Cheka

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Cheka-KGB emblem: sword and shield
Cheka-KGB emblem: sword and shield

The Cheka (ЧК - чрезвычайная комиссия Chrezvychaynaya Komissiya, Russian pronunciation: [tɕɛka]) was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created by a decree issued on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by a communist Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky. After 1922, the Cheka underwent a series of reorganizations.

It was soon an important military force, crucial for survival of the Soviet regime. In 1921 the Troops for the Internal Defense of the Republic (a part of Cheka) numbered 200,000. These troops policed labor camps, ran the Gulag system, conducted requisitions of food, put down peasant rebellions, riots by workers, and mutinies in the Red Army, which was plagued by desertions [1]

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[edit] Name

The full name of the agency was The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (Russian: Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия по борьбе с контрреволюцией и саботажем; Vserossijskaya Chrezvychajnaya Komissiya), but was commonly abbreviated to Cheka or VCheka. In 1918 its name was slightly altered, becoming All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Corruption.

A member of Cheka was called a chekist. Chekists of the post-October Revolution years wore leather jackets creating a fashion followed by Western communists; they are pictured in several films in this apparel. Despite name and organisational changes over time, Soviet secret policemen were commonly referred to as "Chekists" throughout the entire Soviet period and 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).

[edit] History

The Cheka was created immediately after the October Revolution, during the first days of Bolshevik government. Its immediate precursor was the "commission for the struggle with counter-revolution", established on December 7 [O.S. November 21] 1917, by the Milrevkom (the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet) on the proposal of Dzerzhinsky[2]. Its members were the Bolsheviks Skrypnik, Flerovski, Blagonravov, Galkin, and Trifonov[3].

The Cheka was established on December 20 [O.S. December 7] 1917, by a decision of the Sovnarkom. It was subordinated to the Sovnarkom and its functions were, "to liquidate counter-revolution and sabotage, to hand over counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs to the revolutionary tribunals, and to apply such measures of repression as 'confiscation, deprivation of ration cards, publication of lists of enemies of the people etc.'"[4]. The original members of the Vecheka were Peters, Ksenofontov, Averin, Ordzhonikidze, Peterson, Evseev, and Trifonov[5], but the next day Averin, Ordzhonikidze, and Trifonov were replaced by Fomin, Shchukin, Ilyin, and Chernov[6]. A circular published on December 28 [O.S. December 15] 1917, gave the address of Vecheka's first headquarters as "Petrograd, Gorokhovaya 2, 4th floor"[7].

Originally, the members of the Cheka were exclusively Bolshevik; however, in January 1918, left SRs also joined the organisation[8] The Left SRs were expelled or arrested later in 1918 following their attempted rebellion against Bolshevik rule.

In 1922, the Cheka was transformed into the State Political Administration or GPU, a section of the NKVD of the RSFSR.

[edit] Operations

The agency 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, members of the clergy, and political opponents of the new regime. The very first organized mass repression began against the libertarian Socialists of Petrograd in April 1918. Then came Moscow the following month and May Day 1918. The Moscow action led to a pitched battle between the anarchists and the police. ( P.Avrich. G Maximoff) The Cheka orchestrated the campaign of repression that came to be known as "Red Terror", which was implemented by Dzerzhinsky on September 5, 1918. The organ of the Red Army, "Krasnaya Gazeta," described it:

Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds. Let them be thousands, let them drown themselves in their own blood. For the blood of Lenin and Uritsky … let there be floods of blood of the bourgeoisie – more blood, as much as possible…[9]

An early Bolshevik Victor Serge described in his book "Memoirs of a Revolutionary"

Since the first massacres of Red prisoners by the Whites, the murders of Volodarsky and Uritsky and the attempt against Lenin (in the summer of 1918), the custom of arresting and, often, executing hostages had become generalized and legal. Already the Cheka, which made mass arrests of suspects, was tending to settle their fate independently, under formal control of the Party, but in reality without anybody's knowledge.

The Party endeavoured to head it with incorruptible men like the former convict Dzerzhinsky, a sincere idealist, ruthless but chivalrous, with the emaciated profile of an Inquisitor: tall forehead, bony nose, untidy goatee, and an expression of weariness and austerity. But the Party had few men of this stamp and many Chekas.

I believe that the formation of the Chekas was one of the gravest and most impermissible errors that the Bolshevik leaders committed in 1918 when plots, blockades, and interventions made them lose their heads. All evidence indicates that revolutionary tribunals, functioning in the light of day and admitting the right of defence, would have attained the same efficiency with far less abuse and depravity. Was it necessary to revert to the procedures of the Inquisition?"

