(; Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya po bor ' bye s kontrrevolyutsiyei i sabotazhem ), but was often shortened to " Cheka " or " VCheka ".

By late 1918, hundreds of Cheka committees had been created in various cities, at multiple levels including: oblast, guberniya (" Gubcheks "), raion, uyezd, and volost Chekas, with Raion and Volost Extraordinary Commissioners.

On March 18, VCheKa adopted a resolution, The Work of VCheKa on the All-Russian Scale, foreseeing the formation everywhere of Extraordinary Commissions after the same model, and sent a letter that called for the widespread establishment of the Cheka in combating counterrevolution, speculation, and sabotage.

On June 12, 1918, the All-Russian Conference of Cheka adopted the Basic Provisions on the Organization of Extraordinary Commissions.

In 1918, the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission and the Soviets managed to establish a local Cheka apparatus.

In late November, the Second All-Russian Conference of the Extraordinary Commissions accepted a decision after the report of I. N. Polukarov to establish at all frontlines and army sections of the Cheka and granted them the right to appoint their commissioners in military units.

On 20 December 1917, the Council of People's Commissars officially established the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-revolution and Sabotage — usually known as the Cheka ( based on the Russian acronym ВЧК ).

Directed from Petrograd at first the commission had several regional departments ( Gubcheks ) that were officially titled Provincial Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage and were generally known as the Kiev Cheka, Kharkov Cheka, Odessa Cheka, etc.

* Cheka ( abbreviation of Vecheka, itself an acronym for " All-Russian Extraordinary Committee to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage " of the Russian SFSR )

Fighting for time and funding during the ensuing Russian Civil War of 1917 – 23, Narkompros, the Soviet Ministry of Education, quickly assembled the Cheka Likbez ( an acronym for the " Extraordinary Commission for the Liquidation of Illiteracy ") which was to be responsible for the training of literacy teachers as well as organizing and propagating the literacy campaign.

From its founding, the Cheka was an important military and security arm of the Bolshevik communist government.

A member of Cheka was called a " chekist ".

One of the first founded was the Moscow Cheka.

On March 7, 1918, because of the move from Petrograd to Moscow, the Petrograd Cheka was created.

Combating counterrevolution, speculation, and malfeasance on railroads was passed under the jurisdiction of the railway section of VCheKa and local Cheka.

On February 6, 1922, after the Ninth All-Russian Soviet Congress, the Cheka was dissolved by VTsIK, " with expressions of gratitude for heroic work.

The Cheka was also used against the armed anarchist Black Army of Nestor Makhno in the Ukraine.

It was during the Red Terror that the Cheka, hoping to avoid the bloody aftermath of having half-dead victims writhing on the floor, developed a technique for execution known later by the German words " Nackenschuss " or " Genickschuss ", a shot to the nape of the neck, which caused minimal blood loss and instant death.

The Chinese 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.

Cheka was actively and openly utilizing kidnapping methods.

With kidnapping methods Cheka was able to extinguish numerous cases of discontent especially among the rural population.

The Cheka was heavily involved in the conflict, which resulted in the defeat of the Mensheviks and the formation of the Georgian SSR.

The Cheka was the predecessor to the NKVD and the KGB.

Initially, opposition to the Bolshevik regime was strong as a response to Russia's poor economic conditions, with the Cheka reporting no less than 118 uprisings, including the Kronstadt Revolt.

In the wake of the October Revolution, the old Russian Imperial Army had been demobilized ; the volunteer-based Red Guard was the Bolsheviks ' main military force, augmented by an armed military component of the Cheka, the Bolshevik state security apparatus.

Julian Semyonov was an influential spy novelist, writing in the Eastern Bloc, whose range of novels and novel series featured a White Russian spy in the USSR ; Max Otto von Stierlitz, a Soviet mole in the Nazi High Command, and Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka.

In 1922, at the end of the Civil War, the Cheka was renamed as the GPU ( State Political Directorate ), a section of the NKVD.

This did not diminish Dzerzhinsky's power ; he was Minister of the Interior, director of the Cheka / GPU / OGPU, Minister for Communications, and director of the Vesenkha ( Supreme Council of National Economy ) from 1921 – 24.

Dzerzhinsky was succeeded as head of the Cheka by fellow ethnic Pole Vyacheslav Menzhinsky.

Realizing that it was left with no capable security force, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR created a secret political police, the Cheka, led by Felix Dzerzhinsky.

The Cheka was reorganized in 1922 as the State Political Directorate, or GPU, of the NKVD of the RSFSR.

In December 1917, the Cheka was founded as the Bolshevik's first internal security force following the failed assassination attempt on Lenin's life.

In August 1921, Nikolay Gumilev, his friend and fellow writer was arrested by the Petrograd Cheka for his monarchist views.

In this, the Cheka said that they targeted " class enemies " such as the bourgeoisie, and members of the clergy ; the first organized mass repression began against the libertarians and socialists of Petrograd in April 1918.

* 1917 – Cheka, the first Soviet secret police, is founded.

The first head of the 4th Directorate was Janis Karlovich Berzin, a Latvian Communist and former member of the Cheka, who remained in the post until 28 November 1937, when he was arrested and subsequently liquidated during Joseph Stalin's purges.

First mentioned in 1606 as Rastyapino (), it has been named after Felix Dzerzhinsky, a Bolshevik leader who was the first head of the Soviet Cheka ( secret police ), since 1929.

The first chief of the Soviet foreign intelligence service, Cheka foreign department ( Inostranny Otdel — INO ), was Yakov Davydov.

The first secret police after the Russian Revolution, created by Vladimir Lenin's decree on December 20, 1917, was called " Cheka " ( ЧК ).

After the Russian Revolution, the club eventually found itself under the authority of the Interior Ministry and its head Felix Dzerzhinsky, chief of the Soviet Union's first secret police force, the notorious Cheka.

* Cheka, first of a succession of Soviet state security organization

They include persons as diverse as Apollo Korzeniowski, writer, political activist and father of Joseph Conrad ; Romuald Traugutt, leader of the 1863 January Uprising ; Jarosław Dąbrowski, later military chief of the 1871 Paris Commune ; Feliks Dzierżyński, a leader of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and founder of the Cheka secret police ; the Marxist theoretician and revolutionary, Rosa Luxemburg ; the future Marshal of Poland, Józef Piłsudski ; Piłsudski's political archrival, Roman Dmowski ; and Eligiusz Niewiadomski, assassin of Poland's first president, Gabriel Narutowicz.

Detachments of the Red Army and Cheka attacked the first insurgent towns in western Georgia — Chiatura, Senaki and Abasha — as early as 29 August and managed to force the rebels into forests and mountains by 30 August.