One still hears Russian security men speak of Chekist operators. Originally these were an anti-sabotage, anti-revolutionary force which became a battle gendarmerie during the civil war and was empowered to hold courts martial and execute Whites, or Reds who were getting a little bleached. It remained as a part of the army although nowadays has become merely a slang word. The actual organization underwent many changes of structure, responsibility and name. It became GPU, OGPU, NKVD, NKGB and in 1946 split into MVD and MGB. The latter was renamed KGB in 1954; it is responsible for the most vital part of security and intelligence at home and overseas. (The MVD now handles police, prisons, immigration, highway police and fire services.) Stok’s branch of KGB is the counter-intelligence unit GUKR.
In 1937 Marshal Tukhachevsky tried to throw off Chekist control and was executed for plotting with Trotsky to betray Russia to Hitler. Thousands of Red Army officials were executed at the same period and the Red Army was in bad repute. At the twentieth Party Congress in 1956 there was a movement towards proving the innocence of the executed men.
Colonel Stok had had extensive political-military experience, starting from when he stormed the Winter Palace in Leningrad in 1917. He worked with Antonov Ovseyenko when the latter was military adviser in Barcelona. Some say that he was responsible for Ovseyenko’s removal. As a KGB officer, Stok’s loyalty is to the Communist Party, but as an officer he must sometimes sympathize with the aims of the professional soldiers with whom he works. Stok is not a member of GRU (military intelligence) which is entirely separate.