Brief Look at NKVD and MGB "Internal Army" Flags

A component of the security services of the Soviet Union that most outside observers might not take serious note of is the ever-present armed and trained special operations military units that the each version of the Cheka-KGB as well as the NKVD-MVD had at its disposal. The original concept of these “internal armies” or Внутренние войска in Russian (“VV” abbreviated in English), was to be the heaviest hand in the body of the special services.

A field banner for the 57[th] Rifle Division of the VV
NKVD USSR. This one was likely used right after WWII
according to what information is available regarding
this division. Theyspecialized in fighting armed groups
of counterrevolutionaries particularly in Ukraine. 

Initially, the units were created to enforce the political policies of the Moscow Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and, of course the man who was general secretary of this committee – a title first held by Stalin. Ironically, he was the same person who so greatly abused these troops that continued to exist long after WWII and Stalin’s death in 1953, when the Khrushchev-era “de-stalinization” of the country and the organizations such as the NKVD-MVD and Cheka-KGB began. In fact, these same "VV" troops from the KGB with names such as Alpha Group, Zenith, and Vymple (Russian for "banner" which was the airborne "group") were the vanguard in the assaults in 1979 on the Tajbeg Palace near Kabul that started the Soviet war with Afghanistan. The initial attack organized by the KGB was called Storm 333 in Russian and resulted in not only the taking of the government, but a revolutionary war that lasted nearly 10 years.  Even more ironic is the fact that had the Western governments not been so anti-Soviet and backed the USSR instead of the Afghani rebels, Osama Bin Laden and other US-trained militants would most likely never have come to power and the terrorists known as the Taliban would not exist. Of course this is is speculation about what should have and/or could have been.

The reverse of the above VV NKVD flag.

The VV NKVD troops were used by Stalin to carry out all sorts of highly controversial and very unpleasant actions before, during and after WWII, in part during the “Great Terror” of the 1930s and later post-war divisions were used to suppress anti-Soviet rebel groups throughout Ukraine and newly acquired Baltic States. The Organization for Ukrainian Nationalists was the most renowned and persistent of the rebel groups (see previous chapter dealing with OUN flag and the organization). The suppression took the roles of direct attack, capture and executions or mass deportation by train of whole ethnic populations to desolate regions in Siberia, or wholesale murder of civilians in small towns and villages suspected of collaborating with anti-Soviet rebels.

A closeup of the hand-sewn numbers and letters, which consist of several rows of stitching side by side and which simply says the name of the rifle division as explained in the previous photo. It is also easy to see the work of hands on the central star. What is interesting about this flag is that it does not have the ubiquitous "Workers of the Country [sometimes translated as "World] Unite" even though there is plenty of room at the top of the front of the flag. 

The text of the reverse simply says "For Our Soviet
Motherland" together with the hammer and sickle
symbol of the original revolution.

After the war, the foreign intelligence service, the OGPU (All-Union State Political Directorate) which had been subordinated by the NKVD, was once again an independent agency – “Ministry of State Security,” or MGB. They too had a number of “VV” units who also participated in counter-intelligence and espionage elimination of such elements among the counterrevolutionaries.

An award flag for the 88[th] Rifle Regiment of the VV
MGB of the USSR with the slogan "For Our Soviet
Motherland" sewn in across the top.

As the KGB inherited this problem from its predecessor during the Khrushchev era, so it was ordered to publicly back off the hunt and pursuit of rebels. However, secretly, the KGB created new forms of VV units with the most famous called Vympel, Zenith, and Alpha. Each of these special operations units had specific purposes including emergency response teams and by the 1970s, a counter- terrorism unit. Nonetheless, the topic of the KGB and clandestine operations after its inception will be discussed in more detail later.

The reverse of the MGB flag with a more standard style state seal and the other, more famous slogan: "Workers of the Country [World] Unite!"

Like the NKVD flag above, the text was created by rows of stitching sewn closely together. An all-sewn rendition of Stalin and Lenin on silk is inside the octagon in the center of the flag.

