Two months after the Bolshevik coup in October 1917, on December 20 the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (VChK, in Russian) was established. The commission was headed by Felix Dzerzhinsky, a native of the Minsk region. The commission was granted extrajudicial powers over cases, including imprisonment in concentration camps and executions of so-called enemies of the revolution and non-proletarian social classes. On September 5, 1918, these powers were ratified in the decree ‘On the Red Terror.’
Following the example of the All-Russian commission, on January 22, 1918 the Minsk Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies created a department to combat counter-revolution and speculation. Its first head was the Commissar for Internal Affairs of the Council of People's Commissars of the Western Region and Front, the Latvian Ludvig Rezavusky. The department was housed in the building of the former 'Europe' hotel. The department fought officials who sabotaged the new government, counter-revolutionaries and speculators. Evidently, the actions included executions. However, shortly before the German advance on Minsk in February of the same year, the department fled to Smolensk, where it was disbanded.
A few months after the Germans left Minsk, on February 18, 1919 the executive committee of the newly formed SSRB established the Minsk Provincial Extraordinary Commission to fight counter-revolution and sabotage. According to the documentary film by Belarusfilm ‘Chekists of the Minsk Region’, the head of the Provincial Cheka was Ryhor Haragliad. It is likely that during this period the commission occupied a two-story building built in 1893 at the current address Engels Street, 18. It is believed that from here the 'Red Terror' began on Belarusian lands. Interrogations and executions took place in the building's cellars. However, this time the Bolsheviks did not rule Minsk for long. On August 8, 1919 the Polish Army occupied what would become the capital of Belarus.
Local residents later recounted that, while fleeing, the Chekists executed several dozen people accused of counter-revolution. The Bolsheviks left their bodies in the basement and the yard of the Minsk Provincial Cheka.
After the Poles left on August 21, 1920, the Minsk Provincial Cheka was reestablished under the leadership of Alexander Rotenberg. In the same year it was renamed the Cheka of the BSSR. Once again the building on today's Engels Street became the site of bloody Cheka activity. Arrests, interrogations and executions of counter-revolutionary elements and speculators resumed. One contemporary employee, Mikhail Pavlovich (real name Israel Mendelevich) Shreider, recorded in his memoirs how Minsk Chekists uncovered a gang of Jewish speculators who supposedly made sausage out of human flesh. The gang was executed without trial. Shreider did not recall where the executed were buried.
