The activity of the politician, nicknamed by his contemporaries "Iron Felix", causes an ambiguous reaction. Some call him a hero, some call him an executioner who knows no mercy. Many statements by Dzerzhinsky about politics, economics, the state apparatus are of interest today.

Childhood and youth

Felix Edmundovich was born in 1877 on the territory of today's Belarus, in the Vilnius province. The parents of the future revolutionary are from an intelligent environment: mother, Polish by nationality - the daughter of a professor; father, a Jew - a gymnasium teacher. In 1822, Felix's father dies, and the mother is left alone with eight children. Despite the difficult financial situation, they try to give children a good education... The boy, who does not know Russian at all, is sent to the Imperial Gymnasium. The study did not work out. Dzerzhinsky, who dreams of becoming a priest (Catholic priest), has only one positive assessment in his education document, on the subject of "The Law of God."

In 1835, as a student at the gymnasium, the young man became a member of the Social Democratic movement.

I hated wealth, because I fell in love with people, because I see and feel with all the strings of my soul that today people worship the golden calf, which turned human souls into bestial and banished love from the hearts of people ...

In 1897 he was arrested for spreading revolutionary ideas. After a year of imprisonment, in 1898, Dzerzhinsky was sent into exile in the Vyatka province. There he continues to agitate among the factory workers. The frantic revolutionary is transferred to a remote area, to the village of Kaigorodskoye. Deprived of the opportunity to campaign, Dzerzhinsky escapes to Lithuania, from where he moves to Poland.

Revolutionary activity

Dzerzhinsky continues to serve the "cause of the revolution" by joining the Social Democratic Party of Poland and Lithuania (SDPPiL) in 1900. Acquaintance with Lenin's Iskra publication strengthens his convictions. In 1903, after he was elected secretary of the foreign committee of the SDPPiL, Dzerzhinsky arranged the transfer of prohibited literature and the publication of the newspaper "Red Banner". As a member of the Main Board of the Party (elected in 1903), he organizes sabotage and uprisings of workers in Poland. After the Petrograd events, in 1905, he headed the May Day demonstration.

Dzerzhinsky's personal meeting with Lenin in Stockholm in 1906 resulted in Dzerzhinsky joining the RSDLP (Russian Social Democratic Party).

In 1909, the revolutionary who continued his party work was arrested, deprived of his estate rights and sent to a life-long settlement in Siberia. From the moment of joining the Bolshevik Party until February revolution 1917 he goes to prison eleven times, then to exile or hard labor. Each time he escapes, Dzerzhinsky returns to party activities.

Dzerzhinsky's statements show his frantic position as a professional revolutionary:

Let's rest, comrades, in prison.

Remember that in the soul of people like me there is a holy spark ... which gives happiness even at the stake.

Dzerzhinsky became a member of the Moscow committee of the Bolshevik organization after the February revolution of 1917. Here he is engaged in the propaganda of an armed uprising. Lenin assesses the personal qualities of Dzerzhinsky and includes him in the military revolutionary center. F.E.Dzerzhinsky - one of the organizers of the October armed coup.

To live - doesn't that mean to have an unbreakable faith in victory?

"Chief Chekist"

The Bolsheviks, who had won a victory as a result of an armed coup, came to power in 1917. Immediately it became necessary to create an organization that would oppose the opponents of the revolution. F.E.Dzerzhinsky was appointed chairman of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (VChK), created in December 1917. The punitive organization received broad powers, including the right to independently impose death sentences. After moving from Petrograd in 1919, the Chekists occupy the building on Lubyanka. There is also a prison here, firing squads are working in the basements.

Dzerzhinsky's statements about the Chekists became his slogan in the fight against counterrevolution:

Anyone who becomes cruel and whose heart remains insensitive towards the prisoners must leave here. Here, like in no other place, you need to be kind and noble.

Either saints or scoundrels can serve in the organs.

Only a person with a cold head, warm heart and clean hands can be a security officer.

The abbreviation "VChK" is one of the most famous names XX century. The chairman of the department did not tolerate dissent. It is Dzerzhinsky who is considered the initiator of the persecution of the intelligentsia and clergy.

The philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev wrote about him:

It was a fanatic. In his eyes, he gave the impression of a man possessed. There was something eerie about him ... In the past, he wanted to become a Catholic monk and he transferred his fanatical faith to communism.

