Tsarist Origins

I. Ivan IV’s Oprichnina (1565)

II. Peter I’s Preobrazhenski Prikaz (ca. 1700-1725)

III. Nicholas I’s Third Section (1825-1880)

IV. Military Intelligence

A. Dmitri Miliutin’s Reforms, 1860s

B. Asian Department

Okhrana

I. Department of State Police (1880)/Department of Police (1883)

A. Osobiy Otdel/Special Department

B. Okhrannie Otdeleniia/Security Sections

C. Okhrana (1881)

D. Zagranichnaia Agentura/Foreign Agency

II. Cabinets Noirs and espionage

Russian Revolution

I. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

II. Challenges from within and without

Cheka

I. All-Russian Extraordinary Commision to Combat Counterrevolution, Speculation, and Sabotage, 7/20 Dec 1917

II. Felix Dzerzhinsky

A. “Iron Felix”

III. “Revolutionary Violence against Counterrevolutionaries”

IV. Lubyanka

V. Comintern

VI. Inostranniy Otdel/Foreign Dept.

The Changing Names of State Security

I. NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs)

II. GPU—State Political Directorate/Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie

III. OGPU—Unified State Political Directorate/Obedinenoe Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie

IV. GUGB—Main Administration of State Security

V. NKGB (Peoples Commissariat of State Security/Narodny Kommissariat Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti)

VI. Smersh—Smert Shpionam/Death to Spies

VI. MGB—Ministerstvo Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti/Ministry of State Security

VII. MVD—Ministerstvo Vnutrikh Del/Ministry of Internal Affairs

VIII. KGB