Union and thus enjoyed more power than its predecessor. In 1926 Dzerzhinsky died and was succeeded by his deputy Vyacheslav Rudolfovich Menzhinsky.
Having so much power at its disposal, the OGPU was the perfect vehicle for Iosef Vissarionovich Dzugashvili, or better known as Josef Stalin ("Man of Steel"), to ride into the annals of history as the worst tyrant of all times. His killing of millions by starvation, genocide and by other atrocities most likely drove him to madness.

The OGPU was ruthless in enforcing Stalin's policy of collectivization and dispossesing the peasants(Gulaks) from their wealth, 300,000 Kulak families were deported and between 5-6 million people died of famine. The OGPU was not only ruthless and this manner but also in hunting down those who Mensheviks who resisted the Revolution, in 1923 mock trials were organized for the Mensheviks to enforce the OGPU's power and cement the fact that disobedience to the State would not be tolerated. By 1931 the OGPU gained so much power that it was running the Soviet Union's police force, had its own army and force-labour camps. Networks of spies and informers reported from farms, factories and offices of any behaviour deemed dangerous by the State; the lives of the citizens of the Soviet Union was basicly at the hands of those who interpreted what was correct and incorrect method(s) of acting and thinking. Eventhough Stalin led his backward nation out of the ashes let us never forget that he used the bodies of millions to fuel the fire and lead his country into industrialization. One of OGPU's most ambitious covert action was an attempt to launch a revolution in Germany which was approved by the Politburo. The German Revolution was to begin in the early hours of Ocotober 23, 1923 but it failed because it had no working-classs support; after this failure the Revolution concentrated on Asia.

[Taz]

Main Political Department (GPU)
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Feliks Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky 1922 - 1923

Joint Main Political Department (OGPU)
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Feliks Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky 1923 - July 1926

Vyacheslav Rudolfovich Menzhinsky July 1926 - May 1934

[Taz]

DOB-DOD: 19/08/1874 - 10/05/1934
Age at Revolution: 43 Age at Death: 59
Date of Arrest:
Relatives: Family unknown
Connections: none

Biography:
Menzhinsky Vyacheslav Rudolfovich (19.8.1874, Petersburg - 10.5.1934, at a summer residence, Arkhangelsk in the Moscow area), party member and a statesman, one of heads of the agencies of state security. The son of a military school teacher. He received a faculty of law at St.Petersburg University.
He travelled to Belgium, Switzerland, France and the USA.
In 1908, he entered into the group " Forward ".
In July 1917 he returned to Russia. And was a participant of the "storm" of the Winter palace.
From 25.10.1917 he was the commissioner of Petrograd revolutionary-military committee at the State bank.
In November 1917 - January 1918 deputy narkoma, in January-March 1918 narkom of the finance of RSFSR. In April - November 1918 general consul of RSFSR in Berlin ( he is sent for bolshevistskuju propagation).
In 1918 he became a member of the Narkomata foreign board.
In January-April 1919 narkom Workers'-and-peasants' inspector of the Ukraine and a member of the Vseukrainskoj CHK board 15.9.1919. osoboupolnomochennyj Special department VCHK and a member of Presidium VCHK.
In February - July 1920 deputy, in July 1920 - July 1922 Head of Special and Confidential-political departments VCHK.
Since July 1922 simultaneously a member of VCHK Board.
He was considered as "intellectual" and the least odious figure in VCHK. Nevertheless he was one of the main organizers of mass Large "gangs" of about 56 thousand people. The organizer of the loudist provocations of the VCHK, including " B.V.Savinkov's affair ". He was involved in all bloody actions of the VCHK.
On the 18.9.1923 he became 1st deputy pred. OGPU to F.E.Dzerzhinsky, taking into account, that Dzerzhinsky had been very much overloaded with work in the VSNH, actually all management of the OGPU was overseen by Menzhinsky. He played a huge role in the development of the Soviet secret Police, and its transformation into one of the most powerful forces in the world.
In 1927 he became a member of the Central Committee of the VKP.
After the death of Dzerzhinsky on 30.7.1926 he became pred. OGPU at SNK of the USSR.
However, because of poor health, the partly paralysed Menzhinsky had been compelled to be content with the information recieved from his deputy G.G.berr. Under the management of Menzhinsky the OGPU had headed the carrying out of retaliatory operations against L.D.Trotski's supporters, not hesitating to widely apply provocation.
In 1927-28 from Moscow under the supervision of the OGPU he sent leading members of the opposition (about 150 people). for interigation, in these years the OGPU was engaged in prosecution and arrests of non " ardent bolsheviks ", and thousands and thousands of " class enemies ", and consequently in Soviet history Menzhinsky is allocated more than a place of honour.
He Supervised over the actions on " liquidations kulachestva, as a class ", and also operations on destruction of enemies of I.V.Stalin abroad (for the first time they had such scope).
Under the decision of the Politburo from 30.1.1930 many people suffered repression, and 150 thousand families were sent; as a result of the leadership of Menzhinsky to camps and labour settlements, more than 1,5 million peasants.
About 2 million people are deprived of property and moved within the limits of their own province. The actions of the OGPU caused a wave of country revolts, which the subordinates of Menzhinsky suppressed with the force of weapons.
In 1930 on the affairs investigated by the OGPU, more than 20 thousand people were arrested. Under the order of Menzhinsky the cases against them were falsed from the beginning to the end.
The false political processes of the - " SHahtinskoe business " (" the harmful organization of bourgeois experts in area Shahtinskom of Donbass "; 1928), business "Prompartii" (1930), business of " the Labour country party " (1930), business " the Allied bureau of Central Committee RSDRP menshevikov " (1931) allowed Stalin to assign fault for the failures in the economy to "wreckers" and " enemies of the working people ".
Later on in the political processes of 1937-38 it was declared, that Menzhinsky had been killed on the 10/05/1934.
His ashes are buried in the Kremlin wall.