A closeup of the state seal sewn into the reverse of the MGB flag with 16 republics represented by individual banners or "ribbons" each with "Workers of the World [Country], Unite!" in each of the constituent native languages of the republics. This version of the state seal only existed from 1946-1956 until the country was re-divided into the final 15 republics that existed until the union was dissolved in 1990.

NKVD and the Other Security Services

An security services sergeant posing in front of an OGPU award
flag. A viewer pointed out that though the flag is certainly from
the OGPU, the uniform the sergeant is wearing is post WWII. 
Therefore, for some reason an older flag is being used as a for
the soldier to pose in front of though it will always make a good 

backdrop for any Soviet photo. Notice that there are only six
republics represented on the state seal which makes this a very
early, pre-WWII flag, though a post war photo. Also note that
he is not wearing a pistol as nearly all NKVD officers did -
though in posed photos, most officers from any branch of
security service is seldom seen armed. 

(Submitted photo)

The NKVD as opposed to the KGB and earlier security services incarnations of the Soviet Union were two equal but separate organizations. The lines between their specific duties were often blurred - especially during the Stalin years. The lines were even more obscure shortly before and especially after the USSR officially joined the fray of WWII. The OGPU ("All-Union State Political Directorate" and nearly immediate successor to the Cheka) as a whole was incorporated as a division/directorate of the NKVD. This included their specially trained military support units as well as all foreign intelligence agents.  

A small group of NKVD agents while taking a break in the field in 1944.* The NKVD political

branch had uniforms with bright colors - royal blue and crimson red, particularly on the caps.

They did this so that if they were running through a group of khaki-covered "simple Red Army"

sea of people in a charge of a battle, they would always be visible and distinct from the "mere"

or "average" soldier during WWII. The NKVD border guards's uniforms were more blended to

their surroundings and were only easily distinguished by the bright green caps they wore. Soviet

Security service/political police felt and were taught that they were superior to anyone who was not in the Cheka-KGB family. Considering the "perks" political agents received for being members of any of the Soviet security agencies, throughout the 70 plus years of the Soviet Union, were apparently worth the trade-off of losing friends, neighbors and sometimes family, and the loss, even temporarily for some, of the compassion that makes people human. 

Two different types of NKVD caps.

The one on top is for an agent/young

officer of the state security side of the

organization. The one beneath it is for

the NKVD border guard. Both caps in

remained in use until the entire NKVD

broken back up into the MGB and the

MVD in the late 1940s and earlier

part of the 1950s as the MVD donned

new uniforms as did the MGB-KGB. 

Eventually, only the colors remained

on the respective uniform cap.

However, in order for most citizens of modern democracies to comprehend the differences between the NKVD (later the MVD - Ministry of Internal Affairs) while Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria had control over them just before, during and more or less up until Stalin's death on March 5 of 1953 and the state security organizations of the Soviet Union, they have to be able to relate to these organizations in terms of their own country's security agencies. After Stalin's death in 1953 Beria subordinated the MGB to his MVD which made many state officials in the Kremlin extremely uncomfortable. In 1954, after Beria was arrested, tried and executed as the post-Stalinist fervor grew, the MGB (Ministry of State Security) was changed to the more renowned KGB (Committee for State Security – a post Stalin-Beria move to "demote" the massive and powerful MGB as separate from the MVD – again) from fear of what such an organization was capable of at the ministry level.

In the United States, the closest comparison to the NKVD would be the Federal Bureau of Investigation – if it were given free reign and powers of not only arrest, but trial and execution. The NKVD's "jurisdiction" superseded any local law enforcement or regional agency and, like the FBI, was supposed to only operate within the borders of the country. In fact, most militias (police departments) and fire departments were part of the NKVD itself.

On the other hand, the Cheka-KGB was charged with many tasks similar to the US Central Intelligence Agency and, like the CIA, was supposed to operate exclusively outside of the country except in cases of counterintelligence, counterrevolution and/or counterterrorism. However, the CIA alone is not a sufficient equivalent to the state security services of the Soviet Union. If the US National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security were combined with the CIA and the National Security Council to give indirect orders, then the comparison is a bit better. In fact, the CIA was the first dedicated and independent of the military security agency ever to exist in the United States and it did not come about until then President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 and completed the plans of his presidential predecessor Franklin D. Roosevelt who saw the urgent need for a permanent foreign intelligence service in the US, especially for a young country with high aspirations.

