The Iron or Rustproof Felix? Felix Dzerzhinsky as a Symbol of Revolutionary Fanaticism, Trivialization of Injustice and Dubious Democracy in Soviet and Post-Soviet Era Russia

Abstract

The article discusses the cult associated with the personality of Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (1877–1926), a revolutionary and the founder of the political police in the Soviet Union, and the changing meanings of this cult in various stages of the history of the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia. Thanks to Dzerzhinsky, as the head of the most significant repressive component, Soviet state terror acquired a very specific institutionalized form. The image of Dzerzhinsky as the basis for the mythologizing of the Soviet political police became very useful in all stages of the development of the Soviet system, most significantly for the development of the cult being the period after the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956. Even later, despite many revelations of the crimes of communism, the glorification of Felix Dzerzhinsky and the trivialization of the terror he introduced has not completely disappeared. The myth about the founder of the “Cheka” remained very similar or even identical in its main features in all these periods, but its functions varied in time. State security officials in Russia still call themselves “Chekists” in reference to Dzerzhinsky’s VChK/Cheka. The author therefore concludes that his cult has become more useful for state power in the Kremlin in the long run than the cults of other Soviet-era leaders, including Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin.