Founding Following the formation of the
Soviet Union in December 1922, the ruling
Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) saw the need for a unified
intelligence service to exercise control over
state security throughout the new union. At the time, the
State Political Directorate (GPU) served as the
secret police for the
Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR) and was successor to the
Cheka. It was responsible to the
Council of People's Commissars, which functioned as the highest
executive body of the Soviet Union after the formation. On 15 November 1923, the GPU was dissolved and reformed into the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) with its
jurisdiction covering the entirety of the Soviet Union. Its official full name was the Joint State Political Directorate under the
Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (), though the name is also translated as the All-Union State Political Administration or as Unified State Political Directorate.
Felix Dzerzhinsky, who had served as the chairman of the State Political Directorate and of the Cheka, was appointed as the OGPU's first chief. The OSNAZ (), a militarised section of the Cheka, had originated in 1921; it became a component of OGPU. Jews constituted around 15.1% of the OGPU's leading officials in 1918 and half of the members of it's collegium.
Operations The OGPU, like the GPU before it, was in theory supposed to operate with more restraint than the Cheka, which had orchestrated the
Red Terror from 1918 to 1922. Unlike the Cheka, the OGPU could not shoot "
counter-revolutionaries" at will, and most suspected
political criminals had to be brought before a judge. The OGPU's powers increased greatly in 1926, when the was amended to include
Article 58, a section on anti-state
terrorism. The provisions were vaguely written and very broadly interpreted. Even before then, OGPU had set up
tribunals to try the most exceptional cases of terrorism, usually without calling any witnesses. In time, the OGPU's
de facto powers grew even greater than those of the Cheka. The OGPU achieved perhaps its most spectacular success with the
Trust Operation of 1924–1925. OGPU agents contacted
White émigrés and
anti-communists in
Western Europe and pretended to represent a large group, known as "the Trust", working to overthrow the communist régime. Exiled Russians gave "the Trust" large sums of money and supplies, as did foreign intelligence agencies. Soviet agents finally succeeded in luring one of the leading anti-communist operators,
Sidney Reilly, into Russia to meet with the Trust. Once in the Soviet Union in September 1925, Reilly was arrested and executed. The Trust was then dissolved, having become a huge
propaganda success. Dzerzhinsky died in 1926 and was succeeded as chief of the OGPU by deputy chairman
Vyacheslav Menzhinsky. From 1927 to 1929, the OGPU engaged in intensive investigations of an opposition
coup d'etat. Soviet leader
Joseph Stalin issued a public
decree that any and all opposition views should be considered dangerous and gave the OGPU the authority to seek out "hostile elements." That led in March 1928 to the
Shakhty Trial, which saw the prosecution of a group of supposed industrial saboteurs allegedly involved in a hostile conspiracy. That would be the first of many trials during Stalin's rule. The OGPU planned and set up the
Gulag system, and also became the Soviet government's arm for the
persecution of the
Russian Orthodox Church, the
Greek Catholics, the
Roman Catholic Church,
Islam and other religious organizations, in an operation headed by
Yevgeny Tuchkov. The OGPU was also the principal secret police agency responsible for the detection, arrest, and liquidation of
anarchists and other dissident left-wing factions in the early Soviet Union. It also enforced the
Dekulakization campaigns during the
First Five-Year Plan through extrajudicial
special troikas of local OGPU agents,
Communist Party officials, and
state procurators with the authority to sentence suspects to
exile or
death without a formal trial in the
Soviet judicial system. OGPU troops took part in
Soviet invasion of Xinjiang.
Dissolution Menzhinsky's health had deteriorated rapidly during his directorship of the OGPU and Stalin tended to deal with his first deputy,
Genrikh Yagoda, who essentially took over as head in the late 1920s. Menzhinsky spent his last years as an invalid until his death in May 1934, for which Yagoda would later be blamed in the
Trial of the Twenty One. In July 1934, two months after Menzhinsky's death, the OGPU was dissolved and reincorporated into the
People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the newly created
interior ministry of the Soviet Union, becoming its
Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) under the leadership of Yagoda. The OGPU would later be transformed into the more widely known
Committee for State Security (KGB) in 1954. ==See also==