To fight the internal foe it was necessary to create an organ … that would protect the rear of the Red Army and permit the peaceful development of the Soviet form of government.
In December, 1917, Lenin appointed Felix Dzerzhinsky as Commissar for Internal Affairs and head of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (Cheka).
Sections:
Organized Terror
Robert Bruce Lockhart Plot
Red Terror
Yakov Peters
Kronstadt Uprising
Sidney Reilly
Vyacheslav Menzhinsk
NKVD
Primary Sources
The video provides valuable information, however, there is only one image available to view throughout.
A Cheka badge, showing the ‘sword and shield’ of the revolution.
The Cheka is sometimes referred to as the Bolshevik ‘secret police’, though most Russians were well aware of its existence and activities.
Contents:
1 Summary
2 Formation and early years
3 Dzerzhinsky the ‘Iron Count’
4 The agency grows
5 Unrestrained by law
6 Brutal methodology
7 Creative methods of torture
8 Not-so-secret police
Paving the way for the Great Purges of Stalinist Russia, the Bolshevik’s solidified their power over Russia by utilising an efficient mechanism of state terror; the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, known simply as the ‘Cheka’.