As mentioned above, the state security and political police (OGPU) was subordinated to the NKVD at Beria's request and Stalin's order shortly before war was officially declared on Germany by the Soviet Union. For a brief period in 1941, the OGPU (then renamed the NKGB, or "People's Commissariat for State Security) was made autonomous again, but shortly thereafter Stalin and Beria perceived the need to re-subordinate them into the NKVD. The power-hungry Beria, the last head of the NKVD and briefly of the newly named MVD, had hopes of eventually replacing Stalin; in fact, a rumor circulated among the Party elite in the Kremlin that Beria had poisoned Stalin to speed along his own plans to assume the role of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee – a.k.a. "dictator for life." This rumor was not publicly pursued, particularly since Beria was executed only nine months after Stalin's death. Just as in many cases of "disappeared" persons, there was little, if any fanfare at the announcement of Beria as an "enemy of the people” – a title befitting one who was an enemy of all people who were not Beria and who used the same term to have a large number of Soviet citizens imprisoned or killed (precisely how many people is impossible to say given the “Top Secret” status of many related documents, even to this day).

A photo of the 158th Rifle Division of SMERSH taken most

likely immediately after their graduation from a specialized

academy - training course - for SMERSH agents. This was a

a new experiment in warfare and control over some

morally deficient SMERSH agents and their units was not

established. As a result, atrocities were committed sometimes in

conjunction with the NKVD. Please note that many of the

agents pictured above are women. The Red Army saw no

problem with women carrying a rifle into battle.  However,

though even to this day two years of service in the military is 

compulsory, women are exempt from conscription during 

times of peace.** 

The last group that needs to be mentioned is SMERSH (a semi-acronym for the Russian phrase "Death to Spies" or СМЕРть Шпионам [emphasis on the pasts of the two words used]). At least for the edification of the public and any other more observant citizen of the young country, the organization was created to capture and/or prevent the work of, for the purposes of propaganda, German spies and saboteurs. It was not long before they were working either without official orders or with the help of military intelligence (GRU).

The military intelligence division of the Red Army could not compete with the effectiveness of the OGPU and NKVD. Part of this gap in successful operations was in part due to the fact that a majority of the GRU officers were loyal to their superiors and bound by the Red Army's "Code of Military Conduct." However, there are a significant number of documented operations performed by GRU officers that are no better than the things the NKVD agents have been accused of by people who survived the Great Patriotic War only to find themselves fighting daily to stay alive in a Gulag and survived that as well, only finally enjoy their old age and government pension, if lucky enough to be re-approved for the pension and a decrease in their monthly money since inflation had made many pensions nearly worthless after 1991.

Agents with SMERSH had the same powers of arrest, trial and execution of anyone found to either be a collaborator during the Great Patriotic War with any of the invading fascist militaries, or had helped soldiers with these armies (particularly the Germans) in any way.

There is an entire chapter coming soon that deals entirely with SMERSH and their activities during the GPW, especially since they were often the first in a chain of events that typically ended with the NKVD, either interrogating and/or torturing of prisoners, or forming the troikas which were infamous for convicting a prisoner even before a word was spoken. Eventually, SMERSH agents too often did not like the public credit going to the NKVD for the extensive work, typically undercover work as a member of the same region the spy was sent to for the purposes of observation and infiltration of even the tiniest organization or group of dissidents. Once the leaders of such groups were identified based on an agent's reports, they were captured and normally killed by either members of the NKVD or SMERSH.

More coming soon on the SMERSH, NKVD-MVD and MGB-KGB pursuits of spies and saboteurs - though more realistically, they were usually after rebels hiding out in various parts of the incredible amount of uninhabited land across the Soviet Union, which reached from the border of Germany to the Pacific Ocean via Soviet regions north of (and including) Mongolia.  








