Virtual tour about the history of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Speculation, and Sabotage (Cheka) available on the Presidential Library's portal

The Presidential Library provides a virtual tour of the exhibition "The saving sword of the Revolution": Chekist in life, cinema and literature", devoted to the first Soviet body of state security - the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Speculation, and Sabotage that existed from 1917 to 1922.

Persisting counterrevolution - the political opponents of Soviet power, the Cheka institutions also solved the tasks of countering banditry, espionage, sabotage and terror, profiteering and smuggling during a civil war and economic collapse.

The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Speculation, and Sabotage (Cheka) was formed under the Council of People’s Commissars on December 7 (20), 1917, by the initiative of Vladimir Lenin. He also became one of the first victims, the Cheka investigated the case of assault on him in the summer of 1919. "When Vladimir Lenin drove through Sokolniki - near the Sokolniki Council building, the gangsters stopped his car and robbed him, taking away his documents, revolver, car and left", - we can learn from the report by Trepalov, the Head of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department. "Inspecting en route the stolen documents and discovering that they have just robbed the chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, Koshelkov turned the car around going to return, capture and kill Vladimir Lenin. Fortunately, Vladimir Lenin was already safe in the building of the Sokolniki Council". Then the Koshelkov’s gang, which had been acting with impunity since 1910, managed to avoid arrest again. But soon the Cheka found the criminals and eliminated them during the arrest.

The protocols of the commission meetings, reports, photographs, instructions, propaganda posters and other archival materials tell about the work of the Cheka. The Cheka Weekly periodical as well as the summaries of the secret department of the Cheka provide a detailed representation of the political, economic and military life of the country and also the problems that the Cheka had to face. For example, the report from the Tsarskoye Selo in summer of 1919 states: "Very suspicious young women serving as interpreters at the radio station". A summary from Yekaterinburg includes the following: "there are some agents of the White Guard military control pretending to be the prostitutes and the cabmen. Street boys are used for communication".

Part of the exposition, which presents photographs, documents, publications about and other exciting materials, is dedicated to one of the founders of the Cheka and its leader Felix Dzerzhinsky.

The Cheka’s pursuit through the years has become one of the main themes in literature and cinema, which was also reflected in the exhibition of the Presidential Library. Artworks and movie fragments will show visitors the image of the real Chekist created on the movie screen and in fiction. They reveal the everyday life of the Cheka since often the fiction stories and plots were based on real events.

The Presidential Library also releases the banner exhibition "The saving sword of the Revolution": Chekist in life, cinema and literature", based on the previous exposition and improved with materials provided by the Yulian Semyonov Cultural Foundation. In the 1960s, the works of this writer and screenwriter created a brand new image of the Cheka specialist. First of all, he is an intellectual devoted not only to the revolution but also to the fate of Russia. He acts in the difficult political, social and economic conditions of the changing state system, at the background of a long civil conflict. Such characters are the young Chekist Maksim Isaev and his senior comrades in the novels "Diamonds for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat", "No Password Necessary" and their adaptations. That hero is Felix Dzerzhinsky in the novel-chronicle "Burning" and the movies "December 20" and "The Collapse of Operation "Terror".

Virtual projects are an actively developing area of activity of the Presidential Library, thanks to which the electronic repository, along with paper, photo, audio and video materials, has been added with exhibits from exhibitions, items from museum collections.

More than fourty temporary exhibitions are available for remote visits, which at different times were available in the Presidential Library. They are provided on the library’s portal at Exhibitions section by the link: https://www.prlib.ru/about_exhibition.