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

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

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.

Leaders

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

• Cheka (Abbreviation of Vecheka, itself an acronym for "All-Russian Extraordinary Committee to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage") (Russian SFSR)
  • Felix Dzerzhinsky 1917 - 1918
  • Yakov Peters 1918
  • Felix Dzerzhinsky 1918 - 1922

February 6, 1922: Cheka became GPU, a section of the NKVD of the Russian SFSR.

• Felix Dzerzhinsky 1922 - 1923

November 15, 1923: GPU was reorganized into OGPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.

• Felix Dzerzhinsky 1923 - July 1926
• Vyacheslav Menzhinsky July 1926 - May 1934

July 10, 1934: OGPU became GUGB of the NKVD of the USSR; NKVD of the Russian SFSR ceased to exist.

• Genrikh Yagoda 1934 - 1936
• Nikolai Yezhov 1936 - 1938
• Lavrenty Beria 1938 - 1945

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.

• Vsevolod Nikolayevich Merkulov February 3, 1941 - July 20, 1941 (NKGB folded back into NKVD)
• Vsevolod Nikolayevich Merkulov April 14, 1943 - 1946 (NKGB reseparated from NKVD)

March 18, 1946: All People's Commissariates were renamed to Ministries.

• Viktor Semionovich Abakumov 1946 - 1951
• Semion Denisovich Ignatiyev 1951 - 1953
• The East German secret police, the Stasi, took their name from this iteration.

• KI - "Committee of Information"
  • Peter Fedotov MGB
  • Fedor Kuznetsov GRU
  • Yakov Malik Foreign Ministry

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.

• Lavrenty Beria March, 1953 - June, 1953
• Sergey Nikiforovich Kruglov June, 1953 - March, 1954

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.

• Ivan Serov (March 13 1954 - December 8 1958)
• Aleksandr Shelepin (December 25 1958 - November 13 1961)
• Vladimir Yefimovich Semichastny (November 13 1961 - May 18 1967)
• Yuri Andropov (May 18 1967 - May 26 1982)
• Vitaly Fedorchuk (May 26 1982 - December 17 1982)
• Viktor Chebrikov (December 17 1982 - October 1 1988)
• Vladimir Kryuchkov (October 1 1988 - August 22 1991)
• Leonid Shebarshin ( August 22 1991 - August 23 1991, acting)
• Vadim Bakatin (August 23 1991 - October 22 1991)

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.