Martin Ivanovich Latsis was a Latvian Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet politician, and senior state security officer of the Cheka from Courland.

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.