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This is Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, 1877-1926 (he was dubbed by people as the Iron Felix). He was the first chairman of the Cheka from 1917 until his death from a heart attack. Dzerzhinsky was also known as the "friend of children" for the work he preformed helping the orphans of war! (This information is actually good for a laugh, considering that while he was chief of police thousands, and perhaps millions of young Russian children were orphaned, living in poverty, starving, diseased, living as prostitutes on the streets, and were even recruited into the red army. So much for being a "friend of children".) The word Cheka is a Russian noun meaning "lynchpin" Cheka is also an abbreviation coming from two Russian words, extraordinary (in Russian "chrezvichaynaya") and commission (in Russian "komissiya"). These two words begin with the Russian letters 'ch' and 'k', this last letter is pronounced 'ka' So, Che - ka. The central cheka station is Moscow was often called the "vserossiskaya" or All - Russian. So the Cheka was often called the All - Russian Extraordinary Commission. VCheka for short. The full name was the All Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Speculation. The secret police named Cheka was formed between the dates of December 7 and the 20th, 1917 after an official decree by Lenin's Sovnarkom, (the Council of People's Commissars) was passed.
