Russia KGB founder honoured

international | crime and justice | other press Monday September 13, 2004 11:48 by pat c

Russia KGB founder honoured
By Rob Cameron
BBC correspondent in Moscow

A new statue of the founder of what became the KGB, Felix Dzerzhinsky, has
been unveiled in a small town outside Moscow. The monument was commissioned
by the town authorities.

Some believe the event is part of the gradual rehabilitation of the once
feared Russian secret service under President Vladimir Putin, himself a
former officer of the KGB. Around 300 people - including Dzerzhinsky's
grandson - attended Saturday's ceremony in the town that bears his name.

Dzerzhinsky was nicknamed Iron Felix, but this statue is actually bronze and
will stand outside the town's palace of culture.

Murky past

As every Russian school child knows, Felix Dzerzhinsky played an active part
in the October Revolution and founded the Cheka - or All-Russian
Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage - to
give the body its full name.

It was later renamed the NKVD before becoming the KGB and throughout the
Communist era was the most feared arm of the Soviet apparatus, abducting,
torturing and killing many thousands of people.

A statue of Dzerzhinsky once stood in Moscow's Lubyanka Square, home to the
KGB's infamous headquarters. In 1991, however, following the failed coup
against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev it was torn down. But in the last
few years there have been attempts to rehabilitate the organisation.

President Putin even allowed the organisation's successor, the FSB, to
produce a calendar commemorating major events in the KGB's history.

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