The KGB (Russian: Комитет Государственной Безопасности, English: The Committee of State Security, German: Der Ausschuss für Staatssicherheit, French: La commission de sécurité de l'Etat, abbreviated КГБ KGB is a transliteration of the three Russian letters), or the Committee of State Security of the USSR, was the intelligence agency of the Soviet Union from March 13, 1954 to November 6, 1991.It was formerly founded by Dzerzhinsky. It was formerly known as the Cheka, founded by Dzerzhinsky.
(Cheka is the Russian acronym for All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage). Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия по борьбе с контррреволюцией и саботажем), which was renamed in 1918 as All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Power Abuse (Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия по борьбе с контрреволюцией, спеременных контрреволюцией), renamed in 1918: All-Russian ией, спекуляцией и преступлениям по должности).).
[edit]Introduction to the KGB
The KGB's remit is roughly comparable to that of the United States' counterintelligence divisions of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and it is renowned for its strength and sophistication, even surpassing the United States in some respects. The KGB was established in 1954. The agency dates back to the establishment of the "Cheka" in December 1917, when the Soviet government was first established, with Dzerzhinsky as its first head. In the 1930s, the Department of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, headed by Yagoda and Yezhov, became an instrument of the "Great Purge". During the Cold War, the KGB became too powerful and involved in all areas of the country. After the dramatic changes in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia inherited the KGB, but its power has been greatly weakened. With the gradual recovery of Russia's economic strength, in order to cope with the eastward expansion of NATO, Georgia and other traditional spheres of influence continue to be encroached upon, and the rise of domestic separatist forces of the new situation, Russia's intelligence agencies began to reintegrate into the focus of national security, intelligence activities have also re-activated.
The KGB has a reputation for its intelligence capabilities. It is a well-known fact that Vladimir Putin, former President of the Russian Federation and now Prime Minister of the Russian Federation government, was a member of the KGB in the first place.
Early Soviet intelligence agency Putin at the KGB Dzerzhinsky, founder of the KGB The Cheka was headquartered in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) at 2 Khovaya St. In 1918, the Soviet government moved to Moscow, and the Cheka's headquarters were moved to 11 Lubyanka Square near the Kremlin in Moscow in 1920.
The main agencies of the KGB were the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Domestic Counterintelligence Service, the Army Administration, the Border Guard Administration, the General Affairs Bureau, and the KGB's foreign station groups. KGB system staff once reached more than 500,000 people, including 10,000 in the headquarters organization, 200,000 in the departments of espionage, counter-espionage and technical support, and 300,000 in the border guards. In addition, there were 1.5 million informants throughout the country and 250,000 spies abroad, with an annual budget of $10 billion.
The KGB has always been the Soviet Union's foreign intelligence work, counter-espionage work, domestic security work and border defense and other work of the main responsible departments, is a party, government and military departments above the "super agency", it is only to the Central Politburo of the Soviet **** responsible. The KGB was described by British intelligence as "the world's largest spy agency collecting secret information".
[edit]History of KGB name changes
December 1917 All-Russian Lustration Committee (Cheka)
February 1922 State Political Defense Service
July 1923 General Directorate of State Political Defense
July 1934 General Directorate of State Security
February 1941 People's Commissariat of State Security
February 1941 People's Commissariat of State Security
Ministry of State Security Department of the People's Commissariat for National Security
July 1941 General Directorate of National Security
April 1943 Department of the People's Commissariat for National Security
March 1946 Ministry of National Security
October 1947-November 1951 Ministry of National Security (Foreign Intelligence Agency under the jurisdiction of Intelligence Committee)
March 1953 Ministry of Internal Affairs
2. The Full Council of the State Security Committee of the USSR
The Full Council of the State Committee of the USSR, consisting of fifteen to seventeen members, is responsible for examining the most important issues and adopting the corresponding resolutions on them, which enter into force by decree of the Chairman of the State Security Committee. Once the resolutions come into force, they become mandatory for all State security organs. The membership of the Committee includes the Chairman and Vice-Chairmen of the State Security Committee, the heads of the main departments and the heads of several local State security bodies. They are appointed and dismissed by decision of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. By convention, the Chairman of the State Security Committee of Ukraine and the two heads of the State Security Service of the city and region of Moscow and the city and region of Leningrad are traditionally members of the Plenum. According to the regulations, the Whole Committee holds regular meetings once a month, but sometimes more, depending on the urgency and importance of the issue to be discussed. The full committee confirms appointments and removals of cadres on the basis of a list of orders from the National Security Council. Sometimes it hears reports on the most important extraordinary events that have occurred in the country, in the organs and forces of the National Security Council, discusses important resolutions of higher authorities and takes decisions accordingly. As a rule, a wide range of invitees, sometimes as many as 100 or more, are invited to participate in the discussion of issues. The Plenum is the leading organ of the National Security Council, a sort of command school, a form of review and study of the most important issues. The main decisions adopted by the National Committee are valid for a long time, and only the National Committee can cancel the decisions that have already entered into force by its resolutions. The Plenum is an opportunity for an exchange of views among a fairly wide range of heads of the Security Council, and is a useful way and means of making decisions and, above all, of determining the follow-up and monitoring the implementation of resolutions. The resolution will reach all levels of State Security Committee bodies and forces and will serve as a basis for their practical activities in the corresponding areas.
