Cheka in the context of Gulag

Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (29 March [O.S. 17 March] 1899 – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician and one of the longest-serving and most influential of Joseph Stalin's secret police chiefs, serving as head of the NKVD from 1938 to 1946, during the country's involvement in the Second World War.

An ethnic Georgian, Beria enlisted in the Cheka in 1920, and quickly rose through its ranks. He transferred to Communist Party work in the Caucasus in the 1930s, and in 1938 was appointed head of the NKVD by Stalin. His ascent marked the end of the Stalinist Great Purge carried out by Nikolai Yezhov, whom Beria purged. After the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, Beria organized the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and intelligentsia, and after the occupation of the Baltic states and parts of Romania in 1940, he oversaw the deportations of hundreds of thousands of Poles, Balts, and Romanians to remote areas or Gulag camps. In 1940, Beria began a new purge of the Red Army. After Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, he was appointed to the State Defense Committee, overseeing security.

Palace Square (Russian: Дворцо́вая пло́щадь, romanized: Dvortsovaya Ploshchad, IPA: [dvɐrˈtsovəjə ˈploɕːɪtʲ]), connecting Nevsky Prospekt with Palace Bridge leading to Vasilievsky Island, is the central city square of St Petersburg and of the former Russian Empire. Many significant events took place there, including the Bloody Sunday massacre and parts of the October Revolution of 1917. Between 1918 and 1944, it was known as Uritsky Square (Russian: площадь Урицкого), in memory of the assassinated leader of the city's Cheka branch, Moisei Uritsky.

The earliest and most celebrated building on the square, the Baroque white-and-turquoise Winter Palace (as re-built between 1754 and 1762) of the Russian tsars, gives the square its name. Although the adjacent buildings are designed in the Neoclassical style, they perfectly match the palace in their scale, rhythm, and monumentality.The opposite, southern side of the square was designed in the shape of an arc by George von Velten in the late 18th century. These plans came to fruition half a century later, when Alexander I of Russia (reigned 1801–1825) envisaged the square as a vast monument to the 1812–1814 Russian victories over Napoleon and commissioned Carlo Rossi to design the bow-shaped Empire-style Building of the General Staff (1819–1829), which centers on a double triumphal arch crowned with a Roman quadriga.

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev (also Gumilyov; Russian: Николай Степанович Гумилёв, IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈlaj sʲtʲɪˈpanəvʲɪtɕ ɡʊmʲɪˈlʲɵf] ; April 15 [O.S. 3 April] 1886 – August 26, 1921) was a Russian poet, literary critic, traveler, and military officer. He was a co-founder of the Acmeist movement. He was the husband of Anna Akhmatova and the father of Lev Gumilev. Nikolai Gumilev was arrested and executed by the Cheka, the secret Soviet police force, in 1921.

The Committee for State Security (Russian: Комитет государственной безопасности, romanized: Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, IPA: [kəmʲɪˈtʲed ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ]), abbreviated as KGB (Russian: КГБ, IPA: [ˌkɛɡɛˈbɛ]; listen to both) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, OGPU, and NKVD. Attached to the Council of Ministers, it was the chief government agency of "union-republican jurisdiction", carrying out internal security, foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence and secret police functions. Similar agencies operated in each of the republics of the Soviet Union aside from the Russian SFSR, where the KGB was headquartered, with many associated ministries, state committees and state commissions.

The agency was a military service governed by army laws and regulations, in the same fashion as the Soviet Army or the MVD Internal Troops. While most of the KGB archives remain classified, two online documentary sources are available. Its main functions were foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence, operative-investigative activities, guarding the state border of the USSR, guarding the Soviet leadership, preserving the security of government communications as well as combating dissident and separatism within Soviet society.

Internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Russian: Внутренние войска Министерства внутренних дел СССР, VV MVD) were military formations (analogous to the gendarmerie), which were intended to ensure law and public order and internal security of the Soviet Union, protect state facilities and ensure public safety. Formed in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917, the original internal troops, known as the Internal Security Forces of the Republic (VOHR) were created as combat detachments of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (Cheka). Numbering approximately 260,000 men in the 1980s, they were one of the largest formations of special troops in the Soviet Union. From September 1, 1939 to March 21, 1989, the internal troops were an integral part of the Soviet Armed Forces but were subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

There were a succession of Soviet secret police agencies over time. The Okhrana was abolished by the Provisional government after the first revolution of 1917, and the first secret police after the October Revolution, created by Vladimir Lenin's decree on December 20, 1917, was called "Cheka" (ЧК). Officers were referred to as "chekists", a name that is still informally applied to people under the Federal Security Service of Russia, the KGB's successor in Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

For most agencies listed here, secret policing operations were only part of their function; for instance, the KGB was both a secret police and an intelligence agency.

