Martin Ivanovich Lācis

On 1 November 1918, Lācis launched the Cheka organ Krasny Terror (Red Terror) in Kazan, opening with his article "We are annihilating the bourgeoisie as a class." He declared: "We were too generous — we sought hard evidence against individual bourgeois persons when the guilty party was not the individual but the entire class. We no longer fight against separate individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class." The article instructed interrogators that the suspect's class origin, upbringing, education and profession alone must determine their fate. It was the most naked theoretical formulation of the Cheka's class-based Red Terror and provoked immediate nationwide controversy. Lenin publicly condemned Lācis's logic as "absurd," and on 25 December 1918 Pravda carried a rebuttal by Yemelyan Yaroslavsky, who satirised that under such a doctrine, Karl Marx himself, bourgeois origin, higher education, lawyer by profession, would be shot on the spot. Lācis later claimed the phrasing was merely "a careless expression," but his 1921 book The Extraordinary Commissions in the Struggle Against Counter-Revolution systematised his vision: the Cheka was "not an investigative body or a court" but "a combat organ of the Communist Party," entitled to execute without trial, isolate class enemies in concentration camps, and surveil every sphere of social life.

Lācis is remembered in the Cheka both as a department figure and as its first historiographer. The reason is that the early historical account that laid the groundwork for the official concept of the history of the Soviet state security organs came from his hand. As the official historiographer of the Cheka he compiled a report on its activity over four years and also wrote a series of pamphlets and articles on the Cheka's work.

His historiography consisted of works published between 1918 and 1927. "Two Years of Struggle on the Internal Front" (Moscow, 1920) was a popular survey of the two-year activity of the Extraordinary Commissions against counter-revolution, speculation and malfeasance, and "The Extraordinary Commissions in the Struggle with Counter-Revolution" (Moscow, 1921) belongs to the same period. To these are added "The Truth about the Red Terror," carried in Izvestia VTsIK on 6 February 1920, and "The Cheka on Guard of the Conquests of October" of 1927.

In these works Lācis advanced an interpretation of Cheka activity that justified violent measures against "class-alien" strata. Kubasov's 2012 study analyses his works published from 1918 to 1927 and shows how distinctive that interpretation was, and that it became the basis of the official concept of the history of the Soviet state security organs. His definition of the Cheka in the 1921 book as a "combat organ of the party," entitled to execute without trial and to isolate class enemies in concentration camps, likewise took shape within this historiographical framework.

His historiography was contested from the outset, including from within the party. Kubasov cites Lenin's "A Small Picture for the Clarification of Big Questions" among the literature bearing on Lācis's history-writing, reflecting the dispute over his interpretation of the Cheka and the Red Terror. A scholarly account of the Plekhanov Institute records that he was remembered both as a prominent figure of the Cheka department and as its first historiographer, while also noting how far the charges of cruelty against him were pursued. The standing of being the Cheka's first historian, set beside the later controversies, shows how his doctrine of violence hardened into the institution's official memory.