Operational Directorates of the KGB 1. The First Main Directorate The First Main Directorate is the foreign intelligence and reconnaissance department, which exercises leadership over the spy agencies abroad and conducts intelligence reconnaissance from the Soviet Union itself, directing the work of the first-line (intelligence and reconnaissance) detachments of the State Security organs in the regions in which they are located. The fact that these departments are known as the First General Directorate also emphasizes the paramount importance of the struggle against the enemy abroad.
2. The Second General Directorate The Second General Directorate is engaged in counter-espionage intelligence reconnaissance. From the sixties to the eighties onwards, the work of foreign intelligence reconnaissance was carried out in fits and starts, depending on which Soviet line was dominant at the time in terms of its attitude towards the state authorities. Since the end of the 1980s, a practice has evolved whereby not all counterintelligence investigations are centralized in one department. Rather, they were decentralized into several departments according to specific lines of work. However, the Second Main Directorate has always been the main protagonist of the counterintelligence intelligence reconnaissance sector, which carries out the fight against espionage and works in connection with foreign representative offices and the tourist system, as well as carrying out certain reconnaissance activities on the territory of the USSR.
3. The Third Main Directorate The Third Main Directorate was responsible for stopping the sabotage of the Soviet armed forces by foreign secret services and led the work of the special service divisions of the relevant military departments and units. It became a General Directorate in the seventies on the grounds that the work it performed in concert with the Ministry of Defense was not only large in volume but also important in significance.
4. The Fourth Directorate The Fourth Directorate is responsible for the implementation of counterintelligence reconnaissance activities in all sectors of transportation.
5. The Fifth Directorate The Fifth Directorate, which is responsible for the fight against ideological sabotage, was reorganized in 1989 as the "З Directorate". This was far from being a formal initiative. Now, instead of doing the work of the Fifth Directorate, that is, countering ideological sabotage, it concentrates all its efforts on investigating and suppressing terrorist and sabotage activities carried out by foreign secret services, which use all available foreign organizations and centers engaged in activities that do not comply with the laws of the Soviet Union for the purpose of carrying out these activities.
6. The Sixth Directorate The Sixth Directorate is responsible for counter-espionage intelligence reconnaissance of various defense industry targets and certain scientific research centers.
7. Seventh Directorate The Seventh Directorate is tasked with the implementation of out-of-house surveillance of targets of interest to the Committee. This is the vital reconnaissance division that is so needed in all directions of NSC operations. As far as numbers are concerned, the Directorate is quite large, and its main characteristic is constant combat readiness so that it can carry out its tasks day and night. It is thanks to the activity of this department that it is possible to regularly detect and stop the espionage activities of foreign secret services, to determine their criminal connections, to find out their intentions to penetrate into the key departments of the USSR, to communicate with Soviet citizens, to carry out covert operations and to obtain information by visual means.
8. The Eighth Main Directorate The Eighth Main Directorate is responsible for the preparation of secret code sets for communications between headquarters organs and local organs, and between intelligence and investigation organs and intelligence agencies stationed abroad. The Directorate has modern technical and scientific equipment for the development of a system of coded communications, which guarantees the effective coded communications of the National Security Council and absolutely ensures that such communications can be operated around the clock at any distance from the headquarters offices. There is only one way of obtaining secret code sets, and that is by spies. The labor intensity of the radio operators and code interpreters is extremely heavy, and one, two, or at the most three persons have to ensure at all times and in all places the liaison between the intelligence agencies stationed abroad and the headquarters organs. The working conditions are not easy, life is very hard and boring because of the strict system must be observed, but also very inconvenient, because, the enemy secret service on the radio operator and code interpreter have great interest.
