division of authority in military commands lasted until the collapse of
the Soviet Union. The Cheka officers were the bureaucratic ancestors
of the officers in the Third Chief Directorate of the modern KGB.
During the civil war, Cheka representatives took over command of
major Bolshevik formations after executing the military commander.
A little known but critical component of the Red victory over the
White resistance was the Cheka’s role in the Russian and Ukrainian
countryside, where counterintelligencetargeted clergy and peasant
rebels for arrest and execution. There were more than 100 peasant
risings in the winter of 1920–1921 alone, and rebels controlled large
sections of western Siberia and the Ukraine. During the Antonov re-
volt in Tambov province (1920–1922), the Cheka identified rebel
leaders for liquidation and carried out 2,500 executions of rebels and
the deportationof 80,000 families. Cheka gangs, disguised as rebels,
lured clandestine supporters of Anatoly Antonov into the open for ar-
rest and elimination.
Cheka units also played a critical role in breaking the revolt of
Ukrainian anarchists led by Nestor Makhno in the Ukraine during the
same years. According to a British scholar, Red forces killed more
than 200,000 peasants in crushing Makho’s revolt. The Cheka was
also instrumental in crushing rebellions in Central Asia and the Cau-
casus. In 1921 when a revolt by anarchist sailors at the naval base at
Kronstadt near Leningrad threatened Soviet power, Cheka units led
the assault and forced recalcitrant Red Army units to assault the
fortress. Following the victory, Cheka units helped the Communist
Partyreestablish power and shot 2,103 rebels captured in the storm-
ing of the naval base.
The secret to the Cheka’s success was ruthless efficiency, and the
use of prophylactic Red Terror to destroy all enemies of the regime.
While the tsarist regime never mastered the tools of counterterrorism,
the Cheka establish a nationwide ring of surveillance to identify en-
emies of the people. The Cheka moreover had no qualms about de-
stroying the “innocent”: as Cheka deputy director Martyn Latsis
said, “We are not waging war against individuals. We are extermi-
nating the bourgeois as a class.”COHEN, MORRIS (1910–1992); COHEN, LONA (1913–1992).
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