Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence

ment of Islamic revolutionaries, funds, or weapons into Chechnya. By

1998 radical Islamicists were well armed and itching for another test.

The second phase of the Chechen Wars began in the summer of

1998 with a series of bombings that killed several hundred people

and shook Russia. These bombings were blamed on Chechen rebels,

although no convincing evidence has been presented that a Chechen

organization was responsible. As in the first war, the security services

proved to be in equal measure incompetent and brutal, and interna-

tional human rights agencies accused the Russian government of con-

doning atrocities. The Chechen rebels resorted to terrorism, bombing

bus stations and schools and sabotaging aircraft. In 2004 FSB and

army efforts to take a school occupied by Chechen terrorists ended in

a massive tragedy that took hundreds of lives. See also COUN-

TERTERRORISM.

CHEKA.The Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-

Revolution and Sabotage (Chrevzuychanaya komissiya po borbe s

kontrarevolutsei i sabotazhem), or Cheka, was founded on 20 De-

cember 1917, only six weeks after the Bolshevik Revolution. Bol-

shevik Partyleader Vladimir Leninappointed Feliks Dzerzhin-

sky, a Polish Bolshevik, to head the infant service. From its first

days, Lenin saw the Cheka as the avenging sword of the party, or-

dering it to take immediate action against “enemies.”

Dzerzhinsky grew the Cheka into a massive security empire with

responsibility for counterintelligence, oversight of the loyalty of the

Red Army, and protection of the country’s borders, as well as the col-

lection of human and technical intelligence. By the end of the civil

war, the Cheka had a staff of 250,000. (The total complement of the

Okhranaand tsarist Corps of Gendarmes was 15,000 in the years im-

mediately prior to the Bolshevik Revolution.) Under Dzerzhinsky,

the Cheka became the shield and avenging sword of the revolution.

Beginning in 1918, the Cheka arrested and executed hostages, in-

cluding women and children. One Cheka leader noted that the

Cheka’s raison d’etre was destruction of enemy classes. A recent

study estimates that the Cheka was responsible for 143,000 execu-

tionsbetween 1917 and 1921.

Along with the executions came an orgy of torture and killing not

seen in Europe in hundreds of years. Mass drowning of prisoners, the

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