Abstract
The Author presents the circumstances of the establishment of the political police (CheKa, then NKVD) in Russia as soon as the Bolsheviks took power in 1917. Its creator and first head was Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, a Bolshevik of Polish descent. He also gave it the character of an institution of terror. After Dzerzhinsky’s death (1926), Vyacheslav Rudolfovich Menzhinsky, also of Polish descent, took over as its second head in a row. After his death (1934), the next head was Genrikh (Henryk) Grigoryevich Yagoda, a Polish Jew from the city of Łódź. It was during his time that the great Stalinist terror began.
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