This formula, expressed by the founder of the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky, determined what a real security officer should be. In Soviet times, the official myth claimed that almost all of the security officers were like this. Accordingly, the Red Terror was portrayed as the forced destruction of the irreconcilable enemies of Soviet power, identified through a scrupulous collection of evidence. The picture, to put it mildly, did not correspond to reality. And if so, you get a new myth: the communists, as soon as they came to power, began to methodically destroy the “gene pool of the nation.”
The Red Terror became the darkest phenomenon of the initial stage of Soviet history and one of the indelible stains on the reputation of the communists. It turns out that the entire history of the communist regime is pure terror, first Lenin’s, then Stalin’s. In reality, outbreaks of terror alternated with calms, when the authorities made do with repressions characteristic of an ordinary authoritarian society.
The October Revolution took place under the slogan of the abolition of the death penalty. The resolution of the Second Congress of Soviets read: “The death penalty restored by Kerensky at the front is abolished.” The death penalty in the rest of Russia was abolished by the Provisional Government. The terrible word “Revolutionary Tribunal” initially covered a rather soft attitude towards “enemies of the people.” Kadetka S.V. Panina, who hid the funds of the Ministry of Education from the Bolsheviks, the Revolutionary Tribunal on December 10, 1917 issued a public censure.
Bolshevism gradually came to appreciate repressive policies. Despite the formal absence of the death penalty, the murder of prisoners was sometimes carried out by the Cheka during the “cleansing” of cities from criminals.
A wider use of executions, and especially their implementation in political cases, was impossible both because of the prevailing democratic sentiments and because of the presence in the government of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries - principled opponents of the death penalty. People's Commissar of Justice from the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party I. Sternberg prevented not only executions, but even arrests for political reasons. Since the Left Socialist Revolutionaries actively worked in the Cheka, it was difficult to unleash government terror at that time. However, work in the punitive agencies influenced the psychology of the Socialist-Revolutionary Chekists, who became increasingly tolerant of repression.
The situation began to change after the Left Socialist Revolutionaries left the government and especially after the outbreak of a large-scale civil war in May-June 1918. Lenin explained to his comrades that in a civil war, the absence of the death penalty is unthinkable. After all, supporters of the opposing sides are not afraid of imprisonment for any term, as they are confident in the victory of their movement and the release of their prisons.
The first public victim of political execution was A.M. Shchastny. He commanded the Baltic Fleet at the beginning of 1918 and, in difficult ice conditions, led the fleet from Helsingfors to Kronstadt. Thus, he saved the fleet from capture by the Germans. Shchastny's popularity grew, and the Bolshevik leadership suspected him of nationalist, anti-Soviet and Bonapartist sentiments. People's Commissar for War Trotsky feared that the fleet commander might oppose Soviet power, although there was no definite evidence of preparations for a coup d'etat. Shchastny was arrested and, after a trial in the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal, was shot on June 21, 1918. Shchastny's death gave rise to the legend that the Bolsheviks were carrying out an order from Germany, who were taking revenge on Shchastny, who had withdrawn the Baltic Fleet from under the noses of the Germans. But then the communists would not have to kill Shchastny, but simply give the ships to the Germans - which Lenin, of course, did not do. The Bolsheviks simply sought to eliminate candidates for Napoleon before they prepared the 18th Brumaire. They were least interested in evidence of guilt.
This formula, expressed by the founder of the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky, determined what a real security officer should be. In Soviet times, the official myth claimed that almost all of the security officers were like this. Accordingly, the Red Terror was portrayed as the forced destruction of the irreconcilable enemies of Soviet power, identified through a scrupulous collection of evidence. The picture, to put it mildly, did not correspond to reality. And if so, you get a new myth: the communists, as soon as they came to power, began to methodically destroy the “gene pool of the nation.”
The Red Terror became the darkest phenomenon of the initial stage of Soviet history and one of the indelible stains on the reputation of the communists. It turns out that the entire history of the communist regime is pure terror, first Lenin’s, then Stalin’s. In reality, outbreaks of terror alternated with calms, when the authorities made do with repressions characteristic of an ordinary authoritarian society.
