Why this word is great
CHEKIST — [Noun] A member or agent of the Soviet and Russian state security organs, from the original Cheka to its successors, the KGB and FSB. From Russian чеки́ст (čekíst), from Чека́ (Čeká), the acronym for the first Soviet secret police (the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission), + -ист (-ist), an agent suffix. Unlike a spy, who operates abroad to gather intelligence, or a policeman, who is charged with public order under law, a Chekist is the institutional embodiment of internal political control—a functionary of a parallel justice system defined by secrecy and ideological terror. He is the chill of a predawn knock on an apartment door’s frosted glass, the impassive face behind the interrogation lamp, the bureaucratic stamp that converts a remark into a sentence of timber and frozen steppe. The term thus names not merely a profession, but a cold principle: the bureaucratization of terror.