NKVD troika or Special troika (Russian: особая тройка, romanized: osobaya troyka), in Soviet history, were special quasi-judicial proceedings composed of three officials from the security police (for much of the troikas' existence, the NKVD, hence the name) who issued sentences to people after simplified, speedy investigations and without a public trial. The three members acted as ad hoc judges. These commissions were employed as instruments of extrajudicial punishment introduced to supplement the Soviet legal system with a means for quick and secret execution or imprisonment. It began as an institution of the Cheka, then later became prominent again in the NKVD, when it was used during the Great Purge to execute many hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens. Defendants in the Troika's proceeding were typically not entitled to legal aid or the presumption of innocence. Troika members employed common sense and socialist revolutionary principles to reach a verdict. Convictions usually did not include information about the actual incriminating evidence and basically contained only information about indictment and sentencing. The outcome of such trials was often predetermined before it even began due to targeted numbers of citizens to be executed or imprisoned in Gulag prison camps.

Troika means "a group of three" or "triad" in Russian.

The Left SR uprising, or Left SR revolt, was a rebellion against the Bolsheviks by the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party in Moscow, Soviet Russia, on 6–7 July 1918. It was one of a number of left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks that took place during the Russian Civil War.

The Left SRs had entered the Bolshevik government of Soviet Russia after the October Revolution of 1917, but resigned from the Council of People's Commissars in March 1918 in protest of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Left SRs continued to work in other organizations (notably the Cheka) while denouncing the treaty and the policy of requisitioning grain from the peasants.

The Soviet Border Troops (Russian: Пограничные войска СССР, romanized: Pogranichnyye voyska SSSR) were the border guard of the Soviet Union, subordinated to the Soviet state security agency: first to the Cheka/OGPU, then to NKVD/MGB and, finally, to the KGB. Accordingly, they were known as NKVD Border Security and KGB Border Troops. Unlike the border guards of many other countries, Soviet Border Troops also included the maritime border guarding units, and aviation units (i.e., a coast guard).

The mission of the Border Troops included repulsing armed incursions into Soviet territory; preventing illegal crossings of the border or the transport of weapons, explosives, contraband or subversive literature across the border; monitoring the observance of established procedures at border crossing points; monitoring the observance by Soviet and foreign ships of navigation procedures in Soviet territorial waters; and assisting state agencies in the preservation of natural resources and the protection of the environment from pollution. Border guards were authorized to examine documents and possessions of persons crossing the borders and to confiscate articles; to conduct inquiries in cases of violations of the state border; and to take such actions as arrest, search and interrogation of individuals suspected of border violations.

The State Political Directorate (Russian: Государственное политическое управление, romanized: Gosudarstvennoye politicheskoye upravleniye), abbreviated as GPU (Russian: ГПУ), was the secret police of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from February 1922 to November 1923. It was the immediate successor of the Cheka, and was replaced by the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU).

Moisei Solomonovich Uritsky (Ukrainian: Мойсей Соломонович Урицький; Russian: Моисей Соломонович Урицкий; 2 January [O.S. 14 January] 1873 – 30 August 1918), also known by his pen-name Boretsky (Russian: Борецкий) was a Bolshevik revolutionary leader in Russia. After the October Revolution, he was the head of the Petrograd Cheka from January 1918 until his death on 30 August 1918. Uritsky was assassinated by Leonid Kannegisser, a military cadet, who was executed shortly afterwards.

Chekism (Russian: Чекизм) was the form of counterintelligence state widely present in the Soviet Union by which secret police, counterintelligence and internal security services (originally the Cheka, hence the name, but most famously the KGB) strongly controlled all spheres of society. Similar circumstances exist in some post-Soviet states, particularly Russia. The term encompasses both the ideological underpinnings justifying often arbitrary repression as well as the political situation where security service members occupy high-level political offices and a lack of civilian control over their activities (in extreme cases, the opposite). The term is sometimes also applied to other Eastern Bloc security services (long-serving East German security chief Erich Mielke was fond of calling himself a Chekist), and, presently, to the federal government of Russia under Vladimir Putin (himself a former KGB officer).

The name is derived from Cheka, the colloquial name of the first in the succession of Soviet secret police agencies. Officers of the succession of security agencies (Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKVD, GUGB, NKGB, MGB, MVD, and, longest-lasting, the KGB), as well as their Russian successors, the Federal Security Service, are often referred to, both by themselves and by the broader public, as "Chekists".

