Dzerzhinsky and the Cheka

Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, the son of a Polish landowner, was born in Vilno in 1877. He joined the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party and helped to organize factory workers into trade unions. Dzerzhinsky was arrested in 1897 but managed to escape from Siberia two years later. He went to Warsaw where he joined the Social Democratic Party of Poland that had been formed by Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches in 1893. Dzerzhinsky was arrested again and spent another nine years in Siberia until being released as a result of the political amnesty that followed the February Revolution and played an active role in the October Revolution. His first act was to join the Bolshevik Party. His honest and incorruptible character, combined with his complete devotion to the cause, gained him swift recognition and the nickname "Iron Felix". In December, 1917, Vladimir Lenin appointed Dzerzhinsky as Commissar for Internal Affairs and head of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (Cheka). Lenin regarded Dzerzhinsky as a revolutionary hero, and appointed him to organize a force to combat internal political threats. Personally incorruptible, Dzerzhinsky sought by example to have each Chekist conduct him or herself as a "Knight of the Revolution". In his first year as head of the Cheka he worked, slept and ate in his office. An "Old Chekist", Fyodor Fomin, eulogized Dzerzhinsky's determination to refuse any privilege denied to other Chekists: "An old messenger would bring him his dinner from the common dining room used by all the Cheka workers. Sometimes he would try to bring Felix Edmundovich something a bit tastier or a little bit better, and Felix Edmundovich would squint his eyes inquisitively and ask, 'You mean that everyone has had this for dinner tonight?' And the old man, hiding his embarrassment, would rush to answer, 'Everyone, everyone, Comrade Dzerzhinsky'" (quoted in KGB: The Inside Story, Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky). Dzerzhinsky and the organization he headed (Cheka) take an honorable place in Soviet history as defenders of the world's first workers state against those who sought to restore the old regime. Under "Iron Felix", the Cheka existed to protect and advance a new and just world order — not, as under Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria, to terrorize the Soviet working class and guarantee the despotic rule of a privileged caste. Dzerzhinsky died of a heart attack on 20th July 1926.