Activities of the Voronezh Extraordinary Commission in 1918

Abstract. The article describes actions of the Voronezh Extraordinary Commission (ChK) since its founding. ChK in Voronezh was founded in June 1918 to combat the counter-revolution. There were a lot of peculiar moments of its work: Voronezh ChK wasn’t not formed as a separate commission subordinated to the Central Extraordinary Commission, but as a department of the Province (Guberniya) Executive Committee. Actions of the Voronezh ChK where highly controlled by the Party staff. Despite its functions to combat the counter-revolution, mainly the ChK fought against speculation and maintained the public order. The mass mortal terror was not carried out at all in 1918. Due to the lack of staff, and later on the reorganization by the end of 1918 its activity has been very slightly established. All this demonstrates that the real work of the local ChK often differed from the modern representations in the mass consciousness.

Keywords: Voronezh, civil war, ChK, Red Terror, repression, Soviet Russia, Russian revolution.