Editing Cheka (section)

== Popular culture ==
* The Cheka were popular staples in Soviet film and literature. This was partly due to a romanticization of the organisation in the post-Stalin period, and also because they provided a useful action/detection template. Films featuring the Cheka include [[Ostern]]'s ''[[Miles of Fire]]'', [[Nikita Mikhalkov]]'s ''[[At Home among Strangers]]'', the miniseries ''[[The Adjutant of His Excellency]]'', and also ''[[Dead Season]]'' (starring [[Donatas Banionis]]), and the [[1992 in film|1992]] [[cinema of Russia|Russian]] [[Drama (film and television)|drama film]] ''[[The Chekist]]''.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103949/|title=Chekist|date=1 January 2000|via=IMDb}}</ref>
* In Spain, during the [[Spanish Civil War]], the detention and torture centers operated by the [[Republican faction (Spanish Civil War)|Republicans]] were named "''checas''" after the Soviet organization.<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.firmaspress.com/285.htm|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20031205105934/http://www.firmaspress.com/285.htm|author=Carlos Alberto Montaner|title=International justice begins at home|work=[[Miami Herald]]|date= August 4, 2003|archivedate=2003-12-05|accessdate=December 7, 2024}}</ref>{{Better source needed|reason=The current source is insufficiently reliable ([[WP:NOTRS]]). It is a opinion column commenting a book authored by a right-wing writer.|date=March 2023}} [[Alfonso Laurencic]] was their promoter, ideologist and builder.<ref>[[Rafael Chacón]], "''Por qué hice las checas de Barcelona. Laurencic ante el consejo de guerra''", ''Editorial Solidaridad nacional'', Barcelona, 1939.</ref>
* Dzerzhinsky, who rarely drank, is said to have told Lenin – on an occasion in which he did so excessively – that secret police work could be done by "only saints or scoundrels ... but now the saints are running away from me and I am left with the scoundrels<ref>{{Cite web|last=Stove|first=R. J.|title=Nationalobserver.net|url=http://www.nationalobserver.net/2001_winter_106.htm|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070623095512/http://www.nationalobserver.net/2001_winter_106.htm|archive-date=2007-06-23|access-date=2021-12-31|website=www.nationalobserver.net|publisher=[[Wayback Machine]]}}</ref>".
* ''[[The Chekist]]'', directed by [[Aleksandr Rogozhkin]], is a 1992 French–Russian film based on a 1923 short story by Vladimir Zazubrin. It tells the story of a bloody work and downfall of a Soviet Cheka security official involved in mass executions during the [[Russian Civil War]].
* ''[[The Soviet Story]]'', a 2008 Latvian film, mentioned that Cheka is the Soviet terror machine, and Cheka is the "teacher" of Nazi [[gestapo]].