An idealist who hated the cruelties of the tsarist secret police, fabricated cases, torture, prisons, hard labor, became an executioner.

I strive with all my soul to ensure that there is no injustice, crime, drunkenness, debauchery, excesses, excessive luxury, brothels in which people sell their bodies or souls, or both together; so that there is no oppression, fratricidal wars, national enmity ...

The Cheka, created by Dzerzhinsky and his associates, eventually turned into one of the most effective special services in the world.

Administrative activities

In addition to acting as chairman of the Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky accepts Active participation in the fight against devastation. Dzerzhinsky's statements are a demonstration of his views on the restoration of a destroyed state.

We must go and explain to every worker and peasant that we [Russia] need funds in order to move our factories, in order to have sufficient raw materials of our own, so that we do not have such dependence on foreign countries, which we can get into if we do. to build the development of our economy solely at the expense of import from abroad ...

I am not preaching here that we can isolate ourselves from abroad. This is absurd, it is not necessary at all. But in order not to fall into bondage from foreign capitalists who follow our every step, and when it is wrong, they will immediately try to use it, for this we must work with all our might.

The result of Dzerzhinsky's activities as commissar of railways in the 1920s was the restoration of more than 10 thousand km railroad, more than 200 thousand steam locomotives and more than 2000 bridges. Having personally traveled to Siberia, he was able to ensure in 1919 the supply of about 40 million tons of grain to the starving regions. By organizing the supply of medicines, he contributed to the fight against typhus.

Creation of orphanages

The activities of the Chairman of the Cheka deserves a separate discussion as chairman of the Commission for Combating Homelessness, whose tasks included the organization of labor communes and orphanages. The buildings confiscated from the "former" have become a haven for a whole generation of street children.

An enormous task is before you: to educate and shape the souls of your children. Be vigilant! For the fault or merit of the children falls to a great extent on the head and conscience of the parents.

Love for a child, like any great love, becomes creativity and can give the child lasting, true happiness when it enhances the scope of the lover's life, makes him a full-fledged person, and does not turn the beloved creature into an idol.

Economic activity

In 1922, without leaving the post of chairman of the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky heads the Main Political Directorate of the NKVD and takes part in the formation of a new economic policy state (NEP). In 1924 Dzerzhinsky became the head of the Supreme National Economy of the USSR. He initiates the creation joint stock companies and enterprises with the involvement of foreign capital. Dzerzhinsky is a supporter of the development of private capital in Soviet Russia, calls for the creation of favorable conditions for this.

Dzerzhinsky's statements about the economy:

Currency is that sensitive thermometer that takes into account what irregularities exist.

If we are now a wooden, bastard Russia, then we must become a metal Russia.

When we [Russia] build our factories and begin to develop our wealth, foreign investors will come to us on their own. But when we kneel before them, they will only despise us and will not give a dime.

Well, we [Russia] are a peasant state, but our yield is lower than in Holland, Germany and France. Why? Because, firstly, we do not have nitrogen fertilizers. Hence, it is necessary to create a chemical industry for Agriculture... Secondly, we plow on horseback, but the whole world has long forgotten about it. We need tractors - where can we get them? We need to build tractor and combine factories, which means we need a powerful metallurgical base, which we have is weak. This means that it is necessary to build metallurgical plants, for the operation of which it is necessary to develop deposits of iron ore, non-ferrous metals, and so on.

Exports should prevail over imports, and the balance for specific types of products and goods should be determined strictly on a planned basis. Here [in Russia] each trust and syndicate is on its own. In almost all questions: on wages, on restoration work, on concentration, on taking over the market. And each strove to use all his "happiness" for himself, and pass on the "misfortune" to the state, demanding subsidies, subsidies, loans, high prices.

Fighting bureaucracy

The chairman of the Cheka advocated the fight against bureaucracy and the reform of the country's administrative system.

Dzerzhinsky about Russia:

I came to the irrefutable conclusion that the main work is not in Moscow, but in the localities, that 2/3 of responsible comrades and specialists from all party (including the Central Committee), Soviet and trade union institutions must be transferred from Moscow to the localities. And there is no need to be afraid that the central institutions will fall apart. It is necessary to throw all forces into factories, plants and the countryside in order to really raise labor productivity, and not the work of pens and offices. Otherwise we will not get out. The best ideas and instructions do not even reach here and hang in the air.

