Essay On Cheka

According to Siegelbaum, the Cheka was the “sword of the Revolution,” explicitly conceived as an organ of “mass terror against the bourgeoisie and its agents.” Established as a result of opposition to the Bolshevik government, the Cheka accumulated power with each additional uprising to the extent whereby its campaign of political terror derived it the name of the ‘Red Terror.’ In the beginning the Cheka consisted of but 40 officials. They were in charge of a team of soldiers called the Sveaborgesky regiment, along with the Red Guardsmen. By in 1918, under Felix Dzerzhinkiy’s rule, the Cheka accumulated in mass and members; all their activities were also centralized in the city of Petrograd. The Cheka’s main focus at this time was the fight against counterrevolution, theft and any other activities perceived as crimes against the republic. Mid 1918 the power of the Cheka was undisputed and they had amassed the power to not only investigate and arrest, but also to interrogate and execute the verdict. This came about due to the attempted assassination of Vladimir Lenin; a climate of fear was necessary to be brought on in order to stifle any further attempts at taking the lives of Bolshevik leaders. The attempt of assassination on Vladimir Lenin was received as a shock; two of the three intended bullets fired, hit Lenin. One of the bullets landed in his left shoulder blade and the second directly impacted his shoulder. The assassin was arrested on spot, a 30-year-old Ukrainian woman named Fanya Kaplan. At her trial she stated that she fired the shots at Vladimir Lenin because she saw him as a traitor of the revolution; she herself was a listed prisoner of the Akatua Gulag camp. After this unsuccessful attempt at Lenin’s life, the Ch...

... middle of paper ...

...n the Red Square on October 31, 1961. The Gulag institution was shut down by the MVD in 1960, yet forced labor camps continued to exist. Following this, an emergence of underground group, public attacks and mass riots took place against the authority. “Scholars have called attention to the consequences of mass incarceration on individuals being released from prisons – the lack of housing and employment opportunities, reduced success in marriage markets, drug addiction, serious physical and mental health problems, and legal disenfranchisement” (Bochman, 2012). The country was in a state of peril and control needed to be regained. Khrushchev’s KGB, the main security agency established during the formation of the MVD, was established to retake control. The KGB used labor camps and psychiatric repression to control people, no better than the newly removed gulag system.