Stalin's Secret Police

The KGB of Cold War renown was the successor to a series of equally infamous and lethal state security agencies that date from the early days of the Russian Revolution: Cheka, OGPU, GUGB, NKVD, NKGB and MVD. Beginning with the Cheka, the organisation for combating counter-revolution and sabotage, Stalin’s Secret Police examines the Soviet state’s treatment of the enemies of Bolshevism, using methods that were so ruthless that the government was moved to abolish the organization ‘with expressions