Thursday, July 9, 2015

CHEKA Women – Bolshevik Secret Police: Sadism, Torture, Summary Executions & Massacres as “Social Justice” - 1918-1920s


No information about the woman given by English newspapers the name of “Jacobleva” has yet been located. “Jacobleva” (transliterated) may be a nom de guerre rather than a proper name.

The other three figures appear briefly in some studies of the Red Guard. Further research is needed. Perhaps visitors who have studied Bolshevism in detail can assist.

This post will be augmented after consulting the book: Barbara Evans Clements, Bolshevik Women (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

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1) “Jacobleva” – Petrograd

EXCERPT: The real dictator of Petrograd is a woman of the name of Jacobleva, aged 22, who, in her capacity, of the head of the famous Commission (the Extraordinary Committee for Fighting the Counter-Revolution, Speculation, and Sabotage), surpasses all existing legends of cruelty. [“Woman Dictator - Chaos In Petrograd.” (Kalgoorie, Australia), Feb. 26, 1919, p. 6]

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2) Vera Grebeniukova (aka Dora) – Odessa, Ukraine

“A large share of the torturers were of non-Russian nationalities, selected in Lenin’s assessment Russians seemed ‘too mushy,’ unable to cope with the ‘tough measures.’ Among the torturers there were also women. “Vera Grebennikova, one in Odessa, in just two months have killed 700 people.” (autostranslate revised by RStE)
[“Ideologias e ideias,” 06 de Abril de 2010, Boletim (newsletter) – 708]

“Women were also not exempt from the perpetration of sadistic violence. Vera Grebennikova, for example, was alleged to have killed over 700 people, many of them with her bare hands, during two months in Odessa..”
[Читать онлайн "A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924" автора Figes Orlando - RuLit - Страница 239]

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3) Rozalia Zemliachka (Rozalia Samuilovna Zalkind) – Ukraine

“Rozalia Zemliachka and her lover Bela Kun murdered 50,000 White officers (with Lenin's approval). They were tied in pairs to planks and burned alive in furnaces; or drowned in barges that she sank offshore.” [Crimes of the Century, C. J. Griffin, on 20 July 2005, Amazon book review]

Wikipedia: Rozalia Samuilovna Zalkind (Russian: Залкинд Розалия Самуиловна) known under nicknames Devil (for personal participation in mass executions) and Zemlyachka (20 March 1876 – 21 January 1947) was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician and statesman. She is best known for her involvement in the organization of the First Russian revolution, and along with Bela Kun, as one of the organizers of the Red Terror in the Crimea in 1920-1921, against former soldiers of the White Army.

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4) Rebecca Platinina-Maisel – Arkhangelsk

“In Arkhangel, Rebecca Platinina snuffed out the lives of more than a hundred, including the entire family of her husband, who was executed by crucifixion, in a an act of wanton revenge. “ The agents who committed these brutalities ended their days immersed in insanity. According to Gippius, a major female poet of Petrograd during the period of the red terror observed that “there was literally a single family in which someone had not been arrested, taken and then disappeared without a trace.” (autostranslate revised by RStE) [“Ideologias e ideias,” 06 de Abril de 2010, Boletim (newsletter) – 708]

“Rebecca Platinina-Maisel in Arkhangelsk killed over a hundred, including the whole family of her ex-husband whom she crucified in an act of savage revenge. Such was the brutalizing effect of this relentless violence that not a few Chekists ended up insane. Bukharin said that psychopathic disorders were an occupational hazard of the Chekist profession. Many Chekists hardened themselves to the killings by heavy drinking or drug abuse.” [Читать онлайн "A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924" автора Figes Orlando - RuLit - Страница 239]

“Rebecca Platinina-Maisel” cited in: Orlando Figes, Tragedie van een volk: de Russische revolutie 1891-1924, p. 794

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Wikipedia excerpt:

Cheka (ЧК – чрезвыча́йная коми́ссия chrezvychaynaya komissiya, Emergency Committee, Russian pronunciation: [tɕɪˈka]) was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created on December 20, 1917, after a decree issued by Vladimir Lenin, and was subsequently led by Felix Dzerzhinsky, a Polish aristocrat turned communist. By late 1918, hundreds of Cheka committees had been created in various cities, at multiple levels including: oblast, guberniya ("Gubcheks"), raion, uyezd, and volost Chekas, with Raion and Volost Extraordinary Commissioners. Many thousands of dissidents, deserters, or other people were arrested, tortured or executed by various Cheka groups. After 1922, Cheka groups underwent a series of reorganizations, with the NKVD, into bodies whose members continued to be referred to as "Chekisty" (Chekists) into the late 1980s.

From its founding, being the military and security arm of the Bolshevik communist party, the Cheka was instrumental in the Red Terror. In 1921 the Troops for the Internal Defense of the Republic (a branch of the Cheka) numbered at least 200,000. These troops policed labor camps; ran the Gulag system; conducted requisitions of food; subjected political opponents to torture and summary execution; and put down rebellions and riots by workers or peasants, and mutinies in the desertion-plagued Red Army.

[5113-8/23/21]
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