Mikhail Sergeyevich Kedrov (Russian: Михаи́л Сергеевич Кедров; 24 February (O.S. 12 February) 1878, Moscow – 28 October 1941, Kuybyshev Oblast) was a Russian Soviet communist politician, an Old Bolshevik revolutionary, secret policeman and head of the military section of the Cheka. Early career Mikhail Kedrov was born in Moscow, into a family in the lower ranks of the Russian nobility. He was expelled from Moscow University for his political activity in 1899, without having graduated. He moved to Yaroslavl, where he studied law, joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1901, and was arrested and deported to Vologda in 1902. He joined the Bolsheviks, after the split in the RSDLP in 1903, and donated the money he inherited from his father, approximately 100 thousand gold rubles. During the 1905 Revolution he organised workers' detachments in Kostroma and supplied weapons for the armed rising in Moscow. After defeat of the revolution, he organised distribution of illegal Bolshevik literature, and ran a publishing house in St. Petersburg, until he was arrested. Released after two years in prison, he moved with his family to Switzerland in 1911, and studied at Lausanne and Berne universities. He returned to Russia in 1916, and was a military doctor in the Caucasus during the final part of the war between Russia and Turkey. At the time of the February Revolution, he was in northern Iran, where he helped organise a short-lived soviet. By the end of March 1917, he was in Petrograd (St Petersburg), where he joined the Bolsheviks' military organisation, and edited Soldatskaya Pravda. After the October Revolution, he became member of the Collegium of the People's Commissariat for War, and Military Commissar for Demobilisation. In May 1918 he was sent to the North as a commissar in the Red Army to organise defence of Vologda against the White army. Career in Cheka In September 1918, Kedrov was appointed head of the military section of Cheka, which was renamed the Special Section on 1 January 1919, after a merger with another department. In May 1920, after defeat of the White Army in the north, Kedrov was appointed Cheka plenitpotentiary for the region, which included Arkhangelsk, Vologda, and the Solovetsky Islands, site of one of Russia's oldest monasteries. He ordered the closure of the monastery, expelled the monks, and created the first of the labour camps that formed what later became known as the Gulag. He