Felix Dzerzhinsky

Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (11 September [O.S. 30 August] 1877 – 20 July 1926), nicknamed Iron Felix (Russian: Железный Феликс), was a Bolshevik revolutionary and politician of Polish origin. From 1917 until his death in 1926, he led the first three Soviet secret police organizations—the Cheka, the GPU and the OGPU—establishing state security organs for the new Soviet government. Born to a Polish family of noble descent in Ozhyemblovo estate (now Dzerzhinovo), in Russian Poland, Dzerzhinsky embraced revolutionary politics from a young age, and was active in the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania party. Active in Kaunas and Warsaw, he was frequently arrested and underwent several exiles to Siberia, from which he escaped every time. He evaded the tsarist secret police, the Okhrana, whose work he took interest in. Dzerzhinsky participated in the failed 1905 Revolution, and pursued further revolutionary activities in Germany and Poland. After a final arrest in 1912, was imprisoned until the February Revolution of 1917. He then joined Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik party, and played an active role in the October Revolution which brought them to power. In December 1917, Lenin named Dzerzhinsky head of the newly established the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (Cheka), tasking him with the suppression of counter-revolutionary activities in Soviet Russia. The Russian Civil War saw a vast expansion of the Cheka's authority, inaugurating a campaign of mass arrests, detentions and executions in what became known as the Red Terror. The agency was reorganized as the State Political Directorate (GPU) in 1922, and then as the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) a year later, with Dzerzhinsky remaining as head of the powerful organization. He served as director of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy (VSNKh) from 1924. Dzerzhinsky died of a heart attack in 1926, and was buried in the...