The house at 2 Gorokhovaya Street was built at the end of the eighteenth century according to the project of architect D. Quarenghi. Before the revolution, it housed the Administration of the St. Petersburg City Police. From December 10, 1917, to March 10, 1918, the building housed the first Soviet state security body, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (Cheka). It was also the location of the first working office of the Chairman of the Cheka, F. E. Dzerzhinsky. From March 1918 to 1932, the Petrograd Cheka worked at 2 Gorokhovaya, followed by the Authorized Representation of the GPU-OGPU for the Leningrad Military District. This house is associated with the head of the Petrograd Cheka, Moisey Solomonovich Uritsky.

Uritsky was born in 1873 in Cherkasy into a merchant family. In 1897, he graduated from the Law Faculty of Kiev University. He participated in the revolutionary movement from the early 1890s. He was first arrested and exiled for five years to the Yakutsk region in 1897 for organizing a secret Social-Democratic printing house in Berdichev. When the RSDLP was founded in 1898, he became one of its first activists. After the Second Congress of the RSDLP in 1903, Uritsky joined the Mensheviks. For his radical activities and participation in the 1905 revolution, he was repeatedly exiled to Siberia. After the February Revolution, Moisey Solomonovich returned from emigration to Petrograd. At the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP(b), he, along with a group of "interdistricters," joined the Bolshevik party and was elected to the Central Committee. During the October days and afterward, Uritsky was a member of the Petrograd Revolutionary Committee, then commissioner of the All-Russian Commission for the Convening of the Constituent Assembly, and minister of foreign and internal affairs of the communes of the Northern Region.

From March 1918, he was chairman of the Petrograd Cheka. It was here that the historic meeting between Uritsky and Isaac Babel took place. The writer mentions it in his autobiographical story "The Road." Babel describes Petrograd in December 1917, where he arrived from the army, frozen and hungry. In the former city police building’s vestibule stood two machine guns. The writer was sent to the Anichkov Palace, where his friend, investigator-Cheka officer Kalugin, was located. Babel walked along the dead Nevsky Prospect, not expecting to reach his destination. Kalugin met the emaciated Babel and gave him a robe, shirt, long underwear, and socks made of twisted silk, once belonging to Alexander III. The friends smoked exotic cigarettes—a gift from Sultan Abdul Hamid to the Russian sovereign. The rest of the night was spent sorting through the toys of Nicholas II, his drums and toy trains, notebooks, and christening shirts. In the morning, Kalugin introduced Babel to Uritsky.

"The commissioner of internal affairs of the communes of the Northern Region came out of the office, swaying in his gait. Behind the pince-nez glasses protruded eyelids burned by insomnia, loosened, swollen. I was made a translator in the foreign department. I received soldier’s clothing and meal tickets. In the corner of the hall of the former St. Petersburg city police building allotted to me, I began translating testimonies given by diplomats, arsonists, and spies. Not a day passed before I had everything—clothes, food, work, and comrades, faithful in friendship and death, comrades found nowhere else in the world except in our country. Thus began, thirteen years ago, my excellent life, full of thought and joy."

Uritsky lived just over six months after meeting Babel. Having become head of the punitive department, Uritsky from the very beginning refused to sanction executions. "Overall, his attention," notes the author of the study, "was focused not so much on establishing order through terror as on concrete measures aimed at stopping economic crimes, abuses by authorities, and violence on the streets. This orientation of the Petrograd Cheka chairman, strikingly different from the policy of the Cheka in Moscow, was reflected already in his first orders... he issued a preliminary instruction aimed at strict control over investigations and the arrest of corrupt Chekists as well as criminals posing as representatives of the Petrograd Cheka..." Naturally, the main focus of the Petrograd Cheka was the fight against counter-revolution. Uritsky did not sanction either executions or the practice established in Moscow by the Cheka of taking hostages from among prominent political figures, who were to be executed in case of further attempts on Bolshevik leaders. This exhausted Moscow’s patience. Lenin himself was enraged by the news from the northern capital and immediately sent Zinoviev a stern telegram: "Only today did we hear in the Central Committee that workers in Petersburg wanted to respond to the assassination of Volodarsky with mass terror and that you restrained them. I protest decisively! This is not pos-si-ble! It is necessary to encourage the energy and massiveness of terror against counter-revolutionaries, especially in Petersburg, whose example decides." At the same time, in Moscow, the Cheka widely applied extrajudicial executions of "class enemies," and the practical implementation of the "Red Terror," before its official announcement, was in full swing not only in Moscow but also in other cities. Uritsky continued to resist the wave of extremism. So, he clearly did not become the "Petersburg Robespierre." Most likely, had the assassination attempt not occurred, he would have been removed from office. Such "soft" officials were not favored by the country's leadership.

In August 1918, Moisey Solomonovich was killed by another Jew, Leonid Kannegisser. In fact, Uritsky’s name appeared in published newspaper orders for executions, and, according to Kannegisser’s own admission, he "avenged the death of his comrade." At his first interrogation, he stated that "he is Jewish, but from the nobility..." He shot Uritsky in the reception room of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was located in the General Staff building on Palace Square. Kannegisser was executed, and Uritsky was solemnly buried at the Field of Mars. For some time, Palace Square bore his name.

Uritsky was turned into a true sacred victim in the best traditions of Bolshevik propaganda. After his death, the so-called Red Terror began in the country. To start, the Petrograd Chekists responded to the assassination of their leader by executing 1,412 hostages. Officially, the policy of Red Terror was announced on September 2, 1918, by Yakov Sverdlov in an address of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

Sources:

https://www.business-gazeta.ru/article/393631

Mikhail Beyzer, Jews in Petersburg

http://izbrannoe.com/news/lyudi/moisey-uritskiy-krovavyy-palach-ili-chekist-gumanist/