The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, abbreviated as VChK, and commonly known as the Cheka, was the first Soviet secret police organization. It was established on 20 December [O.S. 7 December] 1917 by the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian SFSR, and was led by Felix Dzerzhinsky. By the end of the Russian Civil War in 1921, the Cheka had at least 200,000 personnel.
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the overthrowing of the liberal-democratic Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. It resulted in the formation of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and later the Soviet Union in most of its territory. Its finale marked the end of the Russian Revolution, which was one of the key events of the 20th century.
Jēkabs Peterss was a Latvian Communist revolutionary who played a part in the establishment of the Soviet Union. Together with Felix Dzerzhinsky, he was one of the founders and chiefs of the Cheka, the secret police of the Soviet Russia. He was the Deputy Chairman of the Cheka from 1918 and briefly the acting Chairman of the Cheka from 7 July to 22 August 1918.
The Red Terror was a campaign of political repression and executions in Soviet Russia carried out by the Bolsheviks, chiefly through the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police. It officially started in early September 1918 and lasted until 1922. Arising after assassination attempts on Vladimir Lenin along with the successful assassinations of Petrograd Cheka leader Moisei Uritsky and party editor V. Volodarsky in alleged retaliation for Bolshevik mass repressions, the Red Terror was modeled on the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution, and sought to eliminate political dissent, opposition, and any other threat to Bolshevik power.
Aleksandr Stepanovich Antonov was a Russian revolutionary, member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and one of the leaders of the Tambov Rebellion against the Bolshevik regime.
Maria Alexandrovna Spiridonova was a Narodnik-inspired Russian revolutionary. In 1906, as a novice member of a local combat group of the Tambov Socialists-Revolutionaries (SRs), she assassinated a security official. Her subsequent abuse by police earned her enormous popularity with the opponents of Tsarism throughout the empire and even abroad.
Pavel Dmitrievich Turchaninov, commonly known by his pseudonym Lev Chernyi was a Russian individualist anarchist. Having joined the anarchist movement during the Russian Revolution of 1905, during which he developed his individualist theory of "associational anarchism", Chernyi was arrested and exiled to Siberia for his revolutionary activities. After several escape attempts, one of which resulted in mutinous exiles capturing Turukhansk, he managed to flee to Paris, where he stayed until the Russian Revolution of 1917. After returning to Russia, he acted as secretary for the Moscow Federation of Anarchist Groups and organised the Black Guards, the federation's armed wing. As political repression against anarchists intensified after the Bolsheviks took power, Chernyi joined an underground anarchist group, which bombed a Russian Communist Party meeting. In 1921, Chernyi and Fanya Baron were arrested on charges of counterfeiting and were executed by shooting by the Cheka.
The Left SR uprising, or Left SR revolt, was a rebellion against the Bolsheviks by the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party in Moscow, Soviet Russia, on 6–7 July 1918. It was one of a number of left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks that took place during the Russian Civil War.
Georgy (Yury) Leonidovich Pyatakov was a Ukrainian revolutionary and Bolshevik leader, and a key Soviet politician during and after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Pyatakov was considered by contemporaries to be one of the early communist state's best economic administrators, but with poor political judgement.
Vladimir Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich was a Soviet politician, revolutionary, historian, writer and Old Bolshevik. He was Vladimir Lenin's personal secretary.
Yakov Grigoryevich Blumkin was a Left Socialist-Revolutionary, a Bolshevik, and an agent of the Cheka and the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU).
Dmitry Ivanovich Popov was a Russian sailor and Left Socialist-Revolutionary that led the Left SR uprising against the Bolsheviks in July 1918. Following the suppression of the uprising, he joined the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine and became a leading member, spearheading the negotiations between the Makhnovists and the Bolsheviks until his arrest and execution by the Cheka.
Anarchism in Russia developed out of the populist and nihilist movements' dissatisfaction with the government reforms of the time.
Isaac Nachman Steinberg was a lawyer, an Orthodox Jew, a Left Socialist-Revolutionary, politician, People's Commissar under Lenin, and a leader of the Jewish Territorialist movement and writer in Soviet Russia and in exile.
Aron Davydovych Baron was a Ukrainian Jewish anarchist revolutionary. Following the suppression of the 1905 Revolution, he fled to the United States, where he met his wife Fanya Baron and participated in the local workers movement. With the outbreak of the 1917 Revolution, he returned to Ukraine, where he became a leading figure in the Nabat and in the Makhnovshchina. He was imprisoned by the Cheka for his anarchist activities and was executed during the Great Purge.
Iosif Solomonovich Bleikhman was a Belarusian Jewish anarchist communist revolutionary. He was the leader of the Petrograd Federation of Anarchist-Communists at the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917, organising a series of demonstrations against the Russian Provisional Government that culminated in the July Days. Following the October Revolution, he also began to agitate against the new Bolshevik government, which resulted in him being arrested and sentenced to periods of penal labor a number of times. During one of these periods, he contracted tuberculosis, which he succumbed to shortly before the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921.
Vladimir Kazimirovich Vol'skii was a Russian revolutionary with a Narodnik orientation.
Several attempts are known to have been made on Vladimir Lenin's life. The most famous of them was committed on August 30, 1918, by the Socialist Revolutionary Party member Fanny Kaplan, as a result of which Lenin was seriously wounded.
The Explosion in Leontievsky Lane was a terrorist act committed on 25 September 1919 by a group of anarchists with the aim of destroying the leadership of the Moscow Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). As a result of the explosion of a bomb thrown by the terrorist Sobolev, 12 people were killed, another 55 were injured.
Roman Alexandrovich Pilar was a Soviet security and intelligence officer.
