Tchéka
The Tchéka (ВЧК, read V-Tch-K and pronounced Vétchéka or Tchéka is an acronym for the extraordinary Commission panrusse for the repression of the counter-revolution and sabotage , Russian: Всероссийскаячрезвычайнаякомиссияпоборьбесконтрреволюциейисаботажем) is a Secret service created on December 20th 1917 under the authority of Felix Dzerjinski to fight the enemies of the new mode Bolchévique. Its organization was decentralized, and was to assist the local Soviets.
The the Council of the police chiefs of the people, after having examined the project of Dzerjinski wrote in its decision:
- To give to the commission the name extraordinary Commission panrusse close the Council of the police chiefs of the people to fight the counter-revolution and sabotage, and to ratify this commission. Measurements to be applied: confiscation, expulsion of the places, withdrawal of the ration cards, publication of the lists of the enemies of the people, etc
One of the members of Tchéka, Latsis, did not declare it: “ do not seek an evidence to establish that your prisoner opposed the Soviet capacity in words or acts. Your first duty is to require of him of which class it belongs, which are its origins, which is its level of education and which is its trade. These are the questions which must decide on its fate. Here is significance and gasoline of Red Terror ” (1° November 1918). If these instructions had been applied to the Russian Communist party itself, all its central committee would have eliminated being. A little later, Dzerzinski the chief of Tchéka, proclaimed that “ the proletarian constraint in all its forms while starting with the capital executions, constitutes a method in order to create the communist man ”.
The central seat of Tchéka was located at Moscow in the building of the Loubianka (Large-Loubianka street) which sheltered all the political police of the the USSR until in 1991; initially located at Petrograd and directed by Moïsseï S. Ouritski, assassinated on August 30th 1918 in a Attack. This building was on the place named then Dzerjinski, in the honor of the first chief of Tchéka.
Officially, Tchéka fought only against the agents Blancs and Westerners, and was in charge with against-subversion and against-espionage. In the facts, it also attacked the popular layers: the famished townsmen who tried to exchange some products in the campaigns against food were stopped for “speculation”, the workmen in strike, the deserters of all the recent Red Army, the restive peasants with the requisitions… The capital punishment had been reintroduced in spring 1918.
Having 40.000 men at the end of 1918, Tchéka counted 280.000 of them at the beginning of 1921.
During the summer 1918, Tchéka was made guilty from 10.000 to 15.000 execution synopses, mainly of noble and of the ecclesiastics, that is to say two to three times more than the number of carried out (6 321 people) under the mode tsarist during the 92 years preceding the Revolution (1825 to 1917).
The Central committee of the Party Bolshevik discussed, on October 25th, 1918, of a new statute of Tchéka. Boukharine, Olminski and Petrovski, police chief of the people inside, required that be taken measures to limit the “ overzealousness of a truffée organization of criminals and sadists, degenerated elements of the lumpen proletariat ”. But soon, the camp of the unconditional partisans of Tchéka took again the top. Y appeared, in addition to Dzerjinski, of the celebrities of the Party such as Sverdlov, Stalin, Trotski and, of course, Lénine. December 19th 1918, on proposal of Lénine, the Central committee adopted a resolution prohibiting with the press Bolshevik to publish “ libelous articles on the institutions, in particular on Tchéka, which achieves its work under particularly difficult conditions ”. Thus the debate was closed.
Tchéka is dissolved in 1922 and leaves the place to GPU.
Director of Tchéka
- December 1917 - February 1922: Felix Dzerjinski