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All-Russian Extraordinary Commission
The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə, links=yes), abbreviated as VChK ( rus, ВЧК, p=vɛ tɕe ˈka), and commonly known as the Cheka ( rus, ЧК, p=tɕɪˈka), was the first Soviet secret police organization. It was established on 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. Ostensibly created to protect the October Revolution from "class enemies" such as the bourgeoisie and members of the clergy, the Cheka soon became a tool of repression wielded against all political opponents of the Bolshevik regime. The organization had responsibility for counterintelligence, oversight of the loyalty of the Red Army, and protection of the country's borders, as well ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
State Political Directorate
The State Political Directorate (), abbreviated as GPU (), was the secret police of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from February 1922 to November 1923. It was the immediate successor of the Cheka, and was replaced by the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU). Name The official designation in line to the native reference is: *Русский: = Государственное политическое управление (ГПУ) при Народном комиссариaте внутренних дел (НКВД) РСФСР *Romanization of Russian, tr =Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie (GPU) pri narodnom komissariate vnutrennikh del (NKVD) RSFSR – (GPU pri NKVD RSFSR) *English: = State Political Directorate (also State Political Administration) under the People's Commissariat of interior affairs of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) Establishment Formed from the Cheka, the original Russian state security organization, on Febr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of Vladimir Lenin, his death in 1924, and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death. As the founder and leader of the Bolsheviks, Lenin led the October Revolution which established the world's first socialist state. His government won the Russian Civil War and created a one-party state under the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments to the ideology are called Leninism. Born into a middle-class family in Simbirsk in the Russian Empire, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics after Aleksandr Ulyanov, his brother was executed in 1887 for plotting to assassinate Alexander III of Russia, the tsar. He was expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in student prote ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nikolai Yezhov
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov ( rus, Николай Иванович Ежов, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ (j)ɪˈʐof; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940), also spelt Ezhov, was a Soviet Chekism, secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, at the height of the Great Purge. Yezhov organized mass arrests, torture, and executions during the Great Purge, but he fell out of favour with Stalin and was arrested, subsequently admitting in a confession to a range of Anti-Sovietism, anti-Soviet activity including "unfounded arrests" during the Purge. He was executed in 1940 along with others who were blamed for the Purge. Early life and career Yezhov was born either in Saint Petersburg, according to his official Soviet biography, or in southwest Lithuania (probably Veiveriai, Marijampolė or Kaunas). Although Yezhov claimed to be born in Saint Petersburg, hoping to "portray (himself) in the guise of a deeply-rooted proletarian", he confessed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genrikh Yagoda
Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda (, born Yenokh Gershevich Iyeguda; 7 November 1891 – 15 March 1938) was a Soviet secret police official who served as director of the NKVD, the Soviet Union's security and intelligence agency, from 1934 to 1936. Appointed by Joseph Stalin, Yagoda supervised arrests, show trials, and executions of the Old Bolsheviks Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, climactic events of the Great Purge. Yagoda also supervised the construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal with Naftaly Frenkel, using penal labor from the gulag system, during which 12,000–25,000''Александр Кокурин, Юрий Моруков''. Сталинские стройки ГУЛАГа.1930–53, Москва, Материк 2005, — 568 с. — С. 34.Anne Applebaum ''Gulag: A History'' (London: Penguin, 2003), p79 laborers died. Like many Soviet NKVD officers who conducted political repression, Yagoda himself ultimately became a victim of the Purge. He was demoted from the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harper Perennial
Harper Perennial is a paperback imprint of the publishing house HarperCollins Publishers. Overview Harper Perennial has divisions located in New York, London, Toronto, and Sydney. The imprint is descended from the Perennial Library imprint founded by Harper & Row in 1964. In fall of 2005, Harper Perennial rebranded with a new logo (an Olive) and a distinct editorial direction emphasizing fiction and non-fiction from new and young authors. In the end matter, books often feature a brand-specific P.S. section that features extra material such as interviews. Recent notable books include ''I Am Not Myself These Days'' by Josh Kilmer-Purcell, ''The Yacoubian Building'' by Alaa Al Aswany, ''This Will Be My Undoing'' by Morgan Jerkins, '' The Paradox of Choice'' by Barry Schwartz, ''Lullabies for Little Criminals'' by Heather O'Neil, ''Grab On to Me Tightly as If I Knew the Way'' by Bryan Charles, and '' The Yiddish Policemen's Union'' by Michael Chabon. In November 2011, they rel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
White Sea–Baltic Canal
