Word: cheka
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Lenin picked as first policeman of the proletarian revolution was borrowed from the Polish aristocracy. When Felix Dzerzhinsky was made head of the Bolshevists' CHEKA, he wrote to his wife: "I am now in the front line and I want to be merciless, to tear the enemy to pieces as a watchdog would...
...directive of Grigory Zinoviev, then chairman of the Comintern: "If out of 100,000,000 population, 10,000,000 do not want to obey the Soviets, they have to be destroyed physically." Nobody will ever know how many hundreds of thousands were killed by Dzerzhinsky's CHEKA...
...Persian art and higher mathematics. He wrote erotic poetry and read pornographic novels in his office between executions. He was plump, languid, soft-voiced, given to blue moods. He said: "Our task is to bring culture to the masses at a terrific speed." His OGPU, successor to the CHEKA,' brought death by execution and starvation to millions of Ukrainian and other peasants...
...mysterious Count Pirro appeared as "Brazilian Ambassador," let it be known that he would hire only non-Bolsheviks for his consular staff, that he would grant Brazilian passports to anyone wanting to leave Russia for political reasons. Anti-Communists flocked to his office, and were promptly arrested by the Cheka. Pirro himself was a Cheka agent. Outraged by such police methods, Balabanov went straight to Lenin to protest. She reports in her memoirs (My Life as a Rebel). "Lenin looked at me with an expression which was more sad than sardonic. 'Comrade Angelica,' he said, 'what...
...search of the sweetest possible name for its secret police, the Kremlin has given that dread body its fourth title since December 1917. Once the CHEKA (Extraordinary Commission), then GPU (State Political Management), 1922-34, then NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), 1934-46, it is now MGB (Ministry of State Security). Said the proverb-loving Russians on hearing the news: Khren ne slashche redki ("Horseradish is not sweeter than radish...