Free Republic

In his study The Gulag Archipelago, Alexandr Solzenitsyn records that “the creation of fabricated cases began back in the early years of the Organs” – that is, immediately after the Soviet secret police agency was created in 1917. The routine fabrication of offenses was done by the Chekists “so that their constant salutary activity might be perceived as essential. Otherwise, what with a decline in the number of enemies, the Organs might, in a bad hour, have been forced to wither away.” From its inception, the Soviet secret police agency was engaged in what we now call “Homeland Security Theater.”

A statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police, Cheka, was unveiled in front of the headquarters of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) in Moscow on September 11. The statue is a replica of a larger Dzerzhinsky statue, one of the symbols of Soviet repression, which was pulled from its pedestal outside KGB headquarters in August 1991. SVR Director Sergei Naryshkin said at the ceremony for the statue's unveiling that Dzerzhinsky's face on the original and new statues is turned toward Poland and Baltic states "because the threat to Russia from the northwest remains."

Ok, so the Left has been claiming Trump was a FRAUD and never made ANY money. So, then why would he OWE Income tax, if, according to them, he never made any, just lost it? Checkmake, MOFO!

On this date in 1920, the Cheka shot famed female soldier Maria Bochkareva (or Botchkareva). The “Russian Joan of Arc” was a peasant woman from Novgorod by way of Siberia. She’d been in the workforce since the age of eight, and had passed almost continuously through abusive male relationships (violently drunken father, marriages to two wife-batterers). She’d also in that time shown herself a natural leader, and become a construction foreman.

President Vladimir Putin signed a decree restoring the title "Dzerzhinsky Division" to an elite police unit that was previously named after the founder of the Bolshevik secret police, the Interior Ministry's internal troops press service said Monday. Felix Dzerzhinsky founded the Cheka, a security apparatus notorious for orchestrating mass summary executions during the Russian Civil War and the Red Terror. Established in 1924, the unit bore his name from 1926 until 1994, when its name was changed to the Independent Operational Purpose Division, the press service said. The Dzerzhinsky Division ensured security at the Potsdam Conference of 1945 and the...

Moscow legislators backtracked on claims that they are considering the return of a monument honoring the founder of the Soviet secret police to the center of the city. The city parliament made no plans concerning the return of the statue of Felix "Iron Felix" Dzerzhinsky, legislature speaker Vladimir Platonov said on Ekho Moskvy radio Saturday. City lawmakers have no right to pitch such initiatives anyway and can only rule on their funding, said Platonov, a member of the ruling United Russia party. Fellow city lawmaker Andrei Metelsky said earlier Saturday that the Dzerzhinsky statue was a historical landmark and could...

Four out of five members of Russia's political and business elite have a KGB past, according to a new study by the prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences. The study, which looked at 1.061 top Kremlin, regional, and corporate jobs, found that "78 percent of the Russian elite" are what are known in Russia as "siloviki," which is to say, former members of the KGB or its domestic successor, the FSB...

In his new book The Red Phoenix, Hans Graf Huyn, the German expert on Russian deception, provides some details on the extent of the recent transformation: "The Russian mafia has direct control over 40.960 commercial enterprises, among them 449 banks, 37 stock exchanges, 678 markets and 566 joint ventures with Western participation. About 55% of Russian capital is in the hands of "the mafia." Some 693 gangs have in the meantime founded their own "legal" institutes for laundering money...

MINSK, Belarus - A monument to Soviet secret police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky was unveiled Friday in the Belarusian capital Minsk, provoking protests from human rights defenders and opposition politicians. Dzerzhinsky, reviled by critics of the Soviet era, helped establish the first Soviet secret service, called the Cheka, in 1917 under Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. The Cheka, a forerunner of the KGB, was responsible for mass arrests and executions.

"Iron Felix" reappeared in central Moscow this week...the Cheka founder's stern bronze visage was quietly re-erected Tuesday morning at the headquarters of...the nation's primary police agency. ... For much of the last decade, Russia has seen the dark side of the Soviet past — the stifling political climate, the gulag camps, the lines at the food shops — fade into memory amid the failed promises of a market economy. The Cheka was disbanded in 1922...but many...talk fondly of a nation that was educated, fed, reasonably healthy and a superpower. Today, what with stark disparities in wealth, pervasive crime, rampant alcoholism,...

Moscow Police Retrieves Iron Felix. The Moscow city police has given itself a present for the Police Day and set up the monument of Felix Dzerzhinsky at the square in front of the Interior Ministry’s headquarters in central Moscow where it once stood. The monument of the notorious founder of the Soviet secret police was put down during the 1991 coup. Now the sculpture has been re-installed at the initiative of the Council of Veterans of the Moscow Department for the Interior who laud Dzerzhinsky on “his activities to tackle the issue of homeless children” and “crime fighting”. Social organizations...

Belarus Unveils Memorial to KGB Founder Dzerzhinsky MosNews Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko, criticized in the West for his authoritarian tendencies, presented the public with a new memorial to Soviet secret police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky at a ceremony in the Minsk region Thursday. “The united principles and high aims established by our predecessors are a good foundation for strengthening ties between our special forces,” Interfax quoted the Belarus president as saying at the opening ceremony, held in Dzerzhinsky’s home town, now named Dzerzhinovo, where the memorial was erected. Russia has forged close ties with the former Soviet state, now its closest...

Gun used to kill prosecutor is focus of massive search By Steve Miletich Seattle Times staff reporter FBI agents are conducting an unusually sweeping search for a customized gun used in the killing of Seattle federal prosecutor Thomas Wales, according to the owner of a Minnesota arms company and sources familiar with the investigation. The gun, an Eastern European-made semiautomatic pistol called a Makarov, had been fitted with a replacement barrel that leaves telltale marks on bullets. The search, one of the most laborious gun sweeps in FBI history, is taking place in all 50 states, as agents track down...