what was chekha from the history textbook
Answers
Answer:
it is secret police
Explanation:
established on December 1917
The Cheka (sometimes called VeCheka) was the much-feared Bolshevik security agency, formed to identify and eradicate counter-revolutionary activity. The Cheka is sometimes referred to as the Bolshevik ‘secret police’, though most Russians were well aware of its existence
The Cheka was formed in the wake of the October 1917 revolution, as a small agency to investigate and deal with threats to the new regime. It was to be the “sword and shield of the revolution”, defending the new regime against its enemies within. Its first leader was Felix Dzerzhinsky.
As opposition to the Bolshevik regime grew through 1918, so did the size and power of the Cheka. Between 1918 and 1920, the Cheka ballooned from a couple of hundred investigators to a bureaucratic and paramilitary behemoth containing more than 100,000 agents.
More significantly, the Cheka operated outside the rule of law. It acted of its own accord, investigated and arrested whoever it chose and answered to no one. The Cheka became a model for 20th century secret police agencies in totalitarian states, including the Gestapo (Nazi Germany), the Stasi (East Germany) and the KGB (Soviet Russia).
Given a virtual blank cheque, Dzerzhinsky ordered the recruitment of thousands of new agents. He also organised Cheka paramilitary units. By the autumn of 1918, these units numbered 33 battalions and more than 20,000 men. By 1919, the Cheka employed more than 100,000 people and was one of the largest and best-funded agencies of the Soviet state.
Unrestrained by law
During its four year lifespan, the Cheka carried out arrests, interrogations, executions and campaigns entirely of its own accord. Dzerzhinsky was technically accountable to the Sovnarkom but only reported Cheka operations after they had taken place.
In 1918, the Cheka came into conflict with the Commissariat of Justice, which demanded to be notified before the arrest of suspects. This infuriated Dzerzhinsky, who queried how it was possible for him to “crush counter-revolution with legal niceties”. Lenin subsequently altered Soviet regulations so that the Cheka was required to notify the Commissariat of an arrest or execution after after it had happened, rather than before.
From that point, the Cheka was never restricted by the rule of law or any obligation to due process or the rights of suspects. Chekists operated as investigators, arresting authorities, interrogators, prosecutors, judges, juries and executioners. With this free rein, Cheka agents were able to persecute, detain, torture and summarily execute thousands of suspected spies, tsarists, counter-revolutionaries, kulaks, black marketeers and other ‘enemies of the state’.
Brutal methodology
While the Cheka’s methods drew on those used by the Okhrana, its size and willingness to use extra-legal killing both surpassed the activities of the Tsarist security police. In its first two years, the Cheka executed 900 people suspected of trading on the black market. Another 600 bureaucrats were executed for “economic crimes”, mostly taking bribes.
Official government figures suggest that just over 12,000 people were killed by Chekists in 1918-20. Some historians suggest that 200,000 or more are more realistic figures.
4. Cheka agents operated on their own accord, carrying out arrests, detention and executions. The Cheka was not accountable to judges or courts and there was no legal oversight of its operations.
5. The Cheka routinely used extra-legal violence and torture. This was sometimes done publicly, in order to provide a deterrent to those who might oppose the regime.