Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies


There were a succession of Soviet secret police agencies over time. The Okhrana was abolished by the Provisional government after the first revolution of 1917, and the first secret police after the October Revolution, created by Vladimir Lenin's decree on December 20, 1917, was called "Cheka". Officers were referred to as "chekists", a name that is still informally applied to people under the Federal Security Service of Russia, the KGB's successor in Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
For most agencies listed here, secret policing operations were only part of their function; for instance, the KGB was both a secret police and an intelligence agency.

History of the Soviet state security organs

Detailed chronology

  • Cheka
  • *Felix Dzerzhinsky
  • *Jēkabs Peterss
  • *Felix Dzerzhinsky
February 6, 1922: Cheka transforms into GPU, a department of the NKVD of the Russian SFSR.
November 15, 1923: GPU leaves the NKVD and becomes all-union OGPU under direct control of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.
  • OGPU – "Joint State Political Directorate" or "All-Union State Political Board"
  • *Felix Dzerzhinsky
  • *Vyacheslav Menzhinsky
  • *Genrikh Yagoda
July 10, 1934: NKVD of the Russian SFSR ceases to exist and transforms into the all-union NKVD of the USSR; OGPU becomes GUGB in the all-union NKVD.
  • NKVD – "People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs"
  • *GUGB – "Main Directorate for State Security"
  • **Genrikh Yagoda
  • **Nikolai Yezhov
  • **Lavrentiy Beria
February 3, 1941: The GUGB of the NKVD was briefly separated out into the NKGB, then merged back in, and then on April 14, 1943, separated out again.
  • NKGB – "People's Commissariat for State Security"
  • *Vsevolod Merkulov
  • NKVD – "People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs"
  • *GUGB – "Main Directorate for State Security"
  • **Lavrentiy Beria
  • NKGB – "People's Commissariat for State Security"
  • *Vsevolod Merkulov
March 18, 1946: All People's Commissariats were renamed to Ministries.
  • MGB – "Ministry of State Security"
  • *Vsevolod Merkulov
  • *Viktor Abakumov
  • *Sergei Ogoltsov
  • *Semyon Ignatiev
The East German secret police, the Stasi, took their name from this iteration.
  • – "Committee of Information"
  • *Pyotr Fedotov MGB
  • *Fedor Kuznetsov GRU
  • *Yakov Malik Foreign Ministry
May 30, 1947: Official decision with the expressed purpose of "upgrading coordination of different intelligence services and concentrating their efforts on major directions". In the summer of 1948 the military personnel in KI were returned to the Soviet military to reconstitute foreign military intelligence service. KI sections dealing with the new East Bloc and Soviet émigrés were returned to the MGB in late 1948. In 1951 the KI returned to the MGB.
March 5, 1953: MVD and MGB are merged into the MVD by Lavrentiy Beria.
  • MVD – "Ministry of Internal Affairs"
  • *Lavrentiy Beria
  • *Sergei Kruglov
March 13, 1954: Newly independent force became the KGB, as Beria was purged and the MVD divested itself again of the functions of secret policing. After renamings and tumults, the KGB remained stable until 1991.
  • KGB – Committee for State Security
  • *Ivan Serov
  • *
  • *Alexander Shelepin
  • *Pyotr Ivashutin
  • *Vladimir Semichastny
  • *Yuri Andropov
  • *Vitaly Fedorchuk
  • *Viktor Chebrikov
  • *Vladimir Kryuchkov
  • *Leonid Shebarshin
  • *Vadim Bakatin
In the aftermath of the 1991 Soviet coup attempt, when the State Emergency Committee failed to overthrow Gorbachev and Yeltsin took over, General Vadim Bakatin was given instructions to dissolve the KGB.
In Russia today, KGB functions are performed by the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Federal Counterintelligence Service which later became the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation in 1995, and the Federal Protective Service. The GRU continues to operate as well.

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