Dzerzhinsky's cause lives on: Russian MPs seek to rename Interior Ministry to CheKa

Felix Dzerzhinsky’s creature, CheKa, or the All–Russian Emergency Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, was an important tool of Red Terror, a campaign of mass killings, torture, and systematic oppression conducted by the Bolsheviks.

MP Tatiana Moskalkova (see photo below) a member of the party ‘Fair Russia, a honored lawyer of the Russian Federation and major-general of the police, put forward the idea of renaming the Interior Ministry to CheKa. In her opinion, in a situation of economic crisis, the Interior Ministry should change name and receive special powers ‘when maintaining order and keeping the country safe and at peace’. The Russian deputy submitted a proposal on behalf of her party during the discussion of the report on the Interior Ministry’s performance.

Bloody Felix’ Children

The All–Russian Emergency Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage was established in 1917. It was headed by notorious Felix Dzerzhinsky. The body was the proletarian dictatorship’s vehicle for protection of national security and the ‘executive authority to combat counter-revolution throughout the country’. Chekists were involved in making lists of ‘enemies of the people’ and executions of ‘enemy agents, speculators, hooligans, thugs, anti-revolution agitators, German spies, White Guardmen’.

Unfortunately, lots of Russians and Belarusians are still making a cult of Dzerzhinsky, who at the Dzerzhinovo family estate in Vilnia Governorate (at the present time – in the territory of Belarus). The employees of Russia’s FSB and Belarus’ KGB have a bust of the CheKa founder and are proud of being named ‘chekists’.

Jb/Belsat/www.kommersant.ru