As the Soviet Union's primary secret intelligence agency during the Cold War , the KGB gained notoriety for its widespread global espionage. But the organizationβand its communist-era predecessorsβalso played a key role inside the Soviet Union : quashing political dissent.
Protecting the homeland from internal enemies has concerned Russian leaders for centuries, spawning a long series of repressive secret police agencies. After the communist revolution , the Cheka served the same role for the Bolsheviks.
Soviet bloc satellite states, such as Hungary, Poland and East Germany, supported their own version of these agencies. Here are some of the ways that Soviet-era secret police discharged their internal security duties, responding to the demands of different leaders and changing historical circumstances.
After the October Revolution of placed the Bolsheviks in power, a civil war raged, with the communist Red Army being fought by a loose coalition of counterrevolutionaries: monarchists, social democrats, foreign powers and others.
Being the wrong kind of person a priest, a hungry food hoarder or being in the wrong place at the wrong time or simply possessing a firearm was enough to earn someone a death sentence from newly formed revolutionary tribunals.