The White Sea–Baltic Canal (), often abbreviated to White Sea Canal (), is a man-made ship canal in Russia opened on 2 August 1933. It connects the White Sea, in the Arctic Ocean, with Lake Onega, which is further connected to the Baltic Sea. Until 1961, it was called by its original name: the Joseph Stalin, Stalin White Sea–Baltic Canal (''Belomorsko-Baltiyskiy Kanal imeni Stalina''). The canal was constructed by forced labor of gulag inmates. Beginning and ending with a labor force of 126,000, between 12,000 and 25,000 laborers died according to official records,''Александр Кокурин, Юрий Моруков''. Сталинские стройки ГУЛАГа.1930–53, Москва, Материк 2005, — 568 с. — С. 34. while Anne Applebaum's estimate is 25,000 deaths. The canal runs , partially along several canalized rivers and Lake Vygozero. As of 2008, it carries only light traffic of between ten to forty boats per day. Its economic advantages are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Soviet and Russian author and dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag prison system. He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature". His non-fiction work ''The Gulag Archipelago'' "amounted to a head-on challenge to the Soviet state" and sold tens of millions of copies. Solzhenitsyn was born into a family that defied the Soviet anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and remained devout members of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, he initially lost his faith in Christianity, became an atheist, and embraced Marxism–Leninism. While serving as a captain in the Red Army during World War II, Solzhenitsyn was arrested by SMERSH and sentenced to eight years in the Gulag and then Forced settlements in the Soviet Union, internal exi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Gulag Archipelago
''The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation'' () is a three-volume nonfiction series written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet dissident. It was first published in 1973 by the Parisian publisher YMCA-Press, and it was translated into English and French the following year. It explores a vision of life in what is often known as the Gulag, the Soviet labour camp system. Solzhenitsyn constructed his highly detailed narrative from various sources including reports, interviews, statements, diaries, legal documents, and his own experience as a Gulag prisoner. Following its publication, the book was initially circulated in the Soviet Union by '' samizdat'' underground publication. It was not widely published there until 1989. It appeared that year in the literary journal ''Novy Mir''; a third of the work was published in three issues. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ''The Gulag Archipelago'' has been officially p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
State Archive Of The Russian Federation
The State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) () is a large Russian state archive managed by Rosarkhiv (the Federal Archival Agency of Russia). It houses documents from the highest bodies of Russian authority, including: * some official documents relating to the history of the Russian Empire (mostly concerning the activity of police) * personal records (including archives of some members of the imperial Romanov from the early 19th century to 1918) * official documents of the supreme national legislative and executive institutions of the Russian Provisional Government (1917) * records of Soviet Russia as an independent state (1917-1922) and as a territorial entity of the USSR (1923-1991) * archives of the Soviet Union (1922-1991) * records of the Russian Federation (since 1992) * documents from many other sources The State Archive, established in Moscow in 1992, acquired the collections of: * the Central State Archive of the October Revolution () (founded in 1920) * the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chekism
Chekism () is a term that relates to the situation in the Soviet Union where the secret police strongly controlled all spheres of society. It is also used to point out similar circumstances in post-Soviet Counterintelligence state, intelligence states such as modern Russia. The term can refer to the system of rule itself, and to the underlying ideology that promotes and popularizes political police violence and arbitrariness against real and imagined enemies of the state. The name is derived from Cheka, the colloquial name of the first in the succession of Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police agencies. Employees of Soviet and Russian state security organs have been called Chekists. Soviet Union Chekism is described as a product of the set of beliefs, practices, and assumptions in the security police introduced and developed for more than a decade by Felix Dzerzhinsky. The systems he had put in place led to the strengthening of the concept that legiti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chronology Of Soviet Secret Police Agencies
There were a succession of Soviet secret police agencies over time. The Okhrana was abolished by the Russian Provisional Government, Provisional government after the February Revolution, first revolution of 1917, and the first secret police after the October Revolution, created by Vladimir Lenin's decree on December 20, 1917, was called "Cheka" (ЧК). Officers were referred to as "Chekism, chekists", a name that is still informally applied to people under the Federal Security Service (Russia), Federal Security Service of Russia, the KGB's successor in Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. For most agencies listed here, secret policing operations were only part of their function; for instance, the KGB was both a secret police and an intelligence agency. History of the Soviet state security organs Detailed chronology *Cheka (abbreviation of ''Vecheka'', itself an acronym for "All-Russian Extraordinary Committee to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage" of the Ru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prodrazvyorstka
''Prodrazverstka'', also transliteration of Russian, transliterated ''prodrazvyorstka'' ( rus, продразвёрстка, p=prədrɐˈzvʲɵrstkə, short for , ), alternatively referred to in English as grain requisitioning, was a policy and campaign of confiscation of grain and other agricultural products from peasants at nominal fixed prices according to specified quotas (the noun ''razverstka,'' , and the verb ''razverstat'', refer to the partition of the requested total amount as obligations from the suppliers). The term is commonly associated with war communism during the Russian Civil War when it was introduced by the Bolshevik government. However, the Bolsheviks borrowed the idea from the grain ''razverstka'' introduced in the Russian Empire in 1916 during World War I. World War I grain razverstka 1916 saw a food crisis in the Russian Empire. While the harvest was good in Lower Volga Region and Western Siberia, its transportation by railroads collapsed. Additionally, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