9. Ninth Directorate The Ninth Directorate is entrusted with the function of defense. It was responsible for guaranteeing the security of high-ranking leaders of the country, ceremonial occasions of the highest national profile, visits of foreign delegations and visits of Soviet delegations. The guarding of Kremlin government offices, the Council of Ministers building, and a number of other targets, including local targets far from Moscow, such as several on the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, and elsewhere, fall within their mandate. In 1990, the Ninth Directorate was reorganized into the Protection Directorate, and the structure was changed to precisely divide it into two types of service departments: one engaged in managerial work and the other in operational activities. The labor of the staff of the Defense Bureau is intense: always alert, always attentive, always ready, and thoroughly dedicated to everything they do, because at any moment there are unpleasant contingencies. Of course. They also have to adapt to the characteristics of their work and the personalities of the people they are defending, and to the circumstances surrounding the targets whose security needs to be guaranteed. In general, the security of a visiting delegation is a particularly difficult task. , because we are not the hosts there, but no one will relieve us of our responsibility. We simply cannot count entirely on the guards of our hosts, because in the event of an unforeseen incident, it is we who are ultimately primarily responsible, and not only for official duties, but also for moral duties. The exercise of the function of guarding is a complex occupation which requires instinct, ability and good physical training. The staff of the Agency, as a rule, does not hold this job for a long time, and after a certain period of time will be transferred to other directions of operational activity, where the work is less demanding in terms of mental and physical tension.
10. The tenth division The tenth division is a centralized repository of statistical documentation and archival materials on the operations of the State security bodies accumulated during the Soviet period, as well as in the pre-Soviet period. For this reason, it is often referred to in staff conversations as the "archive". The archives of the State Security Committee are an organized system for the preservation of all kinds of materials, which are classified by subject and chronology according to the rules of the strict classification system, which ensures the unconditional storage of materials and the rapid retrieval of the required documents. Until August 1991, the staff of the department guaranteed the collection of State secrets thanks to the strict rules governing the use of archives in the USSR, and there were no problems. At the same time, unfortunately, in the archival policy, in the archival legislation, there are some major omissions and shortcomings: the absence of clear rules on the preservation of certain materials and their duration of publication and use in scholarly writings excludes the possibility of full permissible use, closes off the avenues for political speculation using archival materials that can be considered a state secret and their unverified transfer to the mass media, and the consequences of these two actions are often The consequences of these two actions are often irremediable. Since the end of the 1980s, the staff of the Tenth Branch has carried out a careful analysis of a number of events and fragments of the activities of certain subjects, State bodies and other organizations. Their analyses, summaries and conclusions were of great importance and were reported to the leaders of the country, who also took corresponding decisions on the basis of their reports in relation to certain real-life issues. The archival materials have helped to fill in many blanks, to bring a certain openness to rather delicate issues, and to make it possible to cite authentic materials for viewing and solving certain problems, either involving citizens of the Soviet Union or of other countries. The fact that the Security Council's archival service has organized the materials in numerical symbols and in numerical order, and that the reader notices that some of the serial numbers are missing, is not an effort to hide a particular department. Rather, this is what the Security Council has traditionally done, allowing for default entries in departmental numbering. Sometimes they were filled in, and sometimes they reappeared when there was an organizational change in the Safety Committee establishment.
