Gleb Ivanovich Bokii (; ; 21 June 1879 – 15 November 1937) was a Ukrainian Communist political activist, revolutionary, and paranormal investigator in the Russian Empire. Following the October Revolution of 1917, Bokii became a leading member of the Cheka, the first Soviet secret police, and later of the OGPU and NKVD. From 1921 through 1934, Bokii (alternative transliteration, Boky) headed the "special department" of the Soviet secret police apparatus. 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. Early years 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. Revolutionary career Bokii was a participant in revolutionary student circles from an early age, becoming an adherent of Marxism and working with Vladimir Lenin'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. In 1902, he was arrested and sentenced to three years exile in east Siberia. 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. In these early activist years, Bokii was already to show impressive talent in cryptography, a skill which will go on to be evident and ongoing in his later Soviet career. In the Revolution of 1905, Bokii participated in street fighting on Vasilyevsky Island, part of St. Petersburg bounded by the Neva River. At the time of World War I, Bokii served as a member of the Central Bureau of the RSDLP from 1914 to 1915 and a member of the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the party from 1916 to 1917. During the course of his revolutionary activities, Bokii was arrested a dozen times, and suffered two terms of political exile to Siberia. He used the party names "Kuzma," "Diadia," and "Maksim Ivanovich" during the