SSP

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Soviet secret police

History

Cheka

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka

1917-1922

The Cheka was created immediately after the October Revolution, during the first days of Bolshevik government. The Cheka was established on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by a communist Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky. The full name of the agency was The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage. In 1918 its name was slightly altered, becoming All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Corruption. In 1922, the Cheka was transformed into the State Political Administration or GPU, a section of the NKVD of the RSFSR.

GPU/OGPU

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosudarstvennoye_Politicheskoye_Upravlenie

1922-1934

State Political Directorate was the secret police of the RSFSR and USSR until 1934. Formed from the Cheka on February 6, 1922, it was initially known under the Russian abbreviation GPU for Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie of NKVD of the RSFSR. OGPU was reincorporated into NKVD of the USSR in July 1934, becoming the GUGB department. Its final transformation was into the more infamously known Committee for State Security (KGB).

GUGB

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUGB

1934-1943

The Main Directorate of State Security was the name of the Soviet secret police from July 1934 to April 1943.

NKGB

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKGB

1943-1946

The People's Commissariat for State Security or NKGB - was the name of the Soviet secret police, intelligence and counter-intelligence force that existed from February 3, 1941 to July 20 1941, and again from 1943 to 1946, and then renamed into the Ministry for State Security, or MGB.

MGB

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_for_State_Security_%28USSR%29

1946-1953

The Ministry of State Security (MGB) was the name of a Soviet secret police agency from 1946 to 1953. It was merged with the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1953 by Lavrenty Beria, but Beria was arrested and executed the same year, and a third agency, the KGB, broke off from the reformed MVD.

KGB

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kgb

1954-1991

Today

After the State Emergency Committee failed to overthrow Gorbachev and Yeltsin took over, General Vadim Bakatin was given instructions to dissolve the KGB.

In Russia today, KGB functions are performed by the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service) and the FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation). The GRU, Main Intelligence Directorate, continues to operate as well.

Function

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka

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."

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.

Atrocities

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka

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.

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.

Timeline

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_secret_police

February 6, 1922: Cheka became GPU, a section of the NKVD of the Russian SFSR.
November 15, 1923: GPU was reorganized into OGPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.
July 10, 1934: OGPU became GUGB of the NKVD of the USSR; NKVD of the Russian SFSR ceased to exist.
February 3, 1941: The GUGB of the NKVD was briefly separated out into the NKGB, then merged back in, and then in 1943 separated out again.
March 18, 1946: All People's Commissariates were renamed to Ministries.
May 30, 1947: Official decision with the expressed purpose of "upgrading coordination of different intelligence services and concentrating their efforts on major directions". In the summer of 1948 the military personnel in KI were returned to the Soviet military to reconstitute a foreign military intelligence arm of the GRU. KI sections dealing with the new East Bloc and Soviet emigres were returned to the MGB in late 1948. In 1951 the KI returned to the MGB.
March 5, 1953: MVD and MGB are merged into the MVD by Lavrenty Beria.
March 13, 1954: Newly independent force became the KGB, as Beria was purged and the MVD divested itself again of the functions of secret policing. After renamings and tumults, the KGB remained stable until 1991.