CHEKA, THE 1ST SOVIET SECRET POLICE FORCE, IS FOUNDED

Today, The Grandma has been reading about the Cheka, the first Soviet secret police force, that was founded on a day like today in 1917.

The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (AREOC, in Russian Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия), abbreviated as VChK (in Russian ВЧК), and commonly known as Cheka (in Russian  Чека), was the first of a succession of Soviet secret-police organizations known for conducting the Red Terror.

Established on December 5 (Old Style) 1917 by the Sovnarkom, it came under the leadership of Bolshevik revolutionary Felix Dzerzhinsky. By late 1918, hundreds of Cheka committees had sprung up in the Russian SFSR at all levels.

Ostensibly set up to protect the revolution from reactionary forces, class enemies such as the bourgeoisie and members of the clergy, it soon became the repression tool against all political opponents of the communist regime. At the direction of Vladimir Lenin, the Cheka performed mass arrests, imprisonments, torture, and executions without trial.

In 1921, the Troops for the Internal Defense of the Republic (a branch of the Cheka) numbered at least 200,000. They policed labor camps, ran the Gulag system, conducted requisitions of food, and put down rebellions and riots by workers and peasants and mutinies in the Red Army.

The organization was dissolved in 1922 and succeeded by the State Political Directorate or GPU.

The official designation was All-Russian Extraordinary (or Emergency) Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage under the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR (in Russian Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия по борьбе с контрреволюцией и саботажем при Совете народных комиссаров РСФСР, Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya po borbe s kontrrevolyutsiyey i sabotazhem pri Sovete narodnykh komisarov RSFSR).

In 1918 its name was changed, becoming All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Corruption.

A member of Cheka was called a chekist (in Russian чеки́ст). Also, the term chekist often referred to Soviet secret police throughout the Soviet period, despite official name changes over time. In The Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn recalls that zeks in the labor camps used old chekist as a mark of special esteem for particularly experienced camp administrators.

The term is still found in use in Russia today (for example, President Vladimir Putin has been referred to in the Russian media as a chekist due to his career in the KGB and as head of the KGB's successor, FSB).

The chekists commonly dressed in black leather, including long flowing coats, reportedly after being issued such distinctive coats early in their existence. Western communists adopted this clothing fashion. The Chekists also often carried with them Greek-style worry beads made of amber, which had become fashionable among high officials during the time of the cleansing.

More information: GovUK

In 1921, the Troops for the Internal Defense of the Republic (a branch of the Cheka) numbered at least 200,000. These troops policed labor camps, ran the Gulag system, conducted requisitions of food, and subjected political opponents to secret arrest, detention, torture and summary execution. They also put down rebellions and riots by workers or peasants, and mutinies in the desertion-plagued Red Army.

After 1922, Cheka groups underwent the first of a series of reorganizations; however the theme of a government dominated by the organs persisted indefinitely afterward, and Soviet citizens continued to refer to members of the various organs as Chekists.

As its name implied, the Extraordinary Commission had virtually unlimited powers and could interpret them in any way it wished. No standard procedures were ever set up, except that the commission was supposed to send the arrested to the Military-Revolutionary tribunals if outside of a war zone. This left an opportunity for a wide range of interpretations, as the whole country was in total chaos. At the direction of Lenin, the Cheka performed mass arrests, imprisonments, and executions of enemies of the people. In this, the Cheka said that they targeted class enemies such as the bourgeoisie, and members of the clergy.

The Cheka engaged in the widespread practice of torture. Depending on Cheka committees in various cities, the methods included: being skinned alive, scalped, crowned with barbed wire, impaled, crucified, hanged, stoned to death, tied to planks and pushed slowly into furnaces or tanks of boiling water, or rolled around naked in internally nail-studded barrels. Chekists reportedly poured water on naked prisoners in the winter-bound streets until they became living ice statues. Others reportedly beheaded their victims by twisting their necks until their heads could be torn off.

The Cheka detachments stationed in Kiev reportedly would attach an iron tube to the torso of a bound victim and insert a rat in the tube closed off with wire netting, while the tube was held over a flame until the rat began gnawing through the victim's guts in an effort to escape.

Women and children were also victims of Cheka terror. Women would sometimes be tortured and raped before being shot. Children between the ages of 8 and 13 were imprisoned and occasionally executed.

More information: Alpha History

The real point is that totalitarian regimes
have claimed jurisdiction over the whole person,
and the whole society,
and they don't at all believe that we should give unto
Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's.

Jeane Kirkpatrick