Felix Dzerzhinsky

Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (Russian: Феликс Эдмундович Дзержинский; Polish: Feliks Dzierżyński [ˈfɛliɡz d͡ʑɛrˈʐɨj̃skʲi]; 11 September [O.S. 30 August] 1877 – 20 July 1926), nicknamed "Iron Felix", was a Bolshevik revolutionary and politician. From 1917 until his death in 1926, he led the first two Soviet secret police organizations, the Cheka and the OGPU, establishing state security organs for the post-revolutionary Soviet regime. He was one of the architects of the Red Terror and de-Cossackization.

Born to a Polish family of noble descent in the Minsk Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Belarus), Dzerzhinsky embraced revolutionary politics from a young age and was active in Kaunas as an organizer for the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party. He was frequently arrested and underwent several exiles to Siberia, from which he repeatedly escaped. He participated in the 1905 Russian Revolution and pursued further revolutionary activities in Germany and Poland. Following another arrest in 1912, he spent 4+1⁄2 years in prison before his release after the 1917 February Revolution. He then joined Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik party and played an active role in the October Revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power.

In December 1917, Lenin named Dzerzhinsky head of the newly established All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (Cheka), tasking him with the suppression of counter-revolutionary activities in Soviet Russia. The Russian Civil War saw the expansion of the Cheka's authority, inaugurating a campaign of mass executions known as the Red Terror. The Cheka was reorganized as the State Political Directorate (GPU) in 1922 and then the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) a year later, with Dzerzhinsky remaining head of the powerful organization. In addition, he served as director of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy (VSNKh) from 1924.

Dzerzhinsky died of a heart attack in 1926. He became widely celebrated in the Soviet Union, Poland and other communist countries in the following decades, with numerous places (including the city of Dzerzhinsk) named in his honour, and is among the few Soviet figures to be buried in an individual tomb in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. Meanwhile, he also became a prominent symbol of repression and brutality to critics of the Soviet regime.