Word: cheka
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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...
...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...
...prewar Russia it was not healthy to be seen talking to foreigners. The doctors of the Cheka-prescribed a Siberian rest cure for comrades who mingled too freely. With Siberia in mind, Moscow maidens are standoffish...
...times and all nations," 117 persons were known to have been put to death. That started the fiercest empire-wide purge of modern times. Thousands were executed with only a ghost of a trial. Secret police reigned as ruthlessly over Russia as in Tsarist times. First it was the Cheka, next the OGPU, later the N.K.V.D.-but essentially they were all the same. Comrade Stalin recognized their function when, one day, he viewed that part of the walls of the Kremlin from which Tsar Ivan IV watched his enemies executed, was reported as saying: "Ivan the Terrible was right...