The Return of Terror’s Architect
16th November 2023
In September, a new statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky was erected in the Moscow suburbs outside of the headquarters of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki (SVR). Dzerzhinsky was the Polish creator of one of the world’s great repressive political machines. In 1917, he had been instructed to create the SVR’s forerunner, known then as the Cheka, by Lenin himself, who much admired the toughness of the man who became known as Iron Felix. The organisation would be called many names—the GPU, OGPU, NKVD, MGB, KGB—and it is now split into the SVR and the domestic Federal Security Service or Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti (FSB).
Iron Felix was Heinrich Himmler plus competence.