The October Revolution took place under the slogan of the abolition of the death penalty. The resolution of the Second Congress of Soviets read: “The death penalty restored by Kerensky at the front is abolished.” The death penalty in the rest of Russia was abolished by the Provisional Government. The terrible word “Revolutionary Tribunal” initially covered a rather soft attitude towards “enemies of the people.” Kadetka S.V. Panina, who hid the funds of the Ministry of Education from the Bolsheviks, the Revolutionary Tribunal on December 10, 1917 issued a public censure.
Bolshevism gradually came to appreciate repressive policies. Despite the formal absence of the death penalty, the murder of prisoners was sometimes carried out by the Cheka during the “cleansing” of cities from criminals.
A wider use of executions, and especially their implementation in political cases, was impossible both because of the prevailing democratic sentiments and because of the presence in the government of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries - principled opponents of the death penalty. People's Commissar of Justice from the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party I. Sternberg prevented not only executions, but even arrests for political reasons. Since the Left Socialist Revolutionaries actively worked in the Cheka, it was difficult to unleash government terror at that time. However, work in the punitive agencies influenced the psychology of the Socialist-Revolutionary Chekists, who became increasingly tolerant of repression.
The situation began to change after the Left Socialist Revolutionaries left the government and especially after the outbreak of a large-scale civil war in May-June 1918. Lenin explained to his comrades that in a civil war, the absence of the death penalty is unthinkable. After all, supporters of the opposing sides are not afraid of imprisonment for any term, as they are confident in the victory of their movement and the release of their prisons.
The first public victim of political execution was A.M. Shchastny. He commanded the Baltic Fleet at the beginning of 1918 and, in difficult ice conditions, led the fleet from Helsingfors to Kronstadt. Thus, he saved the fleet from capture by the Germans. Shchastny's popularity grew, and the Bolshevik leadership suspected him of nationalist, anti-Soviet and Bonapartist sentiments. People's Commissar for War Trotsky feared that the fleet commander might oppose Soviet power, although there was no definite evidence of preparations for a coup d'etat. Shchastny was arrested and, after a trial in the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal, was shot on June 21, 1918. Shchastny's death gave rise to the legend that the Bolsheviks were carrying out an order from Germany, who were taking revenge on Shchastny, who had withdrawn the Baltic Fleet from under the noses of the Germans. But then the communists would not have to kill Shchastny, but simply give the ships to the Germans - which Lenin, of course, did not do. The Bolsheviks simply sought to eliminate candidates for Napoleon before they prepared the 18th Brumaire. They were least interested in evidence of guilt.
Well, Comrade Astakhov, you are an incorrigible KGB nit, so you entrust to the governors the fate of those dozens of children who have found parents and for whom trials are scheduled for January and February? But they are already accustomed to their mother and father, they have flown to them more than once across the ocean, the children count the days until they leave for their family (who can count), in the evenings they kiss their photographs, try to remember their smell, smelling the toys that were brought to them mom and dad from this distant America? They have never known parental affection, their mother did not take them to bed, did not breastfeed them, did not cuddle them, did not sing a lullaby, they do not even know what a pacifier is. Many were on the street only in the arms of these parents who appeared, as in a fairy tale. And before that, their entire short, unhappy life is a barracks. Are you going to come to them to announce that you and Uncle Putin did not allow them to live in a family with people who managed to love and accept them, with all their illnesses and difficult fates? Rooms with cheerful curtains have already been prepared and furnished for them, prostheses have already been ordered, boxes of medical nutrition are standing in the corridor, doctors who have studied their diagnoses are waiting for them, numerous relatives are waiting for them, already in balloons, with which they were supposed to arrive at the airport to meet, it is written: "Hello, Vanya!" "Hi, Nyusha!"
What would you tell these children if on the appointed day it is not their mother and father who come to them with a newly purchased stroller or wheelchair, but you, the security officer Astakhov? Or maybe you’ll lie to them, saying that your new dad and mom abandoned you? They changed their minds, they’ll take another, healthy one. What words will you find? This is your homeland, son, I don’t know another country like this, where people can breathe so freely? My heart would have broken if I had been sent there with this news. And your?
