V. D. Bonch-Bruevich, then in charge of the Sovnarkom and a participant in the formation of the Bolshevik secret police, compared Dzerzhinsky to Antoine Quentin Fouquier de Tinville, the public prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal from the French Revolution.160 N. I. Bukharin, who in 1919 represented the Central Committee of the Party at the Collegium of the Cheka, justified the Bolshevik terror several years later by quoting Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, claiming, “One needs to rule by iron, if it is impossible to rule by law.”161 M. I. Latsis gave the following blueprint for interrogating the accused: “[D]o not look for clues as to whether or not they rose up against the soviet in arms or in words. Your first duty is ask what class the accused belongs to, their social background, their education, and their profession. All of these questions will decide the fate of the accused.”162 In this sense, Latsis was simply paraphrasing Robespierre's statements from the National Convention concerning the introduction of the Law of 22 Prairial, which opened the Reign of Terror: “The only delay in punishing the enemies of the fatherland should be until such time as they are found out: it is not so much a question of punishing as of destroying them.”163 It is worth remembering that according to the Law of 22 Prairial, all legal guarantees (the right to question, the right to defense, and to hear the testimony of witnesses) were suspended. Instead the inner convictions of the judge and jury were deemed sufficient to decide whether one was innocent or should be put to death. Revolutionary tribunals worked alongside committees that made do without juries. In this the Bolsheviks took much from their French predecessors. After all, was the “judicial troika” of December 1918, which included Dzerzhinsky, Latsis, Kedrov, and Ksenofontov, anything more than a direct “borrowing” from the French Terror?164 Perhaps it was the following excerpt from Saint-Just's speech at the Convention on October 10, 1793 that led the Cheka to name their journal Red Sword: “You must punish nor merely traitors but the indifferent as well; you must punish whoever is passive in the Republic…between the people and its enemies there can be nothing in common but the sword.”165
It is possible that such majestic phrases were intended to raise the stature of the Chekists in their own eyes. Even among their comrades within the Party, their investigations and punitive actions were less than popular (to say nothing of the terror they enforced on the rest of the population). It was only later that the image of the “valiant Chekist” was to take hold, thanks to the efforts of some (far from untalented) journalists, writers, and directors. For the moment they were (to use M. I. Latsis's formulation) the “thugs” of the revolution. The Cheka constantly experienced a dearth of workers, one that was all the more pressing as they were unable to rely on the pool of civil servants who had served before the Revolution.166
At this stage the Cheka was hardly an elite intellectual segment of the Bolshevik apparatus, and its workers left much to be desired in the education department. Only 0.8 percent of those working for the Cheka in 1920 had completed a degree, 1.1 percent had at least spent some time in a post-secondary institution. 13.7 percent of workers had completed high school, while 12.5 percent had completed only some high school.167 By 1921, the percentage of those with higher education had risen to 1.03 percent (513 individuals), while the overwhelming majority (57.3 percent) had not gone beyond primary school.168 Of course, at this point the Cheka was not engaged in sophisticated special operations; their main function was to instill terror. Loyalty to the Bolshevik Party was more important than any education.
A distinct picture of the Jewish Chekists can be found in the biographical directory of the elite of the NKVD from 1934 to 1941. Of the Jews serving in the upper echelons of the NKVD in the 1930s, three-quarters (seventy-eight individuals) had begun their careers from 1918 to 1921. Nearly all of them (sixty-nine) came from former Pale territories, while the lion's share (sixty-six) came from a rather suspect class background, with most coming from the families of petty merchants or craftsmen. All but four of them were less than 30 years of age when they joined the Cheka. Thirty-five individuals were between 15 and 20, twenty-four between 21 and 25, and fourteen between 26 and 30. Half of them (thirty-seven) came to the Cheka from the Red Army, where nearly all of them started in the ranks. Fourteen of them had even managed to serve in the Tsarist Army. Six of these future leaders of the NKVD had either never gone to school or are missing educational information, nineteen had a primary education or had studied in school for a year or two, fourteen had an incomplete secondary education, twenty-six had a secondary education, eleven had an incomplete higher education, while two had completed teachers' exams. Four individuals had joined the Party before the revolution, while most of the rest had joined during the Civil War. Some had been members of other political parties, including some Jewish parties (four from Poalei Zion, and one Bundist).169
The monograph ChK-GPU-NKVD in Ukraine: People, Facts, Documents, which examines the activities of Soviet security forces in Ukraine, includes some information about Jewish Chekists. Besides the individuals discussed, it lists thirty-five additional agents who began their careers in the period 1918– 21. Although some data is missing, the general picture is nonetheless intriguing. Of these thirty-five individuals, nine joined the Cheka between the ages of 15 and 20, ten between 21 and 25, and seven between 26 and 30. Fifteen of them came to the Cheka from the Red Army, where they had nearly all served in the ranks. Three had no formal education, eleven had failed to complete primary school, with an additional eleven completing a primary education, two had an incomplete secondary education, and six had completed secondary school. Twenty-six came from former Pale territories, while two were born beyond the Pale. Only three came from workers' families, while two were of the intelligentsia. The rest came from the craftsmen, servants, or small business owners (there is only information for twenty-eight people). Twenty-one entered the Bolshevik Party from 1917 to 1921, while two were members before the revolution. Among those who joined after the revolution, one was a former SR, one an anarchist, and one was a member of Poalei Zion.170
Let us look at some of the survey data regarding those Jews who joined the Cheka during the Civil War, and went on to make a career for themselves in the organization.171 Among those of the “older generation” were Lev Belskii (Abram Levin), Iakov Genkin, and Samuil Gilman. Belskii was the son of a worker who was employed at a shipping office. He had successfully passed correspondence exams that qualified him as a private tutor and a pharmacist's apprentice. He worked as a pharmacist, joined the army in 1911, and went to the front in July 1914. He was a member of the Bund from 1905 to 1907, and joined the Bolsheviks in July 1917. In April 1918, at the age of 29, he was appointed the chair of the Simbirsk gubernia Cheka, and he continued to ascend the ranks of the organization. Genkin was the son of a teacher at a Jewish school who likewise had passed his tutor's exam. Before the revolution he worked as a mechanic and tinsmith. He completed four years at the local city school, and served in the army from 1911 to 1920. In March 1919, he joined the Bolshevik party. In 1921, at the age of 31, he was promoted from the ranks to the position of Cheka inspector of his division.
Most of those working for the Cheka were much younger, 20 years of age on average. The youngest was Mark Rogol, who had been born in Odessa to the family of a glass-blower. From the age of 13 he worked as an unskilled laborer at a tobacco factory, he joined the Bolsheviks by 15 (at the age of 17 he was expelled for drunkenness, but was later readmitted), and became an agitator for the Odessa Gubkom. Within a month (March 1920) he had joined the local Cheka, and by July was the deputy of the head of the Kremenchug Cheka. By September 1920 he was the head of Information and Intelligence for the Politburo of the Cheka of the Aleksandria uezd.
Mikhail Andreev (Sheinkman) was the son of a porter, had received a primary education, and joined the Bolsheviks in 1919. He became the deputy of the Mozyr uezd Cheka in July 1920, at the age of only 17. By December 1920 he was an investigator for the Belorussian