Thread by @akoz33

Everyone knows the the first head of the Cheka Felix Dzerzhinsky was Polish, but not many, at least in Poland, remember the big role that other Poles played in the original Cheka as well as in the early Red Army and, particularly, the Bolshevik Navy. In fact, along with

Latvians, they were the largest non-Russian ethnic group, in fact larger than the Jews (who are often presented as the driving force behind the revolution). One reason that this has been forgotten is that the Poles were almost completely purged during Yezhov’s anti-Polish

campaign (leaving only a few, such as the future marshals Rokossovsky and Malinovsky). In fact, there is little doubt that had Dzerzhinsky lived longer, he would have been shot. Here is a fragment from Leonid Mlechin’s book on the KGB chiefs:

Former Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of Kazakhstan Mikhail Pavlovich Shreider recalled how in early 1939, during interrogation, the head of the investigative department of the Ivanovo NKVD, who accused him of working for Polish intelligence, suddenly said:

- And we have evidence that Dzerzhinsky also had a hand in your organization. That is why he shot honest investigators who fought against the enemies. Was it by chance that Dzerzhinsky, when he was held in the Warsaw Citadel, was not executed?

Lenin and Stalin were deceived by him. Now we have proof of everything.
Schreider was shocked by his words. At this moment, the head of the regional department of the NKVD entered the office and said
- A year ago, I would not have believed this about Dzerzhinsky.

But now we have the evidence. I personally heard about this from Beria, and I can tell you that all of Dzerzhinsky’s relatives have been arrested and admitted everything.
On April 26, 1936, the Council of People's Commissars adopted a resolution on the eviction of Poles from

Ukraine as politically unreliable. Poles were being removed from the border zone. The first group of 35 thousand people was sent to Kazakhstan.
The People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov would later say at the interrogation

(this was when he was interrogated rather than interrogating): “I began my work by defeating Polish spies who climbed into all departments of the Cheka’s organs, they had Soviet intelligence in their hands.”

On August 9, 1937, the Politburo approved the order of the NKVD "On the Elimination of Polish Sabotage and Spy Groups and Organizations of the Special Forces (Polish Military Organization)."
Two years later, Schreider, who, during interrogation, found out that he was in the

same case as Dzerzhinsky, was also included in this mythical organization.
Yezhov’s order stated: “Almost from the very moment of the Cheka’s emergence, the highest levels of anti-Polish intelligence and counterintelligence of Cheka-OGPU-NKVD were in the hands of Polish spies:

Unschlicht, Messing, Pilar, Medved, Olsky, Sosnovsky, Makovsky, Loganovsky, Baransky and a number of others.”

Such cases were fabricated throughout the country. At least 18 thousand people were imprisoned. In Moscow, a group of Polish students

were accused of gathering under the guise of membership of OSOAVIAHIM - (civilian paramilitary organisation, later replaced by DOSAAF en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOSAAF ) to bring weapons to Red Square during a demonstration on November 7, 1937 and to shoot the leaders of the country and

the party standing at the mausoleum. The purpose of such an action was supposedly to weaken the Soviet Union on the eve of the war with Poland.
The People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov ordered the arrest of all political emigrants who fled to the USSR,

that is, all Polish communists like Dzerzhinsky. Stanislav Frantsevich Redens, a former secretary of Dzerzhinsky and a relative of Stalin was shot as a Polish spy.
If Dzerzhinsky himself lived to see Nikolai Ivanovich Ezhov,

he would also be shot together with the thousands of Poles who chose communism over Poland’s independence and as the result fell victim to the Chekists.