What is the nkvd secret police

Rykov, who headed the NKVD only briefly, in Republican commissariats of internal affairs had been abolished in After F. Menzhinsky until May The unified NKVD —41 consisted of numerous main administrations and departments of Union, republic, and lower levels.

Later the main administrations of state surveying and cartography, highways, and weights and measures were added to the NKVD. The commissariat also had an administrative-economic administration, a department of acts of civil status, and a department of colonization. It is evident from its structure that the NKVD was much more than an organ of state security.

In fact in the s and s its economic role was most conspicuous. Its labor reserves were used in numerous large-scale construction projects, lumbering, and gold mining, and its contribution to the Soviet economy was factored into the five-year plans.

The GUGB was subdivided into six major departments: special, economic, operative, foreign, transport, and political. The first kept the military under surveillance and was a key source of information on anti-Soviet groups. The economic department was responsible for combating economic sabotage in industry and agriculture. The operative department guarded the top leaders, including Joseph Stalin , and key installations. With the rise of Joseph Stalin, the secret police which had once been used purely for enforcement, expanded its control over the country.

Stalin was historically paranoid and used the NKVD as his own private force for eliminating people he thought were disloyal or a threat. The main purpose of the NKVD was national security, and they made sure their presence was well known.

People were arrested and sent to work camps for the most mundane things. Sometimes it was referred to by the acronym "Narkomvnudel" made up of the first syllables of its component words. The NKVD also had control over the prison labor camps and censorship. In the square was renamed Dzerzhinsky Square, after the first director of the Cheka, Feliks Dzerzhinsky he was also known as "Iron Felix" and the "friend of children" for his work with war orphans!

Here's a close up of the building in the 20s and note the trams! A statue of Dzerzhinsky stood in the middle of the square until it was removed by an angry mob after the coup attempt. The building housed administrative offices, interrogation rooms, and a prison. The NKVD building was expanded.