Felix Dzerzhinsky - Wikipedia

On July 20, 1926, Felix Dzerzhinsky, often called Iron Felix or Bloody Felix, who established and developed the Soviet secret police (Cheka, forerunner to the KGB), died at age 48.

"Lenin regarded Felix Dzerzhinsky as a revolutionary hero and appointed him to organize a force to combat internal threats. On 20 December 1917, the Council of People's Commissars officially established the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-revolution and Sabotage—usually known as the Cheka (based on the Russian acronym ВЧК). Dzerzhinsky became its director. The Cheka received a large number of resources, and became known for ruthlessly pursuing any perceived counterrevolutionary elements. As the Russian Civil War expanded, Dzerzhinsky also began organizing internal security troops to enforce the Cheka's authority.

The Cheka soon became notorious for mass summary executions, performed especially during the Red Terror and the Russian Civil War.[19][20] The Cheka undertook drastic measures as thousands of political opponents and saboteurs were shot without trial in the basements of prisons and in public places.[21] Dzerzhinsky said: "We represent in ourselves organized terror—this must be said very clearly,"[22] and "[The Red Terror involves] the terrorization, arrests and extermination of enemies of the revolution on the basis of their class affiliation or of their pre-revolutionary roles."[23]

In 1922, at the end of the Civil War, the Cheka was dissolved and reorganized as the State Political Directorate (Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie, or GPU), a section of the NKVD. With the formation of the Soviet Union later that year, the GPU was again reorganized as the Joint State Political Directorate (Obyedinyonnoye gosudarstvennoye politicheskoye upravleniye, or OGPU), directly under the Council of People's Commissars. These changes did not diminish Dzerzhinsky's power; he was Minister of the Interior, director of the Cheka/GPU/OGPU, Minister for Communications, and director of the Vesenkha (Supreme Council of National Economy) 1921–24.

At his office in Lubyanka, Dzerzhinsky kept a portrait of Rosa Luxemburg on the wall.[24]

Besides his leadership of the secret police, Dzerzhinsky also took on a number of other roles; he led the fight against typhus in 1918, was chair of the Commissariat for Internal Affairs from 1919 to 1923, initiated a vast orphanage construction program, chaired the Transport Commissariat, organised the embalming of Lenin's body in 1924 and chaired the Society of Friends of Soviet Cinema."