Feliks Dzierzynski

Feliks Dzierżyński was a Polish-born Bolshevik revolutionary and politician who led the first two Soviet secret police organizations, the Cheka and the OGPU, from 1917 until his death in 1926. He was one of the architects of the Red Terror and de-Cossackization, which aimed to suppress and eliminate any opposition to the Soviet regime. He was also a member of the Politburo and the People's Commissar of VSNKh, overseeing the economic development of the Soviet Union. He was born to a Polish noble family in the Minsk Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Belarus) and joined the socialist movement at a young age. He was arrested and exiled several times by the tsarist authorities for his revolutionary activities, but he always managed to escape. He participated in the 1905 Russian Revolution and became a leader of the Polish-Lithuanian Social Democratic Party. He later joined the Bolshevik Party and played an active role in the October Revolution of 1917. He was appointed by Lenin as the head of the Cheka, the new security police agency that was tasked with combating counter-revolution and sabotage. He expanded the authority and power of the Cheka, which carried out mass executions, arrests, and torture of suspected enemies of the state. He also organized the first concentration camps in Russia. During the Russian Civil War, he was involved in the military and political affairs of the Soviet Republic, and he also tried to establish a Bolshevik government in Poland during the Russo-Polish War of 1919-1920. He was a loyal supporter of Lenin and Stalin, and he opposed any factionalism or dissent within the party. He died of a heart attack in 1926, while attending a Central Committee meeting. He was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, and his statue was erected in front of the Lubyanka, the headquarters of the secret police. He was revered as a hero and a martyr by the Soviet regime, but he was also denounced and criticized by many others for his role in the repression and violence of the early Soviet history.