* Bekesi, Laszlo. KGB & Soviet Security Uniforms & Militaria 1917-1991. Photos by Gyorgy Torok. The Crowood Press, Ltd., United Kingdom, 2002.
** Photo: There are copyrights by the "Group of Authors," the FSB Central Archive, an "artist" and layout designer and some other folks all working for the FSB on this book. Since there is no direct attribution of a copyright or a publisher, and after reading the very specific and frightening explanation of what can happen to someone who reprints the materials inside the book, I will only post one photo that hopefully has reached public domain status due to age. The copyrights listed inside the book were all taken out in 2003.

The Spread of Chekist Ideas and Ideals at a High Moral Cost: Part II

Other Battles Faced by the Soviet Government Against Its Own Citizens

A political poster from the Bolsheviks which literally translated

means: "Electrification and Counter-Revolution" and makes no

sense out of historical context. At this point in time the first

Soviet government was pushing for and promising the public

the availability of electricity throughout the country. The implied

meaning is that "light" shed by the completion of such a huge

task would help find counter-revolutionaries. The usual group

of potential suspects includes an officer from the Imperial White

Guard, a high-ranking clergyman from the Russian Orthodox

Church, a "wealthy" merchant/capitalist and in the center, a

spy/saboteur - commonly depicted as a thin German complete

with stereotypical monocle and the attire of a member of the 

foreign service or possibly an ambassador. 

Stalin's and later Soviet Union leaders' attempts at maintaining public order to keep the ideals of the Revolution not only alive, but in practice despite continuous, organized pockets of resistance - especially after WWII - was a constant battle that involved the extensive use of the NKVD and subsequently MGB/KGB specialized troops. However, long before Stalin attempted to repress counter-revolutionary pockets throughout the Soviet Union, the first major battles were fought in the form of an Imperial Russian - Bolshevik Russian Civil War from 1917-1923. The war started after the collapse of the short-lived Provisional Government established after Tsar Nicholas II abdicated and turned over the reigns of power to a number of revolutionary groups varying in degrees of communism and socialism. (See early chapters here regarding the revolutions of 1917 and the resulting turmoil for more information.) When the Bolsheviks were clearly on one side, they were referred to as the "Red Guard" and later, more formally as the "Red Army." The Imperialists and their supporters were called the "White Guard." Other splinter groups not clearly in either of these groups either joined one side or the other with hopes of a better future for themselves or formed their own paramilitary organizations, such as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationals (OUN). During the Russian Civil War several other countries joined in the fight (usually against the Red Guard) for at least some of the time - but most lost interest as the Bolsheviks gained the upper hand on the battlefield throughout Russia and her component parts.

Post-WWII Rebels
When counter-revolutionaries were suspected within the contexts of cities, teachers or professors, writers, musicians and other members of the intelligentsia, or even just an average Soviet citizen who said something within earshot of the wrong person who would then turn said person in to the current security organization, the matter was dealt with a bit differently than the all too common battles waged against whole organizations - the most prominent and enduring of which was the OUN. The OUN was formed almost immediately after the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917 and became a constant problem for MGB/KGB troops.

Above is a photo of the reverse of a velvet banner made for "Friends"/"Supporters" of the Ukrainian Nationalists. The Ukrainian inscription (слава україні) simply means "Glory to Ukraine." The front of the flag (below) has the national symbol of Ukraine (currently in use again) and three Cyrillic letters for D, U, and N, or Друзі українських націоналістів for Friends of Ukrainian Nationalists. This particular flag was allegedly captured by NKVD or NKGB/MGB troops depending on whether it was seized during or shortly after WWII. Regardless of when it was captured, those who were arrested or killed immediately because of it were certainly treated as enemy combatants and were referred to by the Soviets as an "Enemy of the People" - a term that came to be known under the NKVD's and Stalin's "terror" as synonymous with a death warrant from the security services.

