Gleb Bokii

Gleb Ivanovich Bokii (Глеб Иванович Бокий, 1879–1937) was an ethnic Ukrainian Communist political activist and revolutionary in the Russian Empire. Following the October Revolution of 1917, Bokii became a leading member of the Cheka, the Soviet secret police. From 1921 through 1934, Bokii was the head of the so-called "special department" of the Soviet secret police apparatus, believed to have been in charge of the Soviet Union's concentration camp system. He remained a top level functionary in the secret police apparatus until his sudden arrest in May 1937 as part of the Great Terror. Following an extended investigation, Bokii was given a summary trial and executed in November of that same year. In 1956, Bokii was posthumously rehabilitated by Soviet authorities.

Gleb Bokii was born July 3, 1879 (June 21 O.S.) into the family of an ethnic Ukrainian teacher in Tiflis, Georgia in 1879. Bokii grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he attended school, graduating from the Petersburg Mining Institute in 1896.

Bokii was a participant in revolutionary student circles from an early age, becoming an adherent of Marxism and joining Georgii Plekhanov's Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class in 1897. Bokii joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) in 1900 and worked in that organization as a professional revolutionary as a party organizer and propagandist. Bokii was a loyalist to the Bolshevik faction of that organization, headed by V.I. Lenin and was elected a member of the governing Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP from 1904 to 1909.

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