Figure 1.-- |
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The Bolsheviks and other revolutionaries were brutally treated by the Ocrana, the Tsarist Secret Police. After the Bolsheviks seized power, many included Lenin were convinced that they needed their own secret police to deal with counter revolutionaries. The Bolshevik secret police was created only 2 months after the October Revolution (December 1917). The Bolshevik used the Cheka to firmly establish their rule. It was to be temporary expedient that Lenin assured the population that would be dibanded when the party has consolidated their hold on power. The Cheka was organized by Feliks Dzerzhinskii. It was at first only authorized to investigate "counterrevolutionary" crimes. In the struggle with counter-revolutionaries, however, the Cheka began a much broader campaign against of terror against the propertied classes. The Cheka often resorted to summary execution without trials. Some Bolsheviks were outraged with the Cheka's brutality. Lenin and other Bolsheviks were convinced that the Cheka's campaign of terror was necessary. While tghe Bolshevik's victory in the Civil War (1918-21) Lenin did disband the Cheka. The responsibilities were transferred to the State Political Directorate/United Department of Political Police (OGPU/GPU) (1922). The power of the GPU were more limited than that of the Cheka. This changed, however, with the rise to power of Joseph Stalin. Stalin perpetually obsessed with threats to his power again invested the secret police with virtually limitless extra-llegal powers. The GPU was renamed the People's Comissariat (later Ministry) for Internal Affairs (NKVD/MVD) (1934). Under Stalin the secret police were no longer subject to party control or any legal constraints. The NKVD was authorize to act against subversive elements, oversee prisons and labor camps, as well as the reducation of political prisoners. The NKVD became the person tool of Stalin which used it not only to purge the Pary but to wage a campaign of terror against the Soviet people. Stalin in the 1930s initiated a campaign against peasants to collectivize agriculture which was followed by purges and the Great Terror. Stalin conventiently purged the heads of the secret police that carried out his crimes. His last secret police head was Lavrenti Beria. When Stalin died (1953), the Soviet leadership purged Beria from the Communist Party and had him executed before he could use his power to seize power himself. The NKVD in the de-Stalinization era was renamed the KGB. The Gulag was slowly reduced and the Stalinist Terror receeded. The Soviets leaders, however, until the advent of Gorbechev continued to use the secret police to suppress political and religious thought and to act without any real legal constraint. The KGB acted on its own during the late 1980s to resist Gorbechev's efforts to open Soviet society and played a key role in organizing the attempted coup against Gorbechev (August 1991).
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