“Gangsters stopped the car and robbed V. I. Lenin…” — the exhibition to the 100th anniversary of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Speculation, and Sabotage (Cheka) in the Presidential Library

18 December 2017

On December 18, 2017, the exhibition entitled ““The saving sword of the revolution”: the Chekist (career national security official) in life, cinema and literature” began its work in the Presidential Library. The exposition is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the first Soviet body of state security — the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Speculation, and Sabotage, also known as the Cheka.

As the Director General of the Presidential Library Alexander Vershinin pointed out at the opening of the exposition, such exhibition on top of everything is also a research project, owing to which interesting facts are being sometimes established. The work is carried out through the disclosure of the Presidential Library stock, which contains lots of archival documents, literature, photographs and other sources on the formation, development and everyday work of national security agencies.

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, on the initiative of VI Lenin. He also became one of the first victims, whose case of an assault Cheka investigated in the summer of 1919. “When V. I. Lenin was going on the car through Sokolniki, the gangsters stopped the car and robbed V. I. Lenin near the Sokolniki Council building, taking away his documents, the revolver that was with him and the car and left, — as we can learn from the report of the head of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department Trepalov. — Looking through the documents down the road and finding out that a victim that has just been robbed is chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, Koshelkov turned the car back to catch up on V. I. Lenin and to kill him. Fortunately, V. I. Lenin at the time already was inside the building of the Sokolniki Council and safe.” Then the Koshelkov gang, which had been operating with impunity since 1910, again managed to avoid arrest. But soon career national security officials (Chekists) figured the criminals out and liquidated during the detention.

The protocols of the commission meetings, reports, photographs, instructions, propaganda posters and other archival materials tell about the work of the Cheka. Owing to multimedia equipment, the visitors of the exhibition can “brows through” the periodical edition entitled “The Cheka Weekly,” as well as to read the summaries of the secret department of the Cheka and to see a broad picture of the political, economic and military life of the country, learning about the problems that the Chekists had to face. So, for example, in the summer of 1919 from Detskoye Selo reported: “Very suspicious young women serving as interpreters at the radio station,” and in from Yekaterinburg — “the agents of the White Guard’s military control are left in the city posing as the prostitutes and cabmen. Street boys are used for communication.”

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

The activity of the Cheka for many years has remained one of the most popular themes in the literature and cinema, which was also reflected in the exhibition of the Presidential Library. Through art works and fragments of the movies visitors will be able to see how the image of the real Chekist was created on the screen and the book pages, learn more about the everyday life of the Cheka, as often the stories were based on real events.

The partners of the exhibition were the Central Archive of the Federal Security Service of Russia, the Archive of the Federal Security Service Directorate for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, the Scientific Library named after M. Gorky of St. Petersburg State University, the State Museum of Political History of Russia, and the Russian State Academic Drama Theater named after Alexander Pushkin (Alexandrinsky).

To visit the exposition, please, pre-register by phone (812) 334-25-14 or send an e-mail to: excursion@prlib.ru.