[edit] Tracking down and punishing deserters and their families

It is believed that more than 3 million deserters escaped from Red Army in 1919 and 1920. Around 500,000 deserters were arrested in 1919 and close to 800,000 in 1920 by Cheka troops and special divisions created to combat desertions [1]. The deserters were forcefully mobilized peasants. Thousands of deserters were killed; their families were often treated as hostages. According to Lenin's instructions,

After the expiration of the seven-day deadline for deserters to turn themselves in, punishment must be increased for these incorrigible traitors to the cause of the people. Families and anyone found to be assisting them in any way whatsoever are to be considered as hostages and treated accordingly[1]

In September 1918, in only twelve provinces of Russia, 48,735 deserters and 7,325 "bandits" were arrested, 1,826 were killed and 2,230 were executed. A typical report from a Cheka department stated:

Yaroslavl Province, 23 June 1919. The uprising of deserters in the Petropavlovskaya volost has been put down. The families of the deserters have been taken as hostages. When we started to shoot one person from each family, the Greens began to come out of the woods and surrender. Thirty-four deserters were shot as an example.[1]

The Cheka later played a role in the suppression of the Kronstadt Rebellion in 1921

[edit] Number of victims

Estimates on Cheka executions vary widely. The lowest figures are provided by Dzerzhinsky’s lieutenant Martyn Latsis, limited to RSFSR over the period 1918–1920:

  • For the period 1918-July 1919, covering only twenty provinces of central Russia:
1918: 6,300; 1919 (up to July): 2,089; Total: 8,389
  • For the whole period 1918-19:
1918: 6,185; 1919: 3,456; Total: 9,641
  • For the whole period 1918-20:
January-June 1918: 22; July-December 1918: more than 6,000; 1918-20: 12,733

Experts generally agree these semi-official figures are vastly understated.[10] W. H. Chamberlin, for example, claims “it is simply impossible to believe that the Cheka only put to death 12,733 people in all of Russia up to the end of the civil war.”[11] He provides the "reasonable and probably moderate" estimate of 50,000[12], while others provide estimates ranging up to 500,000.[13][14] Several scholars put the number of executions at about 250,000.[15][16] Some believe it is possible more people were murdered by the Cheka than died in battle.[17] Lenin himself seemed unfazed by the killings. On 14 May 1921, the Politburo, chaired by Lenin, passed a motion "broadening the rights of the [Cheka] in relation to the use of the [death penalty]."[18]

[edit] Cheka atrocities

The Cheka is reported to have practiced torture. Victims were 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, and rolled around naked in internally nail-studded barrels. Chekists poured water on naked prisoners in the winter-bound streets until they became living ice statues. Others beheaded their victims by twisting their necks until their heads could be torn off. The Chinese Cheka detachments stationed in Kiev reportedly would attach an iron tube to the torso of a bound victim and insert a rat into the other end which was then closed off with wire netting. The tube was then held over a flame until the rat began gnawing through the victim's guts in an effort to escape. Denikin’s investigation discovered corpses whose lungs, throats, and mouths had been packed with earth.[19][20][21]

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 16 were imprisoned and occasionally executed.[22]

[edit] The Cheka in popular culture

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c d Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stéphane Courtois, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, 1999, hardcover, 858 pages, ISBN 0-674-07608-7
  2. ^ Carr (1958), p. 1.
  3. ^ Ibid.
  4. ^ Ibid., p. 2.
  5. ^ Ibid., p. 3.
  6. ^ Ibid.
  7. ^ Ibid.
  8. ^ Schapiro (1984).
  9. ^ page 9, Applebaum (2003).
  10. ^ pages 463-464, Leggett (1986).
  11. ^ pages 74-75, Chamberlin (1935).
  12. ^ Ibid.
  13. ^ page 39, Rummel (1990).
  14. ^ Statue plan stirs Russian row (BBC)
  15. ^ page 28, Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, paperback edition, Basic books, 1999.
  16. ^ page 180, Overy, The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, W. W. Norton & Company; 1st American Ed edition, 2004.
  17. ^ page 649, Figes (1996).
  18. ^ page 238, Volkogonov (1994).
  19. ^ pages 177-179, Melg(o)unov (1925).
  20. ^ pages 383-385, Lincoln (1999).
  21. ^ page 646, Figes (1996).
  22. ^ page 198, Leggett (1986).

[edit] Sources

[edit] External links

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Secret police agencies in Communist Eastern Europe