Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, nicknamed "Iron Felix", was a Bolshevik revolutionary and politician. From 1917 until his death in 1926, he led the first two Soviet secret police organizations, the Cheka and the OGPU, establishing state security organs for the post-revolutionary Soviet regime. He was one of the architects of the Red Terror and de-Cossackization.
Dzerzhinsky in 1918
Dzerzhinsky pictured with wife Sofia and son Janek in Lugano (Switzerland), October 1918
Dzerzhinsky in 1922
Dzerzhinsky, Vsevolod Balitsky and Stanislav Redens in Kharkov, Ukrainian SSR, 1926
The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, abbreviated as VChK, and commonly known as Cheka, was the first of a succession of Soviet secret-police organizations known for conducting the Red Terror. Established on December 5 1917 by the Sovnarkom, it came under the leadership of Bolshevik revolutionary Felix Dzerzhinsky. By late 1918, hundreds of Cheka committees had sprung up in the Russian SFSR at all levels.
Members of the presidium of VCheKa (left to right) Yakov Peters, Józef Unszlicht, Abram Belenky (standing), Felix Dzerzhinsky, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, 1921
Smolny, the seat of the Soviet government, 1917
Grigory Petrovsky
Felix Dzerzhinsky in a meeting among other members of the Presidium of the Cheka, 1919