State Political Directorate

State Political Directorate

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State Political Directorate

Soviet poster of the 1920s: The GPU strikes on the head the counter-revolutionary saboteur.

The State Political Directorate was the secret police of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and the Soviet Union until 1934. Formed from the Cheka, 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 of the RSFSR" (??????????????? ???????????? ?????????? ???? ?????).

With the creation of the USSR in December of 1922, a unified organization was required to exercise control over state security throughout the new union. Thus, on November 15, 1923, the GPU was transformed into the Joint State Political Directorate - "Ob'edinennoe Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie under the SNK of the USSR" (???????????? ??????????????? ???????????? ?????????? ??? ??? ????), or OGPU (????), also translated as "All-Union State Political Administration".

Perhaps the most spectacular success of the GPU/OGPU was the Trust Operation of 1924-1925. GPU agents contacted émigrés in western Europe and pretended to be representatives of a large group working for the 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, 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 system. It also became the Soviet government's arm for the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Greek Catholics, the Latin Catholics, Islam and other religious organizations (with the exception of Judaism), an operation headed by Eugene Tuchkov.

The OGPU was reincorporated into the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) of the USSR in July 1934, becoming the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) department. Its final transformation was into the more widely known Committee for State Security (KGB).