Featuring specially commissioned artwork, this study breaks new ground
in covering all the uniformed Soviet security organizations from the
Russian Revolution through to World War II.
The Bolsheviks' seizure of power in Russia in late 1917 was swiftly
followed by the establishment of the Cheka, the secret police of the new
Soviet state. The Cheka was central to the Bolsheviks' elimination of
political dissent during the Russian Civil War (1917-22). In 1922 the
Soviet state-security organs became the GPU and then the OGPU (1923-34)
before coalescing into the NKVD. After it played a central role in the
Great Terror (1936-38), which saw the widespread repression of many
different groups and the imprisonment and execution of prominent
figures, the NKVD had its heyday during the Great Patriotic War
(1941-45). During the conflict the organization deployed full military
divisions, frontier troop units and internal security forces and ran the
hated Gulag forced-labor camp system. By 1946, the power of the NKVD was
so great that even Stalin saw it as a threat and it was broken up into
multiple organizations, notably the MVD and the MGB - the forerunners of
the KGB. In this book, the history and organization of these feared
organizations are assessed, accompanied by photographs and color artwork
depicting their evolving appearance.