The security organs and the defence-industry complex

Abstract

In the history of the formation of the Soviet state a special place belonged to the security organs — in successive periods, the Cheka, OGPU, NKVD, and MVD.¹ These were sometimes also called the ‘administrative-punitive’ organs, because of their powers to inflict extra-judicial penalties on those whom they regarded with disfavour. In part this was the legacy of the Imperial Russian state, where the Ministry of Internal Affairs was at the heart of the executive power. However to a large extent it was also the consequence of economic and political backwardness. The death of millions of people in World War I and the Civil War was an irreplaceable loss, as was the forced emigration of tens of thousands from the scientific and technical intelligentsia and the worlds of culture and education. A new society had to be created on a material, technical, and cultural base which was much more limited than that which had existed before the revolution, and in very poor living conditions. Thus both internal and external factors led objectively to a strengthening of the security organs. This was particularly reflected in the history of the formation and functioning of the Russian defence-industry complex.