State Political Directorate (GPU/OGPU)
국가정치보안부(GPU·OGPU)
The State Political Directorate (GPU), set up on 6 February 1922 under the RSFSR People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs to replace the Cheka, and the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) into which it was turned on 15 November 1923 under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR; the Soviet political police until it was absorbed into the all-union NKVD in July 1934.
In depth
The GPU had narrower powers than the Cheka and at first could not shoot suspects at will but had to bring them before judges, though it soon regained extrajudicial powers. With the formation of the Soviet Union it became the all-union OGPU. Felix Dzerzhinsky headed it until his death in 1926 and Vyacheslav Menzhinsky until 1934, with his deputy Genrikh Yagoda running day-to-day work; its headquarters was the Lubyanka in Moscow.
The Shakhty trial of March 1928 opened the series of Stalin-era show trials, and during the First Five-Year Plan the OGPU enforced dekulakization through special troikas, sending large numbers of peasants into exile, camps or execution. It ran the Solovki camp and in 1930 set up the camp administration that became the Gulag. On 10 July 1934 the OGPU became the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) of the new all-union NKVD.