Cheka ( ЧК-чрезвыча ́ йная коми ́ ссия chrezvychaynaya komissiya, Extraordinary Commission, ) was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations.

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

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

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.

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.

Originally, the members of the Cheka were exclusively Bolshevik ; however, in January 1918, the Left SRs also joined the organization The Left SRs were expelled or arrested later in 1918, following the attempted assassination of Lenin by an SR, Fanni Kaplan.

Women and children were also victims of Cheka terror.

Cheka departments were organized not only in big cities and guberniya seats, but also in each uyezd, at any front-lines and military formations.

Films featuring the Cheka include Ostern's Miles of Fire, Nikita Mikhalkov's At Home among Strangers, the miniseries The Adjutant of His Excellency, and also Dead Season ( starring Donatas Banionis ), and the 1992 Russian drama film The Chekist.

Utkin also told the White Russian Army investigators that the injured girl, whom he treated at Cheka headquarters in Perm, told him, " I am the daughter of the ruler, Anastasia.

According to Emma Goldman, the anarchist, who secretly met Spiridonova in July 1920, she was also tortured by being taken out at night and informed that she was to be shot on a spot-a favored method of the Cheka at that time.

They also made big hits with Cheka.

They are syllabic abbreviations typical for the Russian language of the early Soviet era, although many Cheka and Internal Troops units such as OMSDON used a osobovo naznacheniya designation in their full names.

In September 1919, a grenade attack at a meeting of the Moscow Committee of the Bolshevik Party was used as a pretext for mass arrests of anarchists all over Russia by Bolshevik Red Army forces and the Cheka.

The title was used during the Provisional Government for regional heads of administration, but it is mostly associated with a number of Cheka and military functions in Bolshevik and Soviet government military forces during the Russian Civil War ( the White Army widely used the collective term " bolsheviks and commissars " for their opponents ) and with the later terms People's Commissar ( or narkom ) for government ministers and political commissar in the military.

Secret police chiefs from Lavrenty Beria to Yuri Andropov used the same office on the third floor, which looked down on the statue of Cheka founder Felix Dzerzhinsky.

It began as an institution of the Cheka, then later became prominent again in the NKVD, when it was used during the Great Purge.

Initially formed to fight against counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs, as well as financial speculators, Cheka had its own classifications.

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.

G. Maximoff ) In response to the anarchists ' resistance, the Cheka orchestrated a massive retaliatory campaign of repression, executions, and arrests against all opponents of the Bolshevik government, in what came to be known as " Red Terror ".

In March 1919 after a failed workers revolt against Bolshevik rule thousands of people were executed by the Cheka under orders from Sergey Kirov.

" At Odessa the Cheka tied White officers to planks and slowly fed them into furnaces or tanks of boiling water ; In Kharkiv, scalpings and hand-flayings were commonplace: the skin was peeled off victims ' hands to produce " gloves "; The Voronezh Cheka rolled naked people around in barrels studded internally with nails ; victims were crucified or stoned to death at Dnipropetrovsk ; the Cheka at Kremenchuk impaled members of the clergy and buried alive rebelling peasants ; in Orel, water was poured on naked prisoners bound in the winter streets until they became living ice statues ; in Kiev, Chinese Cheka detachments placed rats in iron tubes sealed at one end with wire netting and the other placed against the body of a prisoner, with the tubes being heated until the rats gnawed through the victim's body in an effort to escape.

On June 24, 1922 he was killed in the firefight against the Cheka along with his brother, Dmitriy.

As a libertarian socialist, Serge protested against the Red Terror organized by Felix Dzerzhinsky and the Cheka.

These raids were prompted by a series of armed aggressions against Cheka officials that were believed to be carried out by Moscow Federation for Anarchist Group supported Black Guard units.

The credit for the murders of the two Cheka officials was later taken by a Black Guards unit, solidifying the state ” s justification for aggression against the Moscow Federation of Anarchist Groups.