In the Soviet Union, why was the Cheka renamed so many times?
score:52
Accepted answer
The secret police was key to the Soviet government (so-called Chekism), so its structure changed frequently in response to state political needs.
- CheKa: The "Emergency Commission" was formed in 1917, at the start of the Civil War, and was structured as appropriate for such a time - most notably, it was empowered to act extrajudicially. After the Civil War ended, The Ninth All-Russian Soviet Congress dissolved the CheKa and created the GPU, an organization more appropriate for a real country that was, in theory, more restrained by laws and rules.
- GPU/OGPU: The "O" stands for Joint, and was added after the various Soviet republics joined together to form the USSR in 1922, and the Russian agency had to become a Union one. While the original GPU reported to the NKVD of the Russian Republic, the OGPU reported to the SovNarKom (the executive government branch of the USSR).
- NKVD: The NKVD of the Russian Republic was transformed into an All-Union organization, and so they got their secret police back. This change also coincides with the beginning of the Great Purge, so it was likely that Stalin found it advantageous to arrange the state apparatus this way.
- NKGB: The NKVD soon became a target of the purges themselves. The secret police component was pulled out to make this more effective, then rolled back in during the war as an intelligence/counterintelligence arm, then taken out again to police occupied Eastern Europe.
- MGB: The "people's komissariat" was changed to the "ministry"; this was a change that affected all agencies as the USSR was rebuilding and reorganizing after the war. Nothing changed except the agency name.
- KGB: Stalin died in 1953, and the de-Stalinization process touched all parts of the government, including the MGB. The KGB resulted from a merger of the MGB and the MVD (the non-secret police); however, the MVD broke off again in 1954.
Note that the renaming and restructuring was fairly transparent to the population, and there was no "rebranding" effort - security officers were informally called "Chekists" up until the dissolution of the USSR.
Upvote:2
An "umbrella" organization such as the Cheka was literally made up of hundreds of sub organizations with different purposes.
These suborganizations were recombined at various times under different chiefs to constitute new organizations with slightly different (mostly) internal mandates, and new umbrella organizations, with new names were created most of these times. For instance, the secret and non-secret police merged and de-merged from time to time.
The only thing that was constant was the ever-presence of the "organs." The forms often changed but the substance, seldom.
More post
- 📝 What was the population within the Aurelian Walls of Rome during its peak?
- 📝 Battles won by much weaker side
- 📝 What would be the GDP of the Roman Empire?
- 📝 Did the United States ever impose any trade embargoes on the basis of health related concerns?
- 📝 How were middle ranking Nazis known to the allies before the end of the war?
- 📝 Why did Shock Therapy fail so badly?
- 📝 Roman consuls under Roman rex
- 📝 In U.S. military forces, did black soldiers suffer a heavy racial segregation during World War II?
- 📝 Are there precedents of 'I am not a racist' from US Presidents?
- 📝 Context for peace between UK and Germany around the Fall of France
- 📝 Why did civilisation/city states never take root in Australia and North America?
- 📝 Did the Dominion of Newfoundland establish diplomatic missions?
- 📝 Why did Spain trade Florida to the British in exchange for Havana?
- 📝 Who were the first leaders of the Yahwistic sect?
- 📝 When and how did the British Monarchy stop claiming Divine Right
- 📝 Has Nursing Always Been Female Dominated Like Today (90+%)?
- 📝 Why did Pakistan get involved in Soviet-Afghan war from 1979 to 1989?
- 📝 Historical assessments of the effectiveness of torture
- 📝 Annexation of the Kingdom of Hanover by Prussia
- 📝 What could be the uses of a pike, other than for fighting, circa 1833 Ireland
- 📝 What plane would have been used to airdrop someone into occupied Europe?
- 📝 Is it known if Caracalla had any other lovers or possible bastard children?
- 📝 How did the Soviet Union support the development of their atomic bomb in 1949?
- 📝 Why were British laypeople more ready to challenge the government starting in the 1960s?
- 📝 Did the Kirk-Holden War happen?
- 📝 How much influence did the Zimmerman Telegram have?
- 📝 Was there a constant 'fear of the bomb' in the Soviet Union and America during the Cold War?
- 📝 Were early mosques originally oriented on Petra instead of Mecca according to archaeological record?
- 📝 Was the Volga really Russia's last line of defense before the Urals?
- 📝 What is the evidence to claim that political order in ancient Rome was sufficiently different under "kingdom", "republic" and "empire"?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 In the Soviet Union, why was the Cheka renamed so many times?
- 📝 Why did Hitler attack the Soviet Union when he was still busy fighting the United Kingdom?
- 📝 Why was the Soviet Union unable to stop the violence in Nagorno-Karabakh?
- 📝 Why didn't Imperial Japan attack the Soviet Union during World War 2?
- 📝 Why did Britain and France not declare war against the Soviet Union when it invaded Poland in WW2?
- 📝 Why did the Soviet Union have multiple airplane manufacturers?
- 📝 Why did the Soviet Union name their strongest bomb Tsar Bomba?
- 📝 Why did the Soviet Union lift the Berlin Blockade?
- 📝 Why did the Soviet Union out-pace the US during the space-race?
- 📝 Why did the Soviet Union close its borders and restrict travel abroad?
- 📝 Why did the Soviet Union get 3 seats in the UN?
- 📝 Why did Jodrell Bank assist the Soviet Union to collect data from their spacecraft in the mid 1960's?
- 📝 Why did the Soviet Union not "grant" Inner Mongolia to Mongolia after World War Two?
- 📝 What was the ratio women to men after World War 2 in the Soviet Union
- 📝 How close was the Soviet Union to collapsing during WW2?
- 📝 Was the Soviet Union in 1945 seeking to capture German soldiers and civilians, or drive them west?
- 📝 What determined which companies went to which post-Soviet republics after the fall of the Soviet Union as everything was centralized in Moscow?
- 📝 Why was Kentucky not admitted to the Union in 1789?
- 📝 Why was the Soviet Marine Infantry disbanded in 1947?
- 📝 Was there a constant 'fear of the bomb' in the Soviet Union and America during the Cold War?
- 📝 What was the lowest available population to the Soviet Union in WW2?
- 📝 What was the strategic importance of Moscow to the Soviet Union in Dec 1941?
- 📝 How and Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?
- 📝 Was Germany's "Fall Blau" plan in the Soviet Union partly aimed at Mediterranean neutrals or Japan (a neutral vis-vis the Soviets)?
- 📝 How many rapes did the Wehrmacht commit in the Soviet Union during World War II?
- 📝 What was the basis for the Nazis to support various ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union and elsewhere over the majority populations?
- 📝 Was one of the main reasons Hitler attacked the Soviet Union due to oil?
- 📝 Why didn't Japanese attack Soviet Union simultaneously as the Germans?
- 📝 Why did the Soviet Union take the risk of deploying missiles to Cuba, which precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis?
- 📝 Why did archery not make a comeback when armor was phased out in the 18th century?