Soviet State Security Services 1917 46

The Bolsheviks'' seizure of power in Russia in late 1917 was swiftly followed by the establishment of the Cheka, the secret police of the new Soviet state. The Cheka was central to the Bolsheviks'' elimination of political dissent during the Russian Civil War (1917–22). In 1922 the Soviet state-security organs became the GPU and then the OGPU (1923–34) before coalescing into the NKVD. After it pla...