The OUN was most noticeable and problematic for the Soviets in the decades immediately following WWII, as were a number of other independence groups formed in parts of Mongolia and the newly annexed Baltic States of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. In fact, the Lviv Oblast (something like "county" or "parish" in English) and the city of Lviv was a bastion of continuous ill will toward Soviet rule. The city was once part of Poland but after WWII became a permanent part of western-most Ukraine. As a border region that had ties to Poland and Germany in addition to Ukraine many people got tastes for other governments varying from Imperial to Nazi and of course Communism. The city was a regular source of irritation for the KGB and its predecessor the Ministry of State Security (MGB) since it spawned anti-Soviet groups including members of the ranks of the most organized of them, the OUN. Because of this ongoing problem with the local public opinion, the KGB established one of its most notorious regional offices in Lviv. Serving as an agent there was either a punishment or a chance to gain notoriety and move up the ranks faster than in other parts of the USSR, and which situation it was depended on the individual officer and why he (very few women were actually KGB agents - despite various spy novel authors' fantasies) was assigned to that location. The security services and the border guard were always closely linked if not under the same agency name and this is understandable given the unstable nature of borderlands and the thought processes of people who have been rapidly shifted from one regime to another and the division of loyalties that results.

The pictures below show close-ups of the embroidery work on a flag from a prominent Ukrainian rebel-supporting group ostensibly from a group called the DUN or Druzhnnik or "friends"/"supporters" of the Ukrainian Nationalists. This flag was likely made during the early part of the Soviet involvement in WWII. Germany had been a potential ally of the Ukrainian people against the Soviets as early as the initial series of revolutions in 1917 when German troops were sent in support of members of the White Guard and other imperialists who wanted to maintain the status quo as far as the Russian Empire and the leadership thereof. (See http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1917armyrevolt&Year=1917 for more information on the White Guard and the initial revolutions.)

In the photos above and below, some of the especially intricate details of this obviously handmade flag are more visible than from a distance. Besides the unusually long-fibered construction of the velvet, sheets of silk  and the embroidery discussed above were sewn together in this weighty example of what one might expect was a form of public announcement about the group and where their sympathies lay - a potentially life-threatening gamble depending on who saw the flag. The national colors of dark blue over a gold field are the dominant colors and have since been restored on the current Ukrainian flag.

Gulags and Asylums

Those who spoke out against the Soviet system in whatever form, faced severe reprisals from the security service personnel in a variety of forms. Arrest was merely an initial step in the final disposition of an individual's case. Most victims of political or alleged criminal activity that wound them up in the hands of the security services were exiled to potentially lethal servitude in one of many forced labor camps (widely known by the Russian acronym: GULAG). A disturbingly high number of people who were arrested particularly by the NKVD during Stalin's reign, were executed either publicly or in secret without a body ever turning up for family members to claim and bury. Both imprisonment and execution were almost always prefaced by some sort of torture.

One of the oldest jokes told about the KGB hearkens back to the theme of beating a confession out of someone, whether real or more likely an elaborately imagined one presented by the interrogating officers: Agents from the CIA, MI6 and the KGB were each told that they had to launch a mission to route out a a certain black rabbit. As per the joke, the British and MI6 were first up. The set about immediately to form organizational groups, discuss and debate strategy, until they finally deemed the whole project unfeasible economically and abandoned the whole task. The Americans and their CIA were up next and after a brief discussion among the highest members of the organization, decided to call in a massive air strike laying the whole forest barren and desolate - much to the protests of the locals. "But at least we know he is not alive down there or at worst, he has gotten away somewhere else," was the CIA agents' response. The KGB officers approached for their assignment already a little tipsy on vodka - but it was almost noon and this is understandable. "You want black rabbit, we get black rabbit." Three KGB officers went into the scorched woods and returned a few minutes later with a brown bear in cuffs and custody, mumbling and rubbing his whole head delicately. Finally, as the KGB officers and the bear approach the judging table, the badly beaten brown bear is heard saying, "Sure, I'm a black rabbit; anybody else you want me to be? I see the evil inherent in just being just a bear."

