Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies <br> There was a succession of Soviet secret police agencies over time. The first secret police after the October Revolution, created by Vladimir Lenin's decree on December 20, 1917, was called "Cheka" (ЧК). Officers were referred to as "chekists", a name that is still informally applied to people under the Federal Security Service of Russia, the KGB's successor in Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. For most agencies listed here secret policing operations were only part of their function; for instance, the KGB was both the secret police and the intelligence agency.
Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939–1946) under "de facto" military occupation for many years to come, controlled by the Soviet Northern Group of Forces, which were stationed in Poland until 1956. Some 25,000 Polish underground fighters, including 300 top Home Army officers, were captured by NKVD units and SMERSH operational groups in the fall of 1944. They suffered mass deportations to the gulags. Between 1944 and 1946, thousands of Polish independence fighters actively opposed the new communist regime, attacking country offices of NKVD, SMERSH and the Polish communist secret service (UB). The events of the late 1940s amounted to a full-scale civil war according to some