(Please excuse the translation)

[Taz]

The NKVD, or Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del - People's Commisariat for Interior Affairs, was the name for the political police in the USSR in one of the stages of its development.

The NKVD was created in early 1918 to handle policing and internal affairs. However, it did not obtain state security functions until it took over the OGPU in July 1934. State security functions were then handled by the NKVD's GUGB ("Glavnoe Upravlenie Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti" or Main Directorate of State Security). On 8 February 1941, the Special Sections of the NKVD (responsible for counter-intelligence in the military) were given to the Army and Navy (NKO and NKVMF) where they became the SMERSH (from Smert' Shpionam or "Death to Spies"). In April 1943, GUGB was removed from NKVD and renamed NKGB.

During World War II, NKVD units were used for rear area security, including halting deserters. On "liberated" territory the NKVD and NKGB carried out mass arrest and deportations, at times forcibly resettling entire populations (650,000+ Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, and others) or significant parts (Lithuanians, Poles) to Central Asia and Siberia.
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In 1934 the powerful OGPU was restructured and became part of the newly created NKVD(Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennykh Del (The People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs) and thus this entity gave birth to the "Great Terror" (1936-1939) where 1.000.000 people were killed, even entire innocent families and where 2.000.000 people were sent to forced labour camps to end their days.
The arrival of the NKVD in Soviet society meant that anyone deemed a danger to the State could be ordered to be imprisoned and resettled without the benefit to be heard. The NKVD was in control of the: militia, frontier control, all armed forces which were not directly part of the armed forces, force labour camps, prisons and all fire brigades. The power that the NKVD had at its disposal allowed Stalin to use this organism against the party and the country and this led to the Great Terror of the 1930's; one can only imagine and shudder at the thought of living in such an opressive manner, between 1934 and 1938 millions were arrested and ended their lives in forced labour camps. On April 17, 1935 Stalin issued the death penalty for children as young as twelve years of age, and thus furthering plummeting his mind into madness.

In 1936 the head of the NKVD, Genrikh Yagoda, was replaced because Stalin had accused him of not showing enough zeal for his work; Stalin by this time was very paranoid and rationalized that if you did not show zeal for your duties that meant your thoughts were problably somewhere else planning the downfall of the Soviet Union. Yagoda was a cruel man and his specialty was murdering by poison he was a cold hearted killer who did not have to be questioned for his loyalty and fondess to cruelty and death, Agabekov described Yagoda as:"brutal, uncultivated and gross". Yagoda died in a jail cell at the Lubyanka Prison (but not after being a witness to Stalin's death, as Stalin was dying, he had another stroke, Yagoda said of him: "Dead Meat". (The current thought is that Yagoda had Stalin poisened but that has not been proven as of yet). But recent documents shift the blame to Beria for when Stalin was found unconscious, unable to talk and having wet his pants Beria simply said: "Master is having a sound sleep. Don't get scared and don't bother us." Master was dying of a stroke and noone can prove that it was a natural one or if it was a stroke that finally put an end to this tyrant. Stalin felt secure in his next appointment for the NKVD. Yeszhov was appointed as the head of the evil NKVD and a new reign of terror began that even surpassed, somehow, the cruelties of the past. This reign was savage and irrational, perhaps the very enbodyment of Stalin's derranged mind. The story of Yagoda does not end with him in a jail cell "thinking" about his unloyalty to Stalin and lamenting his leaders death. In March of 1938, Yagoda and 21 other "Anti-Soviets" were found guilty and sentenced to death, most blamed Yagoda for Stalin's death and perhaps Yagoda was being punished for it.

