Background Info, 1920's Russia?

Question

Related to this question: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Au7CP0jTIfhewT.FjDp6WT3sy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20080708161836AAmpOBy, I need to get some background info on Communist Russia during the early part of Lenin's reign.

Specifically:

1. their intelligence agency/secret police/whatever equivalents

2. which nations were a part of the Russian Empire, and what the attitudes towards them (and vice-versa) were

3. anything related to the above two

Answer 1

The Czar's 'checka' was replicated/replaced/taken over, to become the NKVD (KGB after 1945).

Moscow did not necessarily regard certain lands as her 'empire'. Commuinst theory expected every nation to experience revolution, and nations would be replaced altogether by Soviets (parliaments). Moscow lost cotrol during the Civil War of Poland, the Balitc states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, as well as parts of the Ukraine. Control over these areas was often re-asserted in subsequent years.

Most of the independent countries were expressions of long-repressed nationalism, but the Bolsheviks expected these nations to simply fall, like all nations, to workers' revolutions. Not until Stalin was there a concerted effort to build what we'd understand to be an empire.

Answer 2

the secret service was the NKVD or SMERT. The military have their version, the GRU

after the "revolution" the occupied countries of Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland and Ukraine declared independence. the red russians seemed to accept this- for as long as the civil war lasted. The Ukraine was invaded and occupied as part of the civil war (and "pacified" by the means of the Famine - 5 milion dead)

The soviets then tried to re-occupy Poland and got a nasty shock when they lost the 1920 war. After that Stalin bid his time and rearmed and reorganised his military.

In 1939 he was allied to Hitler and participated in the attack on Poland. He then "took back" Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia but got burned on Finland