USE OF TERROR - secret police

Question 1

evolution of the ‘secret police’ over the USSR

Answer 1

Cheka 1917 est.
GPU 1922
OGPU 1923
NKVD 1934
KGB 1954

Question 2

CHEKA

Answer 2

leader - Dzerzhinsky
role - Oversaw the Red Terror, establishing the model of using state security for political repression.

Question 3

GPU / OGPU

Question 4

Yagoda

Answer 4

1934 - 36
Oversaw the early stages of the Great Purge and the construction of the Gulag system.

Fell out of favor with Stalin for not being “harsh enough.”

Question 5

Yezhov

Answer 5

1936–1938
Known for orchestrating the height of the Great Terror (1937–38).

During his time, mass executions and arrests peaked.

Nicknamed the “Bloody Dwarf.”

Stalin turned on him after the purges lost momentum.

Arrested in 1939, executed in 1940. His name was later erased from official records (damnatio memoriae style).

Question 6

Lavrentiy Beria

Answer 6

1938 - 53..
Took over after Yezhov and reined in mass purges, making the NKVD more efficient and political.

Ran foreign intelligence, Soviet atomic bomb project, and postwar repressions in Eastern Europe.

Remained powerful under Stalin until Stalin’s death in 1953.

Arrested and executed by Khrushchev’s faction in December 1953

Question 7

NKVD

Answer 7

1934 - 54
Enforcer of the Great Purge (1936–1938)

Manager of the Gulag System

Surveillance and Informant Networks

Executions and Mass Deportations

Propaganda and Control

Question 8

how did the secret police sustain the Soviet regime

Answer 8

by creating an atmosphere of surveillance, terror - forcing people in to conformity out of fear of the gulags