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.
Polish Operation of the NKVD victims were ethnically Polish, but not all, wrote Timothy Snyder. The remainder were 'suspected' of being Polish, without further inquiry, or classed as possibly having pro-Polish sympathies. In order to speed up the process the NKVD personnel reviewed local telephone books and arrested persons with Polish-sounding names. The Polish Operation was the largest ethnic shooting and deportation action during the Great Terror campaign of political murders in the Soviet Union, orchestrated by Nikolai Yezhov.<ref name="B/E/F"></ref> It is also the largest killing of Poles in history outside any armed conflict. The top secret NKVD Order No. 00485, titled ""On the liquidation