What did your Dzerzhinsky say about you and Putin? “Only a person with a cool head, a warm heart and clean hands can be a security officer.” It seems so? So: your hands are dirty, your heart is cold, and in your head you have a stinking mess instead of brains. As your greatest achievement, you present the news that, it turns out, those 14 hostages for whom trials took place in December, after consulting in your circle, you decided to release them. I remember these terrible footage from Dubrovka and Beslan, when child hostages, bending down, run out from the terrorists - because at some point the terrorists decided to release some portion for some reason of their own. And so they run, these little figures, through an empty space shot by snipers, and we think, will they make it? - Do you, Chekist creature, remember these shots? So: you and your Putin are exactly the same terrorists. And you captured not three hundred people, and not a thousand. And not even these orphans. You security officers with dirty hands and cold hearts have taken over all of Russia, you creatures.
Now go and sue me, offended virtue. Is there already such an article in your criminal code: “Slanderers of Russia”? Haven't entered it yet?
“Either saints or scoundrels can serve in the organs.”
“Whoever becomes cruel and whose heart remains insensitive towards the prisoners must leave here. Here, as in no other place, you need to be kind and noble.”
Felix Dzerzhinsky
“The Cheka is terrifying because of the mercilessness of its repression and its complete impenetrability to anyone’s gaze.”
Nikolay Krylenko
“While incompetent and even simply ignorant in matters of production, technology, etc., authorities and investigators will rot in prisons of technicians and engineers on charges of some absurd crimes invented by ignorant people - “technical sabotage” or “economic espionage” “, foreign capital will not do any serious work in Russia... We will not establish a single serious concession or trading enterprise in Russia unless we give some specific guarantees against the arbitrariness of the Cheka.”
Leonid Krasin
“Our enemies created entire legends about the all-seeing eyes of the Cheka, about the omnipresent security officers. They imagined them as some kind of huge army. They did not understand what the strength of the Cheka was. And it consisted in the same thing as the strength of the Communist Party - in the complete trust of the working masses. “Our strength is in millions,” said Felix Edmundovich. The people believed the security officers and helped them in the fight against the enemies of the revolution. Dzerzhinsky’s assistants were not only security officers, but thousands of vigilant Soviet patriots.”
Fedor Fomin, “Notes of an old security officer”
“Dear Vladimir Ilyich! Maintaining good relations with Turkey is impossible as long as the current actions of the security officers on the Black Sea coast continue. A number of conflicts have already arisen with America, Germany and Persia because of this... The Black Sea security officers are quarreling us in turn with all the powers whose representatives fall into their area of operation. Cheka agents, vested with unlimited power, do not respect any rules.”
Letter from Georgy Chicherin to Vladimir Lenin
“Arrest the lousy security officers and bring the perpetrators to Moscow and shoot them.<…>We will always support you if Gorbunov manages to lead the Chekist bastard to execution.”
From Lenin's response to Chicherin
Certificate for the badge “Honored Worker of the NKVD”
“Blinded by the blossoming personality cult of Stalin, many organ workers began to lose their bearings and could not discern where the Leninist line ended and something completely alien to it began. Gradually, most of them fell under the influence of Yagoda and became obedient tools in his hands, carrying out tasks that deviated more and more from the Lenin-Dzerzhinsky line.”
“Gradually, I learned from my subordinates more and more details about the dirty deeds committed by employees of the Novosibirsk NKVD. In particular, that Gorbach ordered the arrest and execution as German spies of almost all former soldiers and officers who were held captive in Germany during the First World War (and there were about 25 thousand of them in the huge Novosibirsk region at that time). About the terrible torture and beatings that those arrested were subjected to during the investigation. I was also told that the former regional prosecutor, who arrived at the NKVD to check cases, was immediately arrested and committed suicide by jumping out of a window from the fifth floor.”
