Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (Russian: Феликс Эдмундович Дзержинский; Polish: Feliks Edmundowicz Dzierżyński [ˈfɛliks ɛdmundɔvʲiʈ͡ʂ d͡ʑɛrʐɨj̃skʲi];[a] 11 September [O.S.

[3][4] Born to a Polish family of noble descent in the Minsk Governorate of the Russian Empire (now in Belarus), Dzerzhinsky embraced revolutionary politics from a young age, and was active in the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania party.

In December 1917, Lenin named Dzerzhinsky head of the newly established All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (Cheka), tasking him with the suppression of counter-revolutionary activities in Soviet Russia.

The Russian Civil War saw a vast expansion of the Cheka's authority, inaugurating a campaign of mass arrests, detentions (including in newly founded Gulag forced labour camps), and executions known as the Red Terror.

Remembered by secret police agents (known as "Chekists" throughout the Soviet era) as a hero of the revolution, a large statue of him stood in front of the security service headquarters at Moscow's Lubyanka Building until 1991.

Felix Dzerzhinsky was born on 11 September 1877 to ethnically Polish parents of noble descent,[6][7] at the Dzerzhinovo family estate, about 15 km (9.3 mi) from the small town of Ivyanets in the Minsk Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Belarus).

He was rather tall, thin and demure, making the impression of an ascetic with the face of an icon... Tormented or not, this is an issue history will clarify; in any case this person did not know how to lie.

[14] Two months before he expected to graduate, the gymnasium expelled Dzerzhinsky for "revolutionary activity" and for posting signs with socialist slogans at the school.

Dzerzhinsky subsequently became one of the founders of Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (Polish: Socjaldemokracja Królestwa Polskiego i Litwy, SDKPiL) in 1899.

In 1902, Dzerzhinsky was sent deep into Siberia for the next five years to the remote town of Vilyuysk, while en route being temporarily held at the Alexandrovsk Transitional Prison near Irkutsk.

In Berlin, he organized publication of the newspaper Czerwony Sztandar ("Red Banner"), and transportation of illegal literature from Kraków into Congress Poland.

Dzerzhinsky visited Switzerland, where his fiancée Julia Goldman, the sister of Boris Gorev and Mikhail Liber, was undergoing treatment for tuberculosis.

In 1916, Dzerzhinsky was transferred to the Moscow Butyrka prison, where he was soon hospitalized because the chains that he had been forced to wear were causing severe cramps in his legs.

Dzerzhinsky endorsed Vladimir Lenin's "April Theses", demanding uncompromising opposition to the new Russian Provisional Government, the transfer of all political authority to the Soviets, and the immediate withdrawal of Russia from the war.

[24] Lenin regarded Felix Dzerzhinsky as a revolutionary hero and appointed him to organize a force to combat internal threats.

On 20 December 1917, the Council of People's Commissars officially established the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-revolution and Sabotage—commonly known as the Cheka (based on the Russian acronym ВЧК).

As the Russian Civil War expanded, Dzerzhinsky also began organizing internal security troops to enforce the Cheka's authority.

[25][26] The Cheka undertook drastic measures as tens of thousands of political opponents and saboteurs were shot without trial in the basements of prisons and in public places.

[28][29] In 1922, at the end of the Civil War, the Cheka was dissolved and reorganized as the State Political Directorate (Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie, or GPU), a section of the NKVD.

With the formation of the Soviet Union later that year, the GPU was again reorganized as the Joint State Political Directorate (Obyedinyonnoye gosudarstvennoye politicheskoye upravleniye, or OGPU), directly under the Council of People's Commissars.

Lenin and Dzerzhinsky frequently had opposing opinions about many important ideological and political issues of the pre-revolutionary period, and also after the October Revolution.

After 1917, Dzerzhinsky would oppose Lenin on such crucial issues as the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the trade unions, and Soviet nationality policy.

The energy and dedication that had previously been responsible for the building of the SDKPiL would henceforth be devoted to the priorities of the struggle for Bolshevik power in Russia, to the defence of the revolution during the civil war, and eventually, to the tasks of socialist construction.

[34] Dzerzhinsky died of a heart attack on 20 July 1926 in Moscow, immediately after a two-hour speech to the Bolshevik Central Committee during which, visibly quite ill, he violently denounced the United Opposition directed by Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev.

Located in Belarus, near Minsk and close to the Soviet-Polish border of the time, it was created on 15 March 1932, with the capital at Dzyarzhynsk (in Russian Dzerzhynsk, formerly known as Kojdanów), not far from the family estate.

To comply with decommunization laws,[37] the Ukrainian cities Dzerzhynsk and Dniprodzerzhynsk reverted to their historic names Toretsk and Kamianske in February and May 2016.

In 1951, a large-scale statue of Dzerzhinsky was designed by Zbigniew Dunajewski and erected in the northern side of Bank Square in Warsaw.

The Moscow Soviet (Mossovet) had the Dzerzhinsky statue removed to the Fallen Monument Park and laid on its side in August 1991, after the failed coup d'état attempt by hard-line Communist members of the government.

[45] Finally, the monument was reerected on 11 September 2023, but this time in front of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service headquarters outside Moscow.

[citation needed] A 10-foot bronze replica of the original Iron Felix statue was placed on the grounds of the military academy in Minsk, Belarus, in May 2006.