11. 11th Directorate (Department): default department
12. 12th Department The 12th Department, about whose work there are many unbelievable rumors and all sorts of rumors about the work of the state security agencies in the "full-scale surveillance" of the citizens of the USSR and foreigners. This refers to technical eavesdropping, which is the technical means by which the State security agencies carry out particularly important reconnaissance measures. Such methods have always been used by foreign secret services and were also employed in the Soviet Union. The examination of cases concerning the most important aspects of the life of the country and involving the interests of national security requires unusual methods and methods of reconnaissance, and wiretapping is one of them. It is carried out under strictly defined conditions on the basis of by-laws confirmed by the superiors and declared in force by order of the State Security Committee. On more than one occasion, wiretapping has assisted us in identifying the extremely dangerous actions of criminals, helping us to intercept contacts and communications of interest to the State security agencies and giving us access to information that could not be obtained by other means. Prior to the end of the 1980s, this issue was not legally regulated in the necessary form, so that the information obtained through this channel was utilized in a non-disclosable manner and was not made available to the Public Prosecutor's Office and the courts. Such information was to be corroborated by other subsequent acts, of course, when it was possible to do so. Such information is particularly useful in the detection of cases such as homicide, embezzlement of large sums of State and public **** property, smuggling, speculation in foreign currencies, unlawful access to vital State secrets and their transfer to foreign representatives. The work of the Twelfth Branch requires specialized technical equipment, professional training, and the ability to determine what information is required and to organize it. The staff of this branch is sometimes expected to know more than the average investigator and to fill in gaps in the operational activities of detection. Often, the capabilities of this unit are the only means of obtaining certain information that would never be available to the national security agencies by other means. The subtlety of this work also lies in the fact that, in the course of their work on certain targets, investigators may, quite by accident, come across information that has nothing to do with the person requesting the investigation, or that relates to persons occupying high-level positions of responsibility in the country, whose conversations are prohibited by law from being listened to. What can be done at this point? On the one hand, there is a ban on listening to such persons, while on the other hand, we sometimes obtain clear evidence of their illegal or even criminal activities and cannot stop there. In such cases, we were obliged to report the information we had obtained to a higher level of authority within the USSR and to ask for permission to use it and to continue our work. Such an attitude, which stems from the demands of the national interest, is not usually regarded as a violation of human rights in the sense that it has just been mentioned, has not been and will not be regarded as a violation of human rights, because it is the interest of the state and society that compels us to do so.
13. 13th Directorate (Division): default department
14. 14th Directorate (Division): default department
15. 15th Directorate The 15th Directorate was engaged in designing, constructing, and administering, in accordance with the required regime, certain targets which were to be prepared for special periods, i.e., in the event of the outbreak of military action and other unforeseen circumstances. In Moscow and its suburbs and in certain other parts of the USSR, targets agreed upon in absolute secrecy for use during special periods were built. They included reserve command posts for the command of the State and the armed forces, indispensable stockpiles, government communications hubs and other facilities that supported the life of the State in a state of emergency, ensured that the State functioned more or less normally and, in short, maintained the viability of the State in a state of emergency. It is, of course, self-evident that the facilities of the targets, which require corresponding scientific and technical conclusions based on the principle of minimum indispensability, are designed to protect against nuclear attack, but that their survival rate would be highly questionable in the event of a direct hit by a large nuclear warhead. Nevertheless, a certain part of the target would be preserved, thus safeguarding the manageability of the state to some extent. It is impossible to safeguard the security of the country and its most important objectives without the above facilities. Starting from the capabilities of the Soviet Union, we do not strongly advocate catching up in all respects with the United States, which possesses enormous potential and strength. But the above facilities are a minimum and must be there.
16. The Sixteenth Directorate The Sixteenth Directorate is quite close to the Eighth General Directorate, and it possesses the most outstanding intellectual potential for solving technical and scientific problems. It is responsible for the collection of overt and covert intelligence and the solution of extremely complex tasks relating to the penetration of important targets in other countries of interest to the Soviet Union. The Directorate has many high-level inventions, which require profound knowledge, essential technical equipment and technical means. There is a group of high-level specialists working in this department who could well be the pride of the Soviet Union's scientific and technical community. The 18th Directorate is not confined to its own small circle, but has extensive contacts with the Soviet industrial sector and scientific research institutions, utilizing its potential to assist the latter in carrying out various scientific tasks. When working on specific tasks, they were demanding, hard-working, resourceful, ingenious, and full of a strong desire for eternal pursuit, and, above all, they worked out simply incredible solutions to tasks that, at first glance, seemed to be a figment of human ingenuity. The National Security Council has departments that relentlessly pursue and aspire to a higher level, and the 16th Directorate is one of them, and an extremely important link on the road to the best practices in the riddles of scientific and technological puzzles, without which it would be impossible to guarantee the national security of the USSR at all in our time.
17. General Directorate of Border Troops The General Directorate of Border Troops leads the border military districts, border troops and posts. The headquarters organ of the Border Troops is small, but the total number of border guards is more than two hundred and twenty thousand. For a large country with long borders like the Soviet Union, this was the minimum number allowed by realistic needs. At the end of the 1980s there was an urgent need to expand the border guard units, improve their material conditions, and give them additional financial inputs. The border guards already accounted for half of the total expenditure of the budget of the State Security Committee, and a considerable part of it was spent on the technical equipment of the border: military technical arms, construction of target facilities, communications, salaries of the major units.
