What is the difference between the KGB and the NKVD?
The NKVD (later KGB) carried out mass arrests, deportations, and executions. The targets included both collaborators with Germany and non-Communist resistance movements such as the Polish Home Army and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army aiming to separate from the Soviet Union, among others.
What were secret police used for?
Secret police (or political police) are intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government’s political, religious, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.
What was the USSR secret police called?
the KGB
As the Soviet Union’s primary secret intelligence agency during the Cold War, the KGB gained notoriety for its widespread global espionage. But the organization—and its communist-era predecessors—also played a key role inside the Soviet Union: quashing political dissent.
What did KGB agents do?
The KGB was responsible for foreign intelligence, domestic counterintelligence, technical intelligence, protection of the political leadership, and the security of the Soviet Union’s frontiers.
What are examples of secret police?
secret police, Police established by national governments to maintain political and social control. Generally clandestine, secret police have operated independently of the civil police. Particularly notorious examples were the Nazi Gestapo, the Russian KGB, and the East German Stasi.
What is the Russian equivalent of the Gestapo?
Cheka, also called Vecheka, early Soviet secret police agency and a forerunner of the KGB (q.v.).
What did the Gestapo do?
The Gestapo investigated any person or organization suspected of opposing the Nazi movement. Its presence became pervasive in Germany and later in the countries the German military occupied. The greatly feared Nazi secret police had its origins as a Prussian police force.
What methods did the Gestapo use to torture?
Gestapo officers regularly used intimidation, and psychological and physical torture. It was common for Gestapo officers to beat detainees in custody. Despite the Gestapo’s brutal interrogation methods, they did not often personally kill those whom they arrested. However, some people did die during interrogations or in Gestapo custody.
How did the Gestapo use protective custody?
Protective custody allowed the Gestapo to bypass the court system. Those placed in protective custody could not consult a lawyer, appeal their sentence, or defend themselves in court. The Gestapo even used protective custody to override court decisions in some cases. Typically they did so when they considered the court’s sentence too lenient.