Cheka

American  

[che-kah] / ˈtʃɛ kɑ /

noun

1. (in the Soviet Union) the state secret-police organization (1917–22), succeeded by the GPU.

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Cheka British  

/ ˈtʃɛka /

noun

1. Russian history the secret police set up in 1917 by the Bolshevik government: reorganized in the Soviet Union in Dec 1922 as the GPU

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Other Word Forms

• Chekist noun

Etymology

Origin of Cheka

1920–25; < Russian Cheká, Vecheká, names of the initial letters of Vserossíĭskaya chrezvycháĭnaya Kommíssiya ( po bor'bé s kontrarevolyútsieĭ, spekulyátsieĭ i sabotázhem ) All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (for the Struggle against Counterrevolution, Speculation and Sabotage)

Example Sentences

Long opposed to releasing the contents of the Cheka bags, he said their publication will make it much more difficult for people who had collaborated to talk honestly about what they did and why.

From New York Times

Latvia, one of three Baltic nations reborn as independent states in 1991, has been arguing for nearly three decades over what to do with the so-called Cheka bags, sacks and briefcases stuffed with secret files left behind by the K.G.B., the Soviet secret police agency originally known as the Cheka.

From New York Times

On Dec. 20, the Russian government proudly celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Cheka, the Soviet secret police.

From Washington Post

He asserted that the early actions of the Cheka were directed against “the subversive activities of a wide counterrevolutionary-terrorist underground linked with émigré circles and foreign secret services” and affirmed that there was an “objective side” to the prosecutions and show trials during the Great Terror of the 1930s.

From Washington Post

This was only the start of a seven-decade war by the Soviet regime on its own citizens, with varying brutality and scale, but with the Cheka — later known as the GPU, the NKVD, the MGB and the KGB — always in the avant-garde of repression.

From Washington Post