Dzerzhinsky: Maverick Revolutionary Saint

Originally published: Phoenix Weekly, No. 1, 2008

Dzerzhinsky

On October 20, 1917, Dzerzhinsky was given the task of creating and leading the All-Russian Council for the Suppression of Repression. In December of that year, the "All-Russian Ad Hoc Committee for the Eradication of Counter-Revolution and Sabotage" was born at 2 Pea Street in Petrograd, known as the "Cheka", which was the predecessor of the KGB that would later be feared by the world.

Dzerzhinsky was undoubtedly the most suitable candidate for the post, having been arrested seven times during his revolutionary career and imprisoned for 11 years, and no one knew better than he where the loopholes lay in the organs of the Tsarist Russian dictatorship.

Born into a small aristocratic family, Dzerzhinsky was tall and slender, his face was clean and emaciated, his goatee, his nose and eyes were coupled with his courtesy, a standard aristocratic intellectual image. Only his eyes could reveal his identity,—— someone described him this way: "Those deep eyes shone with the cold light of fanatical faith." He never blinked, as if his eyelids were paralyzed. ”

Since then, that cold eye has stood guard all over the Soviet Union for more than 70 years without blinking, and Dzerzhinsky is the only person among the leaders of the KGB system who has statues all over the Soviet Union after his death.

Dzerzhinsky was the perfect Bolshevik. Lenin and other intellectual leaders never lacked money to spend when they were in exile, and many comrades who grew up in the country of workers and peasants began to pursue the quality of life soon after victory, while Dzerzhinsky only needed three things to live: bread, water, and work. He only had an office, no home, and he never watched plays or movies.

The complex situation facing the Soviets after the October Revolution required strong fighters like Dzerzhinsky.

After the formation of the Soviets, the Bolsheviks and their only political ally, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party representing the interests of the peasantry, soon came into fierce conflict on a series of important issues.

The Socialist-Revolutionary Party opposed Lenin's Treaty of Brest, which paid indemnities to Germany, calling Lenin "a lackey of German imperialism." On July 6, 1918, members of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party in the "Cheka" shot and killed the German ambassador to the Soviet Union.

The most serious confrontation between the two sides is clearly reflected in a scene in the famous film Lenin in 1918: a rich peasant dressed in rags wants to argue with Lenin, and halfway through, Lenin excitedly interrupts: "... You rich peasants will have to give us grain for one day. If you deal with it by force, we will destroy you. This is the truth of us workers and peasants! And the Socialist-Revolutionaries said, "We are going to throw the grain collection teams and the poor peasant committees you sent out of the countryside with their necks and collars!" ”

On August 29, 1918, Ulitsky, the leader of the "Cheka" in Petrograd, was shot dead by the Socialist-Revolutionaries. The next day, Lenin was assassinated at a speech at the Mikhailssund factory in Moscow, and the famous female murderer Kaplan was captured, unlike the image of Kaplan in the movie, who was actually half-blind, firing four shots in a row in the dark, and Lenin was shot three times in the body, and the gunshots scattered, leaving only her still.

Dzerzhinsky and his comrades fought back fiercely. Three days later, Kaplan was shot and his body was stuffed into an iron drum and burned with gasoline. Petrograd captured 1,000 reactionaries, half of whom were shot and half taken hostage.

The Red Newspaper published a list of the 500 hostages and, under the title "Answer to the White Terror," issued a stern Soviet warning: "If our leaders lose even one hair, we will kill all the reactionaries in our hands!" ”

Dzerzhinsky's understanding of the difficult task facing the "Cheka" was simple and clear: "For the 'Cheka', the right to shoot prisoners is extremely important. ”

At the beginning of the establishment of the "Cheka", the comrades of the "Cheka" got a lot of leather clothes, and since then, the leather clothes have been the identity symbol of the "Cheka", and many people see the people wearing the leather clothes as if they are infected with injuries.

Dzerzhinsky turned the "Cheka," a "disciplined fighting body of the Party," into an organization and action institution with a high degree of mystery, whose means were not bound by any rules or bottom lines,—— it was not bound by the judiciary, nor was it subordinate to any party and government organ anywhere, and it did everything from eliminating reactionaries to catching slackers, speculating, and petty theft.

Everyone knows that intellectuals are the most unreliable, and in 1922, Gerrens built a "intellectual department", which systematically and completely collected and sorted out the archives and intelligence systems of intellectuals.

Dzerzhinsky was always referred to as "the goatee-bearded executioner in the fur coat", but in fact, Dzerzhinsky was a kind and kind man. It must be known that the use of hostages to deter reactionary forces was ordered and popularized by Comrade Lenin, and Bukharin, who had the most liberal temperament, also deeply agreed with this.

On January 8, 1921, Dzerzhinsky issued a decree that the Soviets should not send workers who engaged in petty theft and speculation directly to prison, but should stay in factories to be "reformed" by good people to give the way, and for political prisoners, Dzerzhinsky recommended that the use of shootings be abolished, except for terrorist and open violence.

An order signed by Tukhachevsky and Ofsheyenko, who were later shot in the Great Purge, was much harsher: 1. 2. Those who refuse to give their names shall be killed without a court hearing; (2) In villages where weapons are in possession, hostages are taken by political committees at the county or district level and, if weapons are not surrendered, immediately executed; 4. Where hidden weapons are found, the parents are immediately shot without court hearing; Families hiding bandits, confiscating their property and shooting their parents without the need for a court trial ...

After the end of the Civil War in 1922, the Cheka was cut in half and reorganized into the State Political Security Service ("Gpaw"), and from 1924 Dzerzhinsky's most important task was economic management, and the suppression of reactionaries took a back seat.

Although Dzerzhinsky was an outsider to the economy, he quickly achieved considerable success by believing in market adjustments rather than planned regulation.

The last days of Dzerzhinsky's life were spent in great contradictions and pains. In 1926, Kamenev and Zinoviev had a showdown with Stalin. He disagreed with Kamenev and Zinoviev that the peasants were too rich to be deprived of them without mercy, and that he could not support Comrade Stalin because he foresaw the dangerous consequences: "Then the state will produce a dictator, no matter what red feathers he wears." Almost all dictators, such as Mussolini and Piłsudski, used to be red. ”

Stalin, who had a mild-hearted view, after two years of defeating the "left" Kamenev and Zinoviev, confronted the "right" Bukharin – he insisted on the same view of Stalin two years ago, and Stalin became a believer in Kamenev and Zinoviev. Stalin won another victory.

Dzerzhinsky did not see this. On July 20, 1926, at the age of 49, Dzerzhinsky died of exhaustion at the age of 49. Avoiding being overthrown as a "rightist" with Bukharin – his views are far more reactionary than Bukharin's: for he even said that in order to collect grain, it is necessary to go back to the old times, to bring back the landlords...

In 1937, all of Dzerzhinski's relatives were arrested in connection with the "Polish espionage" case, and "they all confessed" and his secretary was shot — 18,000 people arrested in the "Polish Espionage" case. "Our benevolent father" Stalin spared Dzerzhinsky.

Dzerzhinsky perhaps should have appeared in Gorbachev's time, when he concluded that the more administrative controls on the production and supply of commodities, the more scarce they became, and the more regulatory bodies and personnel were needed.

Dzerzhinsky was the most peculiar of the KGB leaders, who was not liked by Lenin, not liked by Trotsky, and not liked by Stalin. Before the Brezhnev era, the KGB had developed a glorious tradition that the latter always had to arrest and execute his predecessor, and Dzerzhinsky was one of the few KGB leaders who had not been shot or imprisoned, not to mention that such a person who did not depend on any leader died peacefully in office.