Secret police

A secret police force is an agency most often used in dictatorships. It is used to scare people living under a dictatorship into agreeing with the dictator's policies. Not all dictatorships, however, use a secret police force. Fidel Castro's Cuba and Mao Zedong's China were able to maintain a dictatorship without using secret police.

Historical secret police agencies
 Secret police agency  Nation                    Existed from  State leader  Cheka / OGPU / NKVD / KGB The chronology of the Soviet secret police agencies is very complicated. Listed here are examples up to 1946. The series continues postwar as the MGB and KGB.Andrew, Christopher and Mitrokhin, Vasili 2000. The sword and the shield: the Mitrokhin Archive and the secret history of the KGB. N.Y. Basic Books. ,   U.S.S.R.              1917–1946     Vladimir Lenin / Joseph Stalin Gestapo           Third Reich  1933–1945     Adolf Hitler Stasi            East Germany (DDR)  1950–1990  Walter Ulbricht / Erich Honecker (1971–89) OVRA              Italy      1927–1943     Benito Mussolini DINA / CNI    Chile      1973–1990      Augusto Pinochet State Security Department  North Korea  1948–present Though still in existance, the set-up is clearly based on the Soviet model.  Kim dynasty (North Korea)  

 References 

Category:Secrecy
Category:Police
Category:Intelligence agencies