1917–1991

State security agencies

The command line from Cheka to GPU/OGPU, NKVD, MGB and KGB.

People who worked in this line →

Organizational Lineage

  1. Cheka (VChK) 1917.12–1922.2

    The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage. Founded under Dzerzhinsky as the revolution's shield, it wielded summary powers — including execution without trial — through the Red Terror of the Civil War.

  2. GPU · OGPU 1922–1934

    With the Civil War over, the Cheka was formally dissolved into the State Political Directorate (GPU), elevated in 1923 to the all-union OGPU. The emergency organ became a permanent, institutionalized political police.

  3. NKVD 1934–1946

    The OGPU was absorbed into the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, a giant that ran the regular police, border troops, and the Gulag. Under Yagoda, Yezhov, and Beria it was the executing machinery of the Great Terror.

  4. NKGB · MGB 1941 · 1943–1953

    State-security functions were split from the NKVD into the NKGB, renamed the Ministry for State Security (MGB) in 1946. It drove the postwar purges — the Leningrad Affair and the Doctors' Plot.

  5. MVD interlude 1953

    After Stalin's death Beria merged the MGB into the MVD under his own hand — an arrangement that ended within months with his arrest and execution, opening the way to party control over the political police.

  6. KGB 1954–1991

    Reconstituted as the Committee for State Security — a committee, not a ministry, kept under party control. The party's "shield and sword" for 37 years, it was dissolved after the failed August 1991 coup.

Leadership Timeline

  1. 1917–1926 Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky Chairman of Cheka, GPU and OGPU
  2. 1926–1934 Vyacheslav Rudolfovich Menzhinsky Chairman of OGPU
  3. 1934–1936 Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs, NKVD
  4. 1936–1938 Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs, NKVD
  5. 1938–1941 Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs, NKVD
  6. 1941, 1943–1946 Vsevolod Nikolayevich Merkulov People’s Commissar for State Security, NKGB
  7. 1946–1951 Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov Minister of State Security, MGB
  8. 1951–1953 Semyon Denisovich Ignatiev Minister of State Security, MGB
  9. 1953 Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria Minister of Internal Affairs, MVD
  10. 1954–1958 Ivan Alexandrovich Serov Chairman of the KGB
  11. 1958–1961 Alexander Nikolayevich Shelepin Chairman of the KGB
  12. 1961–1967 Vladimir Yefimovich Semichastny Chairman of the KGB
  13. 1967–1982 Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov Chairman of the KGB
  14. 1982 Vitaly Vasilyevich Fedorchuk Chairman of the KGB
  15. 1982–1988 Viktor Mikhailovich Chebrikov Chairman of the KGB
  16. 1988–1991 Vladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov Chairman of the KGB