[Taz]

The OGPU merged into the NKVD in July 1934
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Genrikh Grigor'evich Yagoda 1934 - 1936

Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov 1936 - 1938

Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria 1938 - 1945

[Taz]

Genrikh Grigor'evich Yagoda (1891 - March 15, 1938) was a head of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD (1934 - 1936).
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He was born in Lodz, Poland, and joined the Bolsheviks in 1907. After the October Revolution of 1917, he rose through the ranks of the Cheka (the NKVD's predecessor) and became People's Commissar for Internal Affairs, or head of the secret police, in 1934. Yagoda oversaw the first phase of the Great Purge in late 1936, but was replaced shortly thereafter by Nikolai Yezhov.

Yagoda was subsequently arrested and, in the Trial of the Twenty One, found guilty of treason and conspiring against the government of Joseph Stalin; he was executed in Moscow in 1938.

[Taz]

Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (May 1, 1895 - 1940) was a head of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD (1936 - 1938), during the Great Purge (sometimes known as the "Yezhovschina" after him).

Yezhov was born in St. Petersburg and joined the Bolsheviks on May 5, 1917 in Vitebsk, a few months before the October Revolution. He fought in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. He was known as a determined loyalist of Joseph Stalin, and in 1935 he wrote a paper in which he argued that political opposition must eventually lead to violence and terrorism; this became in part the ideological basis of the Purges. He became People's Commissar for Internal Affairs (head of the NKVD) and a member of the Presidium Central Executive Committee on September 26, 1936, following the dismissal of Genrikh Yagoda. Under Yezhov, the purges reached their height, with roughly half of the Soviet political and military establishment being imprisoned or shot, along with hundreds of thousands of others, suspected of disloyalty or "wrecking" (economic sabotage).

Stalin demoted Yezhov to the post of People's Commissar of Water Transport on August 21, 1938; less than a year later, Yezhov was arrested and put on trial for excesses committed during the Purges. In his defense, Yezhov said that he regretted only that he had not punished enough counter-revolutionaries. He was found guilty, and probably executed in secret in 1940.

[Taz]

Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria (29 March 1899 - 23 December 1953) was a Soviet Communist leader. He presided over the NKVD, the Soviet secret police and predecessor to the KGB, during much of Stalin's rule.
Like Stalin, Beria was an ethnic Georgian. Born in Merkheuli in Abkhazia (Georgia), Beria began his career in the Cheka (the early Soviet secret police) and became Party Secretary in his home country. In 1938, Stalin made him head of the NKVD, the Soviet Union's secret police force, which organised the mass arrests and executions of suspected dissidents. Beria has also been held responsible for war crimes committed in World War Two. For example, Beria prepared an order of execution for 25,700 Polish intellectuals, including 14,700 Polish POW (known as the Katyn massacre), signed by members of the Politburo on March 5, 1940. He was a member of the Politburo from 1946 to 1953.

On March 5, 1953, Stalin died four days after collapsing at a dinner with Beria, Georgi Malenkov, Nikolay Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev. Officially, the cause of death was listed as a cerebral hemorrhage. However, the political memoirs of Vyacheslav Molotov, published in 1993, claimed that Beria had boasted to Molotov that he had poisoned Stalin, although no hard evidence was ever produced to support this assertion.

Beria considered himself to be the natural successor to Stalin, but 3 months after Stalin's death in 1953 Beria was ousted by Nikita Khrushchev, and arrested in June of 1953, tried, and shot in December of 1953. His trial was a closed affair, but evidence of his involvement in numerous rapes and tortures was unconvered. In March of 2000 the Supreme Court of Russia refused to rehabilitate him. The refusal was based on the grounds of his proven crimes against humanity.

[Taz]

In 1934 the NKVD was organized as follows:

- GUGB (Chief Directorate of State Security)

- GUPVO (Chief Directorate of Frontier Guards and Interior Troops)

- GULAG (Chief Directorate of Camps)

- GUM (Chief Directorate of the Militia)

- other units responsible for Fire Fighting, Local Antiaircraft Defense, Highway Construction, Archives, etc.