Database: Cheka

The Cheka was the first of all Soviet State's security organizations, created in 1917, after a decree issued by Lenin. Various Cheka committees were created in cities and other administrative levels of the State. From its founding, being the military and security arm of the Bolshevik communist party, the Cheka was instrumental in the Red Terror, a movement initiated to get rid of all opposition to the Soviet system. The name of the agency was originally 'The All-Russian Emergency Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage' which led in the Russian-pronounced short version 'Cheka.' A member of Cheka was called a 'chekist,' a name that persisted through time, within agencies that followed, up to the eighties.