nary" forces - the new Communist government had three years of civil war to give it proof positive of the need to adopt the previous regime's intelligence tactics. The Cheka, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, was hurriedly thrown into place under the leadership of Felix Dzerzhinsky, an incorruptible political purist from a noble Polish family. After the civil war was successfully concluded, Dzerzhinsky reorganized the Cheka into a more permanent entity, the (O)GPU - and supported the rising political star of Joseph Stalin.
By the time of Dzerzhinsky's death and the transformation of the
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