The Tagantsev conspiracy (or the case of the Petrograd Military Organization) was a supposed monarchist conspiracy, largely fabricated by the Soviet secret police in 1921 to both decimate and terrorize potential Soviet dissidents against the ruling Bolshevik regime. As its result, more than 800 people, mostly from scientific and artistic communities in Petrograd (modern-day Saint Petersburg), were arrested on false terrorism charges, out of which 98 were executed and many were sent to labour camps. Among the executed was the poet Nikolay Gumilev, the co-founder of the influential Acmeist movement. In 1992, all those convicted in the Petrograd Combat Organization (PBO) case were rehabilitated and the case was declared fabricated. However, in the 1990s, documents confirming the existence of the organization were introduced into scientific circulation.The affair was named after Vladimir Nikolaevich Tagantsev, a geographer and member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who was arrested, tortured, and tricked into disclosing hundreds of names of people who did not like the Bolshevik regime. Among the security officers that manufactured the case was Yakov Agranov, who later became one of the chief organizers of Stalinist show trials and the Great Purge in the 1930s. The case was officially declared fabricated and its victims rehabilitated by Russian authorities in 1992.

The Red Terror (Russian: красный террор, romanized: krasnyy terror) was a campaign of political repression and executions in Soviet Russia which was carried out by the Bolsheviks, chiefly through the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police force. It officially started in early September 1918 and it lasted until 1922, though violence committed by Bolshevik soldiers, sailors, and Red Guards had been ongoing since late 1917.

Decreed after assassination attempts on Vladimir Lenin along with the successful assassinations of Petrograd Cheka leader Moisei Uritsky and party editor V. Volodarsky in alleged retaliation for Bolshevik mass repressions, the Red Terror was modeled on the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution, and the Paris Commune. The policy sought to eliminate political dissent, opposition, and any other threat to Bolshevik power.

Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (Russian: Феликс Эдмундович Дзержинский; Polish: Feliks Edmundowicz Dzierżyński [ˈfɛliks ɛdmundɔvʲiʈ͡ʂ d͡ʑɛrʐɨj̃skʲi]; 11 September [O.S. 30 August] 1877 – 20 July 1926), nicknamed Iron Felix (Russian: Железный Феликс), was a Soviet revolutionary and politician of Polish origin. From 1917 until his death in 1926, he led the first three Soviet secret police organizations, the Cheka, the GPU and the OGPU, establishing state security organs for the Bolshevik government. He was a key architect of the Red Terror and de-Cossackization.

Born to a Polish family of noble descent in their Ozhyemblovo Estate (in 1881 named Dzerzhinovo), in Russian Poland, Dzerzhinsky embraced revolutionary politics from a young age, and was active in the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania party. Active in Kaunas and Warsaw, he was frequently arrested and underwent several exiles to Siberia, from which he escaped every time. He evaded the tsarist secret police, the Okhrana, whose work he took interest in. Dzerzhinsky participated in the failed 1905 Revolution, and after a final arrest in 1912, was imprisoned until the February Revolution of 1917. He then joined Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik party, and played an active role in the October Revolution which brought them to power.

Vyacheslav Rudolfovich Menzhinsky (Russian: Вячесла́в Рудо́льфович Менжи́нский, Polish: Wiesław Rudolfowicz Mężyński; 31 August [O.S. 19 August] 1874 – 10 May 1934) was a Soviet revolutionary and politician who served as chairman of the OGPU, the secret police of the Soviet Union, from 1926 to 1934.

Born to Polish parents in Saint Petersburg, Menzhinsky joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1902. He emigrated from Russia in 1907, and spent the next decade in Europe and the United States. After the 1917 February Revolution, he joined the Cheka in 1919, and in 1923 was promoted to its deputy under Felix Dzerzhinsky. After his death in 1926, Menzhinsky became head of the Cheka's successor, the OGPU. He worked to crush resistance in the countryside during Joseph Stalin's forced agricultural collectivization.

Nikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin (Russian: Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Булга́нин; 11 June [O.S. 30 May] 1895 – 24 February 1975) was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1955 to 1958. He also served as Minister of Defense, following service in the Red Army during World War II.

Born in Nizhny Novgorod, Bulganin joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917 and became a member of the Soviet political police Cheka a year later. After the Russian Civil War, he held a number of administrative positions until 1931, when he became chairman of the Moscow City Soviet with the support of Lazar Kaganovich. A loyal Stalinist, Bulganin rose through the Soviet hierarchy in the middle of Stalin's purges, and in 1937 he was named premier of the Russian SFSR and a full member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. A year later he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister of the Soviet Union and head of the Soviet State Bank. Although he was never a front-line commander, Bulganin held a number of important political posts in the Red Army during World War II, and served in Stalin's State Defense Committee. In 1947, he succeeded Stalin as Minister for the Armed Forces and was named a Marshal of the Soviet Union. In early 1948, he became a full member of the Politburo.