12 Facts About Cheka

At the direction of Lenin, the Cheka performed mass arrests, imprisonments, torture, and executions without trial.

Originally, members of the Cheka were exclusively Bolshevik; however, in January 1918, Left SRs joined the organization.

On June 12,1918, the All-Russian Conference of Cheka adopted the Basic Provisions on the Organization of Extraordinary Commissions.

Polukarov to establish at all frontlines, and army sections of the Cheka and granted them the right to appoint their commissioners in military units.

At the direction of Lenin, the Cheka performed mass arrests, imprisonments, and executions of "enemies of the people".

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Already the Cheka, which made mass arrests of suspects, was tending to settle their fate independently, under formal control of the Party, but in reality without anybody's knowledge.

Cheka was used against Nestor Makhno's Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine.

In May 1919, two Cheka agents sent to assassinate Makhno were caught and executed.

Many victims of Cheka repression were "bourgeois hostages" rounded up and held in readiness for summary execution in reprisal for any alleged counter-revolutionary act.

The Cheka used trucks disguised as delivery trucks, called "Black Marias", for the secret arrest and transport of prisoners.

The Cheka detachments stationed in Kyiv reportedly would attach an iron tube to the torso of a bound victim and insert a rat in the tube closed off with wire netting, while the tube was held over a flame until the rat began gnawing through the victim's guts in an effort to escape.

Cheka departments were organized not only in big cities and guberniya seats, but in each uyezd, at any front-lines and military formations.