Were there “Checas” in the Madrid of the Civil War? Comparative study of the Soviet political police and the Spanish revolutionary committees (summer-autumn 1936)

Abstract

Faced with the unexpected phenomenon of the coup d'état and the defeat of the revolt against the republican state, a whole series of micro-powers arose that tried and competed with each other to occupy the space left by the government. These micro-powers, revolutionary committees for the most part, not only sought to win the war, but to initiate and settle a revolutionary process, as opposed to the Republican state model. These centers, in exercising popular justice, were labeled by the insurgents as "Checa", linking their image to the Soviet political police model, the Cheká. In this paper we will analyze the Cheká term, comparing the two systems, Russian and Spanish, to assess whether this concept helps or hinders our understanding of a phenomenon as complex as the revolution.