"I'm...a British, French, American, Japonese, Italian, German and some
other kind of spy probably..." [trans]. This drawing was reportedly  
done by an inmate of a gulag depicting members of the current
security service (possibly Smersh, probbably NKVD) obtaining a
"confession"from an arrested individual. This drawing and others below
 are from abook Drawings from the Gulag by Danzig Baldaev.*

The very existence of the gulags was a means for the security forces to eliminate the "enemies of the people" sent there together with hardened criminals - the ones who not only ran the prisons but also did some of the killings the NKVD wanted done in some of these labor prisons. Actual criminal convicts who had been multiple offenders and were sentenced to lengthy prison stays were known as the "thieves by law" and occupied a certain rank above more petty, non-violent criminals. Among these "lesser" prisoners, the counter-revolutionaries or "enemies of the people" were the lowest class and if they survived the initial tortures that brought them to the gulags then the were very often killed by either prison guards (NKVD) or hired or otherwise motivated members of the "thieves by law" groups. Those that survived the prison camps were either very clever or very lucky - or both.

The prisoners at the top of the hierarchy in gulags dispensed their form of "justice" based on the orders of the guards and on the whims of the the gangs of "thieves by law" and could be capricious at best. 

According to the author of Drawings from the Gulag the leading
gangs executed other prisoners with the cooperation of the guards
and administration as well as on their direct orders. The drawing above
shows a sentence of beheading ordered by a "court of thieves" according
to the author.* 

Another fate faced some people rather than being publically branded an “enemy of the people” for various reasons including being “saved” by influential Communist Party members who were either friends or family. One of the most common ways to make someone “disappear” other than by execution or gulag was to have them committed indefinitely to insane asylums. The theory was that if someone objected to the party line, then he or she must not be thinking correctly. The type of person sentenced to this sort of fate varied, but more often than not, this is where an artist, musician or writer might spend his or her life at least while Stalin remained in control of the Soviet Union. A very large number of people were either released from whichever sort of prison they found themselves in as a result of Stalin's paranoia or were "posthumously rehabilitated" - which meant that even though they had died in captivity, their families were not held to blame and their names were restored to good standing. This happened, of course, after Stalin's death during the subsequent reforms to the system. In order to prevent obvious discrepancies between the Communist Party dogma and the repatriation of accused and sentenced "enemies of the people," the task of freeing political prisoners was not a swift one. It crawled along and continued until well after the collapse of the Soviet Union itself.

* http://englishrussia.com/index.php/2011/04/26/the-breath-of-death/#more-48292
 

The Spread of Chekist Ideas and Ideals at a High Moral Cost

Part I: The Fear of the "Disappearing" Citizen

The Cheka (Chesvychaika) did not allow the Soviet Communist Party to seize power, but it allowed it to maintain it in Russia and the Soviet Union. Even as the less visible, more secretive GPU and eventually the KGB, they were the means by which leaders like Lenin, killers like Stalin and do-nothings like Brezhnev were able to keep control over an enormous, nine-time-zone country after WWII. The most unfortunate side effect or in some cases the result, was the deaths of tens of thousands - most of them innocent of anything but difference of political view point than those of the leadership. The elimination of opposition by physically removing them from their homes, families and eventually their lives, was so rampant during the early years of Bolshevik rule that the activities of the Cheka-GPU was called the "Red Terror" by both opposition, foreign and domestic, and the members of the Cheka itself.

Many Western journalists attempted to make their careers by reporting on the newly-formed government in Russia. One such anonymous British reporter wrote in 1929 that a high-ranking member of the Cheka said: "We have executed some twenty or thirty thousand persons, perhaps fifty thousand. They were all spies, traitors, enemies within our ranks, a very small number in proportion to the persons of this kind then in Russia. We instituted the red terror at a time of war, when the enemy was marching upon us from without and the enemy within was preparing to help him. Scotland Yard executed spies and traitors also in war time."*

The Lubyanka All-Russia Insurance Company headquarters building was built in 1898. This photo above was taken before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, after which it became the headquarters for the Soviet Secret and political police until 1991 when the KGB was officially disbanded. Though the basic structure has remained the same, multiple renovations and a massive addition have changed the building and the Lubyanka Square it occupies radically. In all, there are a total of three conjoined buildings that make up the final design of the most infamous security agency ever created. A section of the FSB (Federal Security Service) Border Guard is still housed here as well as a museum-memorial and a new statue in place of the giant one of Dzerzhinsky has been erected across from the main building as a memorial to those tortured and/or killed in the massive underground network of prison cells and "special purpose" rooms. Often, people were arrested and taken to Lubyanka without their families' ever knowing what happened to them.