“Most of the old security officers were convinced that with the arrival of Yezhov in the NKVD, we would finally return to the traditions of Dzerzhinsky, we would get rid of the unhealthy atmosphere and careerist, degenerate and lipacious tendencies implanted in recent years in the organs by Yagoda. After all, Yezhov, as Secretary of the Central Committee, was close to Stalin, in whom we believed then, and we believed that the Central Committee would now have a firm and faithful hand in the organs. At the same time, most of us believed that Yagoda, as a good administrator and organizer, would restore order in the People's Commissariat of Communications and bring great benefit there.
These hopes of yours were not destined to come true. Soon such a wave of repression began, to which not only the Trotskyists and Zinovievites were subjected, but also the NKVD workers who were poorly fighting them.”
Mikhail Shrader, “NKVD from the inside. Notes of a security officer"
Caricature of Yezhov. Boris Efimov, 1937
“Both in Soviet and modern times, it was possible to join the ranks of the “Chekists” only if you had excellent physical and mental health. This is no coincidence. In this profession, “professional benefit” and “professional harm” alternate every now and then, sometimes colliding with each other. With such conflicts you cannot do without good health.”
Evgeny Sapiro, “Treatise on Luck”
“I am still sure that among the security officers 20 percent are idiots, and the rest are just cynics.”
From an interview with Gabriel Superfin
Created by Dzerzhinsky and his colleagues, the Cheka grew into one of the most effective intelligence services in the world, which was feared, hated and respected, including by the worst enemies of our country. But that’s not the only thing that made him go down in history. In addition to his KGB activities, Dzerzhinsky became, perhaps, the most famous fighter against child homelessness in the history of our country.
Recently, debates have not subsided about whether or not to return the monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky to the Lubyanka. If you want to better understand what kind of person the founder of the Cheka was, I bring to your attention his statements:
– To live – doesn’t this mean to have an unshakable faith in victory?
- A security officer must have a warm heart, a cool head and clean hands.
“Whoever becomes cruel and whose heart remains insensitive towards the prisoners must leave here.” Here, as in no other place, you need to be kind and noble.
– A person can only sympathize with social misfortune if he sympathizes with any specific misfortune of each individual person.
– A huge task faces you: to educate and shape the souls of your children. Be vigilant! For the guilt or merit of the children falls to a huge extent on the heads and conscience of the parents.
- Correction can only be made by a means that will make the guilty person realize that he did something wrong, that he must live and act differently. The rod only works for a short time; when children grow up and cease to be afraid of her, conscience disappears along with her.
– Fear will not teach children to distinguish good from evil; He who is afraid of pain will always succumb to evil.
– I’m not preaching that we should isolate ourselves from abroad. This is completely absurd. But we are obliged to create a favorable development regime for those industries that are vital and in which we can compete with them.
– In order for the state not to go bankrupt, it is necessary to resolve the problem of state apparatus. Uncontrollable overstaffing, monstrous bureaucratization of every business - mountains of papers and hundreds of thousands of scribblers; seizures of large buildings and premises; car epidemic; millions of excesses. This is legal feeding and devouring of state property by these locusts. In addition to this, unheard of, shameless bribery, theft, negligence, blatant mismanagement that characterizes our so-called “cost accounting”, crimes siphoning state property into private pockets.
– Where there is love, there is no suffering that could break a person. Real misfortune is selfishness. If you love only yourself, then with the advent of difficult life trials, a person curses his fate and experiences terrible torment. And where there is love and care for others, there is no despair...
“He who has an idea and is alive cannot be useless unless he himself renounces his idea.”
– Faith must be followed by deeds.
– No matter what difficult conditions you have to live in, do not lose heart, because faith in your strength and the desire to live for others is a huge strength.
– Life, concrete practice, opens up new opportunities for us every day, so we need to start from life rather than from paper.
“The worst enemy could not have brought us as much harm as he did with his terrible reprisals, executions, and giving soldiers the right to plunder cities and villages. He did all this on behalf of our Soviet government, turning the entire population against us. Robbery and violence were deliberate military tactics that, while giving us fleeting success, brought defeat and shame as a result.” Dzerzhinsky about the Socialist Revolutionary Mikhail Muravyov, April 1918.