Secret Police and Dissidents Flashcards
What were the names of the secret police under Lenin?
- Cheka (1917-22)
- GPU (1922)
- OGPU (1923)
What were the names of the secret police under Stalin?
- OGPU (1923-1934)
2. NKVD (1934-1953)
What was the name of the secret police under Khrushchev and Brezhnev?
KGB
What did the Cheka do?
- requisition grain during the Civil War
- close down opposition newspapers
- torturing and executing opponents of the regime, including those trading on the black market.
- executing deserters from the Red Army
- organise show trials of the former political leaders of rival socialist parties
Name the three heads of the secret police under Stalin.
- Yagoda
- Yezhov
- Beria
When was Yagoda head of the secret police and what were the impacts he made?
1934-1936
- collaborated with stalin in turning the secret police against the Communist Party
- purges were slow because Yagoda and his staff still treated Communist officials with respect
- TRIAL OF THE 16 = led to the execution of Zinoviev and his allies
When was Yezhov head of the secret police and what were the impacts he made?
1936-1938
- responsible for a huge escalation in the use of terror and torture/ the worst years of The Great Terror
- 1936-1938 = ‘yezhovshchina’ = whole of soviet society engulfed in Yezhov’s terror and a climate of fear was created
- deportations/ executions/ gulags
- TRIAL OF THE 17 = led to the execution/ imprisonment of Trotskey’s main supporters
When was Beria head of the secret police and what were the impacts he made?
1938-1953
- mass deportations/executions of ethnic minorities (eg. the Chechens) = v. violent!!
- interrogated prisoners after WW2
- The Leningrad Affair (1949)
Summarise Khrushchev’s use of the secret police
- renounced use of mass terror and stopped using it against the party
- aimed to control the people with ‘popular oversight’ rather than by using secret police
- used compulsory psychiatric treatment against dissidnts
Who was head of the Secret Police under Lenin?
Felix Dzerzhinsky
Who was head of the Secret Police under Brezhnev?
Yuri Andropov
Summarise Brezhnev’s (Andropov’s) use of secret police.
- no mass terror, targeted individuals
- suspicious of Khrushchev’s liberalisation
- rejected use of show trials/ public attempts at control because he did not want to draw attention to the repressive side of the regime
Name 4 methods Andropov used against dissidents.
- Allowed dissident artists to emmigrate
- Repressive psychiatry
- Official warnings from the secret police (letters)
- Sacking/ demotion of dissidents from jobs
How many dissident artists left the USSR under Andropov?
100,000
What were dissidents in psychiatric institutions treated for?
‘paranoid reformist delusion’
Roughly how many soviet citizens received official secret police warnings during the 1970s?
70,000
How successful was Andropov at controlling dissidents?
Limited success.
- networks of dissidents published illegal material through self-published samizdat magazines
- pressure from western governments meant he could not repress famous dissidents like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Who was the head of the secret police under Andropov?
Andropov remained head of the secret police
What were the main aims of the secret police when Andropov was leader of the USSR?
- suppress dissidents
2. monitor and solve popular discontent/ social malaise
Name 2 ways in which Andropov used the secret police to deal with popular discontent.
- Operation Trawl = KGB arrested people who were drunk/ absent from work
- Anti corruption campaign = KGB officers investigated suspected corrupt officials
Give an example of a corrupt official that Andropov’s secret service exposed.
Brezhnev’s minister of the Interior
Nikolai Shchelokov