To prevent the state [Russia] from going bankrupt, it is necessary to resolve the problem of the state apparatus. The irrepressible inflation of the staff, the monstrous bureaucratization of every business - mountains of papers and hundreds of thousands of hacks; capture of large buildings and premises; car epidemic; millions of frills. This is legal and devouring of state property by this locust. In addition to this, unheard of, shameless bribery, embezzlement, negligence, blatant mismanagement that characterizes our so-called "cost accounting", crimes that pump state property into private pockets.

If you look at our entire apparatus of power in Russia, at our entire system of government, if you look at our unheard-of bureaucracy, at our unheard-of fuss with all kinds of approvals, then I am horrified from all this.

To look through the eyes of your apparatus is death for a leader.

Iron Felix "fought mercilessly against the opposition, fearing that a person who could destroy all the transformations and reforms of the revolution would come to the post of the country's leader.

The ascetically modest Felix Dzerzhinsky is a "knight of the revolution", an eternal worker who put political and state activity in the first place in his life.

Selected quotes from Dzerzhinsky can serve as a characteristic of the head of the state security department. He died on July 20, 1926 during a report on the state of the economy of the USSR. The official cause of death is a heart attack, but there is still talk of poisoning.

If I had to live over again, I would start the way I started.

F.E.Dzerzhinsky was buried at the Kremlin wall. Soviet propaganda idealized the image of the head of the Cheka, but at the end of the 80s, articles appeared that opened some pages of his life and debunked the myth. In August 1991, symbolically, as a sign of the end of the era of socialism, the monument to Dzerzhinsky on Lubyanskaya Square was demolished.

Concern about state security arises at the time of the emergence of the state.

And today, on the day of security officials, I would like to trace the history of the emergence of the service responsible for the security of our state.

According to archival data, the special services in Russia existed long before the appearance of the well-known Cheka.

The first mentions of crimes against the state, sedition, are found in the Code of Laws of 1497. The first legislative foundations of the activities of special services, for example, in terms of protecting the tsar or members of the royal family, are in the Cathedral Code of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich: “... and there will be someone under the tsar's majesty who will sweep a saber on whom, or some other weapon, and with whom wounds (...) that murderer, for that murder he himself is executed with death. "

Under Peter I, the body of political investigation and court, the Preobrazhensky order, was responsible for state security, which was involved in the investigation of "The words and deeds of the sovereign" (this was the name of denunciations of state crimes). Together with the Preobrazhensky order, the Secret Chancellery also acted.

Over time, these organizations were reformed, modified, becoming either a Secret Expedition under the Senate, then the Third Branch of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery, and so on.

It was the Third Section of the Chancellery that became "real", in the classical sense of the word, a special service. She was in charge of questions about the activities of sects, counterfeiters, monitoring foreigners arriving in Russia, and so on.

After the revolution, the new state needed a new body to protect the state security of the RSFSR. December 20, 1917 (old style December 7) By the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission was formed to combat counter-revolution and sabotage. The head of the all-powerful Cheka was F.E. Dzerzhinsky. The name of the Cheka will not last long. In a few years, the VChK will be replaced by the GPU, then the GPU will turn into the OGPU, and in 1934 the state security organs will be transferred to the NKVD of the USSR.

After several successive changes in names and reorganizations in March 1954, a new structure will be created under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, which the whole world will learn about - the State Security Committee.

The powerful KGB will exist until the collapse of the USSR, and in 1995 a new structure will be formed responsible for state security - Federal Service Security.

In this article, we will talk about what a cold head, warm heart, clean hands mean.

This is the motto of Russian officers, but if you go deeper, then here lies the truth, which has been said more than once on the pages of this site.

A cold head is the mind, a hot heart is the soul, clean hands are related to the body. The great trinity, mind, soul and body, this expression of cold head, warm heart and clean hands rather characterizes the effective state of each trinity, the state of each Trinity.

Let's take a closer look.

Cold head

To have a cool head means to have a sober mind that is free from emotions. This is poise, lack of panic at critical moments in life, cold calculation.

How to come to this? You need to be able to develop for yourself a certain strategy that allows you to act in accordance with it in various stressful situations.

