| rdfs:comment | - Cheka (ЧК - чрезвыча́йная коми́ссия chrezvychaynaya komissiya, Emergency Commission, ) was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created on December 20, 1917, after a decree issued by Vladimir Lenin, and was subsequently led by Felix Dzerzhinsky, an aristocrat turned communist. By late 1918, hundreds of Cheka committees had been created in various cities, at multiple levels including: oblast, guberniya ("Gubcheks"), raion, uyezd, and volost Chekas, with Raion and Volost Extraordinary Commissioners. Many thousands of dissidents, deserters, or other people were arrested, tortured or executed by various Cheka groups. After 1922, Cheka groups underwent a series of reorganizations, with the NKVD, into bodies whose members continued to be referred to as "Chekis
- The Cheka was founded in December of 1917, shortly after the Bolshevik party came to power in a disagreement that concerned the game of draughts. Lenin had become frustrated with the game's “compulsory take” rule that he believed made draughts “fundamentally traitorous to the toiling masses” and declared the rule illegal, mandating that citizens of Russia could make any move they wanted, “so long as it was not one that the bourgeois-capitalist scum would make.” Trotsky later showed that one could easily make people take things, by merely lining up soldiers with machine guns in trenches behind them. However, by then the Cheka was too firmly established for his minor qualms to uproot it.
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| abstract | - The Cheka was founded in December of 1917, shortly after the Bolshevik party came to power in a disagreement that concerned the game of draughts. Lenin had become frustrated with the game's “compulsory take” rule that he believed made draughts “fundamentally traitorous to the toiling masses” and declared the rule illegal, mandating that citizens of Russia could make any move they wanted, “so long as it was not one that the bourgeois-capitalist scum would make.” Trotsky later showed that one could easily make people take things, by merely lining up soldiers with machine guns in trenches behind them. However, by then the Cheka was too firmly established for his minor qualms to uproot it. Another rule stated that the black side should start first. Cheka harmonized this with the new Communist reality by changing the dark pieces to red ones. Curiously, most people think of the Cheka as an instrument of terror, while it began with a mere 23 members with no authority beyond seizing a person’s checkerboard or ration card. Those sanctions are unheard-of today because they proved ineffective, for reasons that historians still hotly debate. Some argue that no one feared the loss of a checkerboard as there was ample supply on the black market. Others say members of the Cheka rarely actually seized a checkerboard. However, the Cheka did carry out this punishment several times, though the Russian people reacted by improvising draughts sets with factory garbage. These sets were larger than a standard draughts set, and became known as гигантские шашки (giant draughts). “Giant” playing boards later spread to Germany after World War One, developing into Riesiges Schach (giant chess). Come 1939, this would sweep through Europe and a really gigantic chess game would begin in earnest. The leader of the Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky, boasted about fitting all the files for the organisation’s first month of operation within a single briefcase. His original plan to fit them in a folding draughts set was rejected, as it would require removing the game pieces.
- Cheka (ЧК - чрезвыча́йная коми́ссия chrezvychaynaya komissiya, Emergency Commission, ) was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created on December 20, 1917, after a decree issued by Vladimir Lenin, and was subsequently led by Felix Dzerzhinsky, an aristocrat turned communist. By late 1918, hundreds of Cheka committees had been created in various cities, at multiple levels including: oblast, guberniya ("Gubcheks"), raion, uyezd, and volost Chekas, with Raion and Volost Extraordinary Commissioners. Many thousands of dissidents, deserters, or other people were arrested, tortured or executed by various Cheka groups. After 1922, Cheka groups underwent a series of reorganizations, with the NKVD, into bodies whose members continued to be referred to as "Chekisty" (Chekists) into the late 1980s. With Vladimir Putin's rise to power, the reference to the FSB members as "Chekists" arose, particularly by Putin's political opponents, often with negative connotations. From its founding, the Cheka was an important military and security arm of the Bolshevik communist government. In 1921 the Troops for the Internal Defense of the Republic (a branch of the Cheka) numbered 200,000. These troops policed labor camps; ran the Gulag system; conducted requisitions of food; subjected political opponents to torture and summary execution; and put down rebellions and riots by workers or peasants, and mutinies in the desertion-plagued Red Army.
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