Event · Twentieth century · Russia

The Cheka

1917–1922

All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, founded 20 December 1917 (7 December Old Style) under Felix Dzerzhinsky. Early Soviet secret police with power of summary execution.

Facts

Founded: Decree of Sovnarkom, 20 December 1917 (N.S.), chaired by Felix Dzerzhinsky.; Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Cheka
Mandate: Combat counter-revolution and sabotage; authority expanded to summary execution in 1918.; Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Cheka

The record

The Cheka was created weeks after the Bolshevik seizure of Petrograd. It stood outside ordinary courts. War Communism, grain requisition and the suppression of Tambov and Kronstadt show how emergency police power hardened into lasting party monopoly even as the New Economic Policy eased some economic controls in 1921.

Later agencies (GPU, OGPU, NKVD, KGB) inherited the lineage. This page files the founding organ; Stalin's Terror is a later chapter.

Images

Bare interrogation room with a metal desk, supervised telephone and barred door — institutional coercion, no heroic shield emblem.

Connected

Links in both directions: what this page points to, and what points here.

RulerJoseph Stalin1878–1953 CountryRussia EraTwentieth century1901–2000 EventStalin's Terror1937–1938

Articles

Desk pieces that belong with this record.

2026-10-06The ChekaKarl Marx died on March 14, 1883, in London, decades before the establishment of the Soviet secret police. The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, commonly known as the Cheka, was created thirty-four years later by official decree at the Smolny Institute.Read

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