Cheka

Founding

On 6 December 1917 the Council of People's Commissars decided that a special commission was needed to confront counter-revolution and sabotage, and Lenin sent Dzerzhinsky a draft decree on fighting counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs. On 7 December (O.S.), at Smolny, Dzerzhinsky was appointed chairman; in its first months the commission consisted of only 40 officials. Its remit was to liquidate counter-revolutionary and sabotage activity throughout Russia, hand those responsible to the revolutionary tribunals, and conduct only a preliminary investigation. Informational and organizational sections and a unit against counter-revolution and sabotage were created, and Sovnarkom authorized repressive measures including confiscation, deprivation of ration cards and publication of lists of enemies of the people.

Organizational growth

Staff numbers rose to 120 by March 1918 and reached a maximum of 31,000 by 1921. The central apparatus moved to Moscow in March 1918 and from 1919 occupied the Rossiya insurance company building on Lubyanka; the Secret Department was created in February 1919 and the Foreign Department on 20 December 1920. In 1918 there were 40 provincial (GubChK) and 365 district extraordinary commissions; from August 1918 came border, railway and water-transport organs, and Red Army Cheka organs created at the end of 1918 were reorganized into Special Departments on 21 February 1919. The Cheka had its own armed forces (Cheka detachments, ChON special-purpose units) and its own system of corrective-labour institutions, and in November 1920 it was charged with guarding the state border.

Expansion of punitive powers

Initially the commission's functions and powers were loosely defined, and Dzerzhinsky stated that it conducted only a preliminary investigation as needed to suppress. The Sovnarkom decree of 21 February 1918, "The Socialist Fatherland is in Danger!", first gave punitive powers, and from 5 September 1918 it held the right of direct liquidation of spies, saboteurs and other violators of revolutionary legality. The Red Terror was implemented by Dzerzhinsky on 5 September 1918, and the Red Army journal Krasnaya Gazeta publicly framed it as killing enemies in scores of hundreds. At the Central Committee discussion of 25 October 1918 delegates condemned the organization's "omnipotence" as standing above both the Soviets and the party; Bukharin, Olminsky and Petrovsky demanded an end to the arbitrariness of an organization stuffed with criminals and decomposed elements, and Kamenev proposed its factual abolition. Lenin defended the agency, and the Central Committee resolution of 19 December 1918 legally banned criticism of its activity.

Dissolution and lineage

Lenin insisted the name be changed so that a wartime emergency organ would not be associated with a new peacetime agency. On 23 January 1922 the Politburo decided to reorganize the Cheka into the GPU under the NKVD, and on that basis on 6 February 1922 the VTsIK adopted the decree on abolishing the Cheka and on the rules for conducting searches, seizures and arrests. After the Ninth All-Russian Congress of Soviets the VTsIK dissolved it "with expressions of gratitude for heroic work", and Dzerzhinsky remained chief of the GPU. The 1922 reorganization was the first in a series: merger into the NKVD in 1934, the NKGB separated in 1943 (renamed MGB in 1946), the MGB and MVD merged in March 1953, and the KGB created on 13 March 1954. The theme of a government dominated by "the organs" persisted, and Soviet citizens continued to call members of the various agencies Chekists.

Examples

Within a month repression extended to all political opponents, anarchists included. On 11 and 12 April 1918 some 26 anarchist centres in Moscow were attacked, 40 anarchists killed and about 500 arrested, and the Cheka also acted against Makhno's insurgent army; prisoners were secretly arrested and transported in vehicles known as "black voronok" (Black Maria). The Cheka began very soon to send agents abroad to gather intelligence and promote revolution by covert means, and the claim of a Western capitalist conspiracy was used to justify repressive measures. Russian accounts claim it identified and liquidated large underground organizations such as the "Union for the Defence of the Fatherland and Freedom" and the "All-Russian National Centre", and from 27 January 1921 its tasks also included the elimination of child homelessness and neglect. The Moscow Cheka (1918-1922) was chaired by Dzerzhinsky with Yakov Peters as deputy; the Petrograd Cheka (1918-1922) was chaired successively by Moisei Uritsky, Gleb Bokii, Meinkman, Varvara Yakovleva (acting) and Nikolai Antipov, and there were also the Kharkov Cheka and the Chekas of provincial centres. Cheka personnel and operations became the subject of a long series of Soviet and post-Soviet films, including "Chekist" (1992) and "Sindikat-2" (1981), and streets and squares in Soviet cities were named in honour of VChK employees.

Distinctions and disputes

The Cheka is not the same as the Red Terror: the Cheka was the December 1917 emergency organ, while the Red Terror was the complex of punitive measures carried out by the Bolsheviks during the Civil War, for which the Cheka was the main instrument. The Cheka was in many ways a reincarnation of the Tsarist Okhrana, using its methods and in some cases its personnel, while its first head Dzerzhinsky had spent years in Tsarist prisons and exile and learned his tradecraft from the Okhrana. "Chekist" referred to Soviet secret police throughout the Soviet period despite official name changes, was used in the camps as a mark of esteem for experienced administrators, and is still current in Russia, where Putin is called a chekist because of his KGB career and his headship of the FSB. The "Extraordinary Commission" form was not unique to the security police: other bodies used the same designation, such as Chekvalap, the Extraordinary Commission for the Procurement of Valenki and Bast Shoes. The Cheka's name was taken up by the secret police of the Italian National Fascist Party (Ceka). Estimates of victims diverge sharply and there is no scholarly consensus: one source gives 28,000 executions per year from December 1917 to February 1922, with a low figure of 50,000 and highs of 140,000 and 200,000, and most estimates put the total at about 100,000. Conquest's 140,000 shot in 1917-1922 is criticized on archival grounds by O. B. Mozokhin, who puts the maximum number of Cheka victims at no more than 50,000. In the 1938 purges former senior Cheka officials regarded as Dzerzhinsky's comrades-in-arms, including Artuzov, Bokii, Davtyan, Katanyan, Latsis, Kedrov, Mantsev, Moroz, Pavlunovsky, Peters, Trilisser, Unshlikht, Fomin and Yagoda, were executed.