Victor Serge, a controversial character in his own right, with Polish-Russian parents had a difficult time even getting into Russia after the 1917 revolution. Serge spent his early life in France as a radical revolutionary eventually becoming a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (slightly right of the Bolsheviks), and despite his confinement in a French prison until 1915 near the end of WWI, was reportedly rejected by the Cheka when he tried to move into Russia and join the revolutionaries. He was eventually allowed into the country in 1919 and spent his early years in Russia as a member of the Bolsheviks working under Maxim Gorky. He eventually became disenchanted with the Soviet Party and became a follower of Stalin's greatest foe - Leon Trotsky. By 1933 Serge had been spared execution only to find himself arrested by the GPU and locked up in the bowels of Lubyanka prison. He wrote of his time there in Memoires of a Revolutionary (1945):

The first acknowledged photo of the Lubyanka taken by a CIA operative
soon after the agency was created in 1947. The photo is from the early 1950s.

“Here, in absolute secrecy, with no communication with any person whatsoever, with no reading-matter whatsoever, with no paper, not even one sheet, with no occupation of any kind, with no open-air exercise in the yard, I spent about eighty days. It was a severe test for the nerves, in which I acquitted myself pretty well. I was weary with my years of nervous tension, and felt an immense physical need for rest. I slept as much as I could, at least twelve hours a day. The rest of the time, I set myself to work assiduously. I gave myself courses in history, political economy - and even in natural science! I mentally wrote a play, short stories, poems.”

Serge added: "Lubyanka was originally occupied by insurance company offices. Each floor formed a prison on its own, sealed off from the others, with its individual entrance and reception-kiosk; coloured electric light-signals operated on all landings and corridors to mark the various comings and goings, so that prisoners could never meet one another. A mysterious hotel-corridor, whose red carpet silenced the slight sound of footsteps; and then a cell, bare, with an inlaid floor, a passable bed, a table and a chair, all spic and span."

The caption on the above photo simply says: "In the Courtyard of the Lubyanka prison. 1928." It is most likely a weapons training session for NKVD and/or Cheka-GPU agents. As can be seen in the photo, women were often employed by the Soviet security services especially for so-called "undercover" assignments. By the time SMERSH was formed after the Soviet Union was embroiled in WWII, women played a prominent role in the ranks of SMERSH agents.****

 

"I believe that the formation of the Chekas was one of the gravest and most impermissible errors that the Bolshevik leaders committed in 1918 when plots, blockades, and interventions made them lose their heads. All evidence indicates that revolutionary tribunals, functioning in the light of day and admitting the right of defence, would have attained the same efficiency with far less abuse and depravity. Was it necessary to revert to the procedures of the Inquisition?

 

"By the beginning of 1919, the Chekas had little or no resistance against this psychological perversion and corruption. I know for a fact that Dzerzhinsky judged them to be 'half-rotten,' and saw no solution to the evil except in shooting the worst Chekists and abolishing the death-penalty as quickly as possible," Serge also proclaimed.

The above photo is of the Lubynka taken in the 1980s with the statue of state security service founder Felix Dzerzhinsky prominently adorning the square on which the expanded building dominates the surface but hides a labyrinth of prison cells and torture chambers under the building and the street where automobiles continue to drive around above to this day. However, the statue of Dzerzhinsky was removed (not torn down as in other areas with similar statues) in 1991 and replaced with a modern monument to the memory of all those who were tortured and/or killed by officers from whatever security agency occupied the building and ran the prison at the time.

 

What could befall practically anyone who lived in or entered Revolutionary Russia and later the Soviet Union became more than legend. Everyone who had an opinion that was contrary - or "counter" - to the revolutionary Bolshevik thought process was either forced to remain silent on the matter or suffer from a varying array of ill fates demanded by the political elite and enforced by the political police. When the Cheka was created it was to prevent political dissent or anything that might increase the instability of the new regime. As time passed and the Cheka-KGB re-formed society and itself to conform with a number of Party leadership changes and general attitudes, the once temporary "necessity" as both and Lenin and Stalin had called it for not-so-different reasons, was as much a part of Soviet Union Communist ideology and practice as the Party itself.

