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.
Greek Operation of the NKVD end of this campaign. A wave of Greek emigrants from the Soviet Union in 1937—1939 is often considered a consequence of Stalinist persecution of the Soviet Greek national movement. The 1926 Soviet census registered 213,765 Greeks in the country and 286,000 in the 1939 census. On 9 August 1937, NKVD order 00485 was adopted to target "subversive activities of Polish intelligence" in the Soviet Union, but was later expanded to also include Latvians, Germans, Estonians, Finns, Greeks, Iranians and Chinese. The prosecution of Greeks in USSR was gradual: at first the authorities shut down the Greek schools, cultural centres, and