Editing Cheka (section)

== Atrocities ==
The Cheka engaged in the widespread practice of [[torture]]. Depending on Cheka committees in various cities, the methods included:<ref name="Linc">Lincoln (1999).</ref> being skinned alive, scalped, "crowned" with barbed wire, impaled, crucified, hanged, stoned to death, tied to planks and pushed slowly into furnaces or tanks of boiling water, or rolled around naked in internally nail-studded barrels. Chekists reportedly poured water on naked prisoners in the winter-bound streets until they became living ice statues. Others beheaded their victims by twisting their necks until their heads could be torn off.{{Citation needed|date=November 2023|reason=That sounds like way too much work to be real.}} The [[Chinese in Russian Revolution|Cheka detachments]] stationed in [[Kyiv|Kiev]] would attach an iron tube to the torso of a bound victim and insert a rat in the tube closed off with wire netting, while the tube was held over a flame until the rat began gnawing through the victim's guts in an effort to escape.<ref name=Linc />{{Page needed|date=November 2023}}{{Full citation needed|date=November 2023}}

Women and children were also victims of Cheka terror. Women would sometimes be tortured and raped before being shot. Children between the ages of 8 and 13 were imprisoned and occasionally executed.<ref>page 198, Leggett (1986).</ref>{{Full citation needed|date=November 2023}}

All of these atrocities were published on numerous occasions in ''[[Pravda]]'' and ''[[Izvestiya]]'': January 26, 1919 ''Izvestiya'' #18 article ''Is it really a medieval imprisonment?'' («Неужели средневековый застенок?»); February 22, 1919 ''Pravda'' #12 publishes details of the [[Vladimir, Russia|Vladimir]] Cheka's tortures, September 21, 1922 ''Socialist Herald'' publishes details of series of tortures conducted by the [[Stavropol]] Cheka (hot basement, cold basement, skull measuring, etc.).<ref>{{Cite web |title=Russia's Last Capitalists "d0e670" |url=https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft2199n7h5;chunk.id=d0e670;doc.view=print |access-date=2022-11-02 |website=publishing.cdlib.org |pages=40–43}}</ref>

The Chekists were also supplemented by the militarized Units of Special Purpose (the Party's Spetsnaz or {{lang|ru|ЧОН}}).

Cheka was actively and openly utilizing kidnapping methods.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://mozohin.ru/article/a-10.html|title=Правовое регулирование внесудебных полномочий ВЧК - Главы из монографии ВЧК-ОГПУ - Статьи и публикации - Мозохин Олег Борисович - из истории ВЧК ОГПУ НКВД МГБ|website=mozohin.ru|accessdate=December 7, 2024}}</ref><ref>В. П. Данилов. «Советская деревня глазами ВЧК-ОГПУ-НКВД», 1918–1922, М., 1998. // РГВА (Российский Государственный Военно-исторический Архив), 33987/3/32.</ref> With kidnapping methods, Cheka was able to extinguish numerous cases of discontent especially among the rural population. Among the notorious ones was the [[Tambov rebellion]].

Villages were bombarded to complete annihilation, as in the case of Tretyaki, Novokhopersk uyezd, [[Voronezh Governorate]]. {{citation needed|date=December 2010}}

As a result of this relentless violence, more than a few Chekists ended up with psychopathic disorders, which [[Nikolai Bukharin]] said were "an occupational hazard of the Chekist profession." Many hardened themselves to the executions by heavy drinking and drug use. Some developed a gangster-like slang for the verb to kill in an attempt to distance themselves from the killings, such as 'shooting partridges', or 'sealing' a victim, or giving him a ''natsokal'' (onomatopoeia of the trigger action).<ref>page 647, Figes (1996).</ref>

On November 30, 1992, by the initiative of the [[President of the Russian Federation]] the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation recognized the Red Terror as unlawful, which in turn led to the suspension of Communist Party of the RSFSR.