Lubyanka post-1991 without the prominent statue of Dzerzhinsky.

Before the post-war world changed global maps and theories of government forced new political maps to be drawn between the Western democracies and the Eastern Bloc of Communist countries, Lenin had a number of battles with the various classes of people who opposed his (modified) Marxist principles that included groups as diverse as writers, artists, philosophers and other members of the intelligentsia to farmers who strongly opposed collectivization. Most of these farmers had been so-called peasants who had managed their farms in such a way that they made enough profits to make them financially self-sufficient - though not "wealthy" by the imperial definition. This "class" was known in non-affectionate terms as the Kulaks and were considered dangerous by Lenin and his devoted followers. They were a powerful class in a supposedly classless society. The battle between Lenin and the Kulaks was both open by means of public opinion and very private in the sense that he signed a number of warrants for the whole scale executions of hundreds of these independent farmers at a time - a task ultimately completed by Stalin. The battle between the Soviets and the Kulaks was so intense that violence was the standard way for both sides to approach the situation.


Photo of the rearmost part of the contemporary Lubyanka building and square it centers. (Photo by Barry Kent)

For decades, the Kulaks, a group of people who were the "middle class" long before the term was widely accepted in academic circles in the US until the early 1950s. Again, the idea of financially self-sufficient groups within the Soviet system of government precluded an official separation of peoples by birth, title, land or other wealth.

The poster at right is a prime example of the attempt by the Communist Party leadership trying to demonize the Kulaks and achieve the goal of a classless society devoid of aristocracy and other forms of social class distinction, regardless of what it was based on.


After WWII when the maps had been redrawn, the next war waged by the Communist Part of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was against organized groups of rebels in areas of Ukraine, the Baltic States and other Warsaw Pact countries that were not necessarily part of the Soviet Union proper, but also in the new regions considered under the stewardship (voluntary or not) of the Soviet Union known as "Spheres of Influence." The war to maintain communist and/or socialist forms of government friendly to the Soviet Union was one that lasted the entire lifespan of the SU itself, an antagonistic situation faced by every leader of the SU from 1917 to 1991.

This is a photo static copy of a handwritten letter from Lenin in 1918 to authorities in the Penza Province about 600 miles southeast of Moscow and a grain farming region. Lenin's letter orders the hanging of 100 "Kulak farmers" to set an example for others who opposed his plans.


This letter is from the archives of the Smithsonian Institution acquired on loan from the Russian Federation MVD with the approval of several other federal organizations. The following is the English translation of the text of the letter provided by Smithsonian translators:

“Send to Penza to Comrades Kuraev, Minkin, and other Penza communists


Comrades! The revolt by the five kulak volosts must be suppressed without mercy. The interests of the entire revolution demands this, because we have now before us our final decisive battle [with the kulaks]. We need to set an example.

1. You need to hang (hang without fail, so that the public sees) at least 100 notorious kulaks, the rich, and the bloodsuckers.

2. Publish their names.

3. Take away all of their grain.

4. Execute the hostages - in accordance with yesterday's telegram.

This needs to be accomplished in such a way that people for hundreds of miles around will see, tremble, know and scream out: let's choke and strangle those bloodsucking kulaks.

Telegraph us acknowledging receipt and execution of this.

Yours,

Lenin

P.S. Use your toughest people for this.”

“Translator's note: A “volost” was a territorial/administrative unit consisting of a few villages and surrounding land.”

Without question, the “toughest people for this” brutal public display and executions were members of the local Cheka. If nothing else, the letter demonstrates the absolute contempt which Lenin felt for the Kulaks and those like them who had become financially independent, but had not achieved any social rank during the period of the Russian Empire.

* Whether or not the quote is true to the alleged speaker, the quote is true of the questionable and certainly controversial actions of the Cheka through the KGB. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUScheka.htm

** Wikimedia Commons photo
*** http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/%D0%93%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%A0%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BF%D1%83%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BD_%281914-1916%29b.jpg
**** http://my.opera.com/savana51/albums/showpic.dml?album=4806182&picture=73325952