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The State Political Directorate was the secret police
Secret police

Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy to maintain national security against internal threats to the state.Secret police forces are typically associated with totalitarianism regimes, as they are often used to maintain the political power of the state rather than uphold the rule of law....
 of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and the Soviet Union
Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
 from 1922 until 1934. Formed from the Cheka
Cheka

The Cheka was the first of a succession of Soviet Union state security organizations. It was created by a decree issued on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by an aristocrat turned communist Felix Dzerzhinsky....
, the Soviet state security organization, on February 6, 1922, it was initially known under the Russian abbreviation GPU for "Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie of the NKVD
NKVD

The NKVD or People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the leading secret police organization of the Soviet Union that was responsible for Soviet political repressions during the Stalinism era....
 of the RSFSR" (??????????????? ???????????? ?????????? ???? ?????).

The 'Foreign Department' of the GPU was headed by a former Bolshevik and party member, Mikhail Trilisser
Mikhail Trilisser

Mikhail Abramovich Trilisser-Moskvin was a Soviet OGPU chief of the Foreign Department of the Cheka and the OGPU. Later, he worked for the NKVD as a covert bureau chief and Comintern leader....
.






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Gpu
The State Political Directorate was the secret police
Secret police

Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy to maintain national security against internal threats to the state.Secret police forces are typically associated with totalitarianism regimes, as they are often used to maintain the political power of the state rather than uphold the rule of law....
 of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and the Soviet Union
Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
 from 1922 until 1934. Formed from the Cheka
Cheka

The Cheka was the first of a succession of Soviet Union state security organizations. It was created by a decree issued on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by an aristocrat turned communist Felix Dzerzhinsky....
, the Soviet state security organization, on February 6, 1922, it was initially known under the Russian abbreviation GPU for "Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie of the NKVD
NKVD

The NKVD or People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the leading secret police organization of the Soviet Union that was responsible for Soviet political repressions during the Stalinism era....
 of the RSFSR" (??????????????? ???????????? ?????????? ???? ?????).

The 'Foreign Department' of the GPU was headed by a former Bolshevik and party member, Mikhail Trilisser
Mikhail Trilisser

Mikhail Abramovich Trilisser-Moskvin was a Soviet OGPU chief of the Foreign Department of the Cheka and the OGPU. Later, he worked for the NKVD as a covert bureau chief and Comintern leader....
. The Foreign Department was placed in charge of intelligence activities overseas, including espionage and liquidation of 'enemies of the people'. Trilisser was later liquidated himself by Stalin during the Great Purge
Great Purge

Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in 1936-1938. Also described as a "Soviet holocaust" by several authors, it involved the purge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, repression of kulaks, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of unaffiliat...
 in 1940.

With the creation of the USSR in December 1922, a unified organization was required to exercise control over state security
State Security

State Security can refer to:* general concepts of security agency or national security* Committee for State Security * State Security * State Security ...
 throughout the new union. Thus, on November 15, 1923, the GPU left the Russian NKVD and was transferred into the all-union Joint State Political Directorate, also translated as "All-Union State Political Administration". Its official name was "Ob'edinennoe Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie under the SNK of the USSR" (???????????? ??????????????? ???????????? ?????????? ??? ??? ????), or OGPU.

Perhaps the most spectacular success of the GPU/OGPU was the Trust Operation
Trust Operation

Operation Trust was a counterintelligence operation of the State Political Directorate of the Soviet Union. The operation, which ran from 1921-1926, set up a fake anti-Bolshevik underground resistance organization, "Monarchist Union of Central Russia", MUCR , in order to help the OGPU identify real monarchists and anti-Bolsheviks....
 of 1924-1925. OGPU agents contacted émigrés
White Emigre

White ?migr? is a political term mostly used in France, the USA, and the UK to describe a Russians who immigrated from Russia in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War and who was in opposition to the then current Russian political climate....
 in western Europe and pretended to be representatives of a large group working to overthrow of the communist regime, known as the "Trust". Exiled Russians gave the Trust large sums of money and supplies, as did foreign intelligence agencies. The Trust finally succeeded in luring one of the leading anti-Communist operators, Sidney Reilly
Sidney Reilly

Lieutenant Sidney George Reilly, Military Cross , famously known as the Ace of Spies, was a Jewish Russian- or Ukraine-born adventurer and secret agent employed by Scotland Yard, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland William Melville#Secret Service Bureau and later the Secret Intelligence Service ....
, into Russia to meet with the Trust. Once he was in Russia, he was captured and killed. The Trust was dissolved, and it became a large propaganda success.

The OGPU was responsible for the creation of the Gulag
Gulag

The Gulag was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. Gulag is the Russian acronym for The Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies of the NKVD....
 system. It also became the Soviet government's arm for the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church
Russian Orthodox Church

The Russian Orthodox Church ; or The Moscow Patriarchate , also known as the Orthodox Christian Church of Russia, is a body of Christianity who constitute an Autocephaly Eastern Orthodox Church under the jurisdiction of the List of Metropolitans and Patriarchs of Moscow, in full communion with the other Eastern Orthodox Churches....
, the Greek Catholics, the Latin Catholics
Roman Catholic Church

The Roman Catholic Church, officially known as the Catholic Church is the world's largest Christianity Ecclesia , representing over half of all Christians and one-sixth of the world population....
, Islam
Islam

Islam is a Monotheism, Abrahamic religion originating with the teachings of the Prophets of Islam Muhammad, a 7th century Arab religious and political figure....
 and other religious organizations, an operation headed by Yevgeny Tuchkov. The OGPU was also the principal secret police agency responsible for the detection, arrest, and liquidation of anarchists and other dissident left-wing factions in the early Soviet Union.

The OGPU was reincorporated into the newly-created all-union NKVD in July 1934, becoming the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD
NKVD

The NKVD or People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the leading secret police organization of the Soviet Union that was responsible for Soviet political repressions during the Stalinism era....
) of the USSR. Its final transformation was into the more widely known Committee for State Security (KGB
KGB

KGB is the Russian language abbreviation of Committee for State Security , which was the official name of the umbrella organization serving as the Soviet Union's premier security agency, secret police, and intelligence agency, from 1954 to 1991....
).

See also

  • Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies
    Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies

    The Soviet Union had a succession of secret police agencies over the course of its existence. The first secret police after the Russian Revolution of 1917, created by Vladimir Lenin's decree on December 20 1917, was called "Cheka" ....


External links

  • (in Russian)