This strategy or system allows you to build on it and not panic as you already know how to deal with various stressful situations.

This strategy is within you and is brought to automaticity.

Warm heart

A warm heart still allows you to remain human, not a robot. If a cold head is needed in order not to succumb to emotions, then we need a heart so that we can show love and kindness to all living things. It doesn't matter if you help grandma cross the road or take a stray kitten and take care of him. It's all kindness.

If every person made at least one person happy for a moment every day, then life would be better.

Start with yourself. Believe me, the more people you make happy, the happier you will become. It's all boomerang. Don't hurt people; on the contrary, try to support and help them.

If you put even a drop in the human spirit, this is already a huge shift.

Do good deeds and you yourself will be blissful. Do and do not expect anything in return, but everything will definitely return, people like you will appear around you, who are also not averse to helping you when you need this help.

Clean hands

What it means to clean hands means not doing anything unnatural or anything that can tarnish you. Do not commit any atrocities. Keep your hands clean at all times. Do not get them dirty and do not have any dealings with the people who do it.

Try to use your body and hands only for good deeds.

By combining all these three aspects - a cool head, a warm heart and clean hands, you will become a harmonious and self-sufficient person.

Check it out.

You can also ask all questions in the comments that are immediately below this article.

Even if you do not have any questions, you dear reader, you can leave a positive review under this article in the comments, if you liked it, I, as an author, will be immensely grateful to you.

The Cheka, created by Dzerzhinsky and his colleagues, has grown into one of the most effective special services in the world, which was feared, hated and respected, including by the worst enemies of our country. But not only this he went down in history. In addition to his KGB activities, Dzerzhinsky became, perhaps, the most famous fighter against child homelessness in the history of our country.

V Lately disputes about whether or not to return the monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky at the Lubyanka do not subside. If you want to better understand what kind of person the founder of the Cheka was, I bring to your attention his statements:

- To live - doesn't that mean to have an unshakable faith in victory?

- The Chekist must have a warm heart, a cool head and clean hands.

- Anyone who becomes cruel and whose heart remains insensitive towards the prisoners must leave here. Here, like in no other place, you need to be kind and noble.

- A person can only sympathize with social misfortune if he sympathizes with any specific misfortune of each individual person.

- A huge task is before you: to educate and shape the souls of your children. Be vigilant! For the fault or merit of the children falls to a great extent on the head and conscience of the parents.

- Only such a means can correct it, which will make the guilty person realize that he acted badly, that he must live and act differently. The rod lasts only for a short time; when children grow up and cease to be afraid of her, conscience disappears with her.

- Fear will not teach children to distinguish good from evil; whoever fears pain will always succumb to evil.

- I do not preach that we should isolate ourselves from abroad. This is completely absurd. But we must create a favorable regime for the development of those industries that are vital and in which we can compete with them.

- To prevent the state from going bankrupt, it is necessary to resolve the problem of the state apparatus. The irrepressible inflation of the staff, the monstrous bureaucratization of every business - mountains of papers and hundreds of thousands of hacks; capture of large buildings and premises; car epidemic; millions of frills. This is the legal feeding and devouring of state property by these locusts. In addition to this, unheard of, shameless bribery, embezzlement, negligence, blatant mismanagement that characterizes our so-called "cost accounting", crimes that pump state property into private pockets.

- Where there is love, there is no suffering that could break a person. Real unhappiness is selfishness. If you love only yourself, then with the advent of difficult life trials, a person curses his fate and experiences terrible torments. And where there is love and care for others, there is no despair ...

- He who has an idea and who is alive cannot be useless, unless he himself renounces his idea.

- Faith must be followed by works.

- In whatever difficult conditions you have to live, do not lose heart, because faith in your strength and the desire to live for others is a huge strength.

- Life, concrete practice, every day opens up new opportunities for us, so we need to start more not from paper, but from life.

“The worst enemy could not bring us as much harm as he did with his nightmarish massacres, executions, and granting soldiers the right to plunder cities and villages. All this he did on behalf of our Soviet power, restoring the entire population against us. Looting and violence was a deliberate military tactic that, while giving us fleeting success, brought defeat and disgrace as a result. " Dzerzhinsky about the Socialist-Revolutionary Mikhail Muravyov, April 1918.