Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, a member of the Polish nobility, was born into an Orthodox Christian Polish-Russian family of teachers. His father was a Russified Pole and a history lecturer. His mother was a woman of … See more

Menzhinsky had joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1902. During the 1905 revolution, Vera Menzhinsky worked alongside Nadezhda Krupskaya See more

Trotsky who knew Menzhinsky from when they were exiles, in 1920, left a scathing portrait of him: "The impression he made on me could best be described by saying that he made none at all. He seemed like a poor sketch for an unfinished portrait. Only now and then … See more

After the February Revolution of 1917, Menzhinsky returned to Russia in the summer of that year and joined the Mezhraiontsy, … See more

Menzhinsky spent his last years as an invalid, suffering from acute angina since the late 1920s, which rendered him incapable of … See more

• Bibliography of the Russian Revolution and Civil War
• Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies
• Commanders of the border troops USSR and RF See more