18. Reconnaissance Technical Directorate The Reconnaissance Technical Directorate is the vanguard of the design, development, production and operation of specialized technical tools, the largest concentration of the results of scientific thought, the highest technological craftsmanship and unique technical solutions. Relatively few of the Bureau's products are technical tools developed and produced in volume, and they tend to be individual products, which are designated for strictly defined reconnaissance missions. Drawing on the scientific and technological achievements of the Soviet scientific community and industry as a whole, the Reconnaissance Technology Directorate pays close attention to new foreign products in this field and endeavours to utilize the most valuable of all of them. The products of the Reconnaissance Technical Bureau are doubly secret. If information leaks out, it is possible for an adversary to quickly develop precautions that counteract the effectiveness of our technological capabilities. The Bureau is staffed by dedicated individuals with certain specialties. The NSC generously shared its new inventions with local industry, never offering any quid pro quo, and at the time there was no activity of a commercial nature. It is perfectly realistic to say that without the products of this Bureau, neither the Intelligence and Reconnaissance Agency, nor the Counterintelligence and Reconnaissance Agency, nor any other department of the National Security Council, and above all the Border Guard, would be able to fulfill the tasks facing this department. I believe that this directorate still has a great future ahead of it, but this can become a reality only under one condition: that is, if it absorbs domestic and foreign experience and constantly seeks higher levels of various scientific and technological discoveries.
[edit]Other auxiliary departments
1. Military Construction Directorate The Military Construction Directorate helps to solve the most complex engineering projects urgently needed by the operational directorates.
Soviet KGB Badge 2. General Directorate The General Directorate serves the operational activities of the National Security Council. Its productive work in the implementation of extremely complex reconnaissance measures is inconceivable without material management guarantees, especially in unexpected situations.
3. The Directorate of Health Care The Directorate of Health Care takes precautionary measures for the health of the staff of the National Security Council, especially some of those who work abroad, due to the environment in the place of their stay, and carries out frequent examinations and timely treatment. The Directorate has even developed a set of recommendations for staff going to countries with unfavorable climatic conditions to take physical exercises before leaving the country.
4. Dzerzhinsky Higher School The Dzerzhinsky Higher School provides advanced language training in nearly fifty foreign languages and specialized subject knowledge, as well as training specialists in advanced mathematics, physics and other disciplines. The State Committee on National Security has an excellent educational and training network, with higher education available to trainees and specialized training courses for staff to receive specialized knowledge and preparatory training. The National Security Council trains border and communications cadres, code translators, certain technical specialists, guarantees the preparation and defense of associate and doctoral theses.
5. Personnel Directorate The Personnel Directorate manages the cadres in the State Security Committee and has corresponding personnel departments at all levels of its units. It selects and transfers staff, accepts them for work and places them in jobs, promotes them, solves many problems relating to material security, handles leave and incentives, selects and sends cadres for training and further training, and so on, but this is far from being the whole of the work carried out by the personnel departments of the organs of state security. The most difficult stage of personnel work is the selection and study of candidates for work in the State security organs, because, if a mistake is made at this point, it may be costly at any stage of the person's activity. The Personnel Directorate provides the necessary assistance to the departments of the National Security Council in the analysis of files relating to unforeseen events, including defections of individual staff members, breaches of military discipline, and negligence in the performance of their duties.
[edit]Past leaders of the KGB
The most influential leaders in the history of the KGB were Andropov and Beria, with Andropov ending up as the supreme leader of the Soviet Union and Beria losing a power struggle and being executed by Khrushchev for treason.
Feliks Edmundovich Dzerzhinski 1917-1926
Feliks Edmundovich Dzerzhinski
(Belarusian language Фел?ск Эдмундав?ч Дзяржынс к?,
Polish: Feliks Dzier?yński,
Russian: Феликс Эдмундович Дзержинский )
Vyacheslav Rudolfovich Maimonjinski 1926-1934
Henrich Grigorievich Yagoda 1934-1936
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov 1936-1938
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria 1938-1941
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria 1941-1943
Beria with Stalin (behind left) and Stalin's daughter Vsevolod Nikolayevich Merkurov 1943 -1946
Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov 1946-1951
Sergei Ivanovich Ogolizov 1951 (August-December)
Semyon Denisovich Ignatieff 1951-1953
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria 1953 (March-June)
Sergei Nikiforovich Kruglov 1953-1954
Ivan Alexandrovich Serov 1954-1958
Alexander Nikolayevich Selepin 1958-1961
Vladimir Efimovich Semichasne 1961-1967
Yuri Vladimir Rovich Andropov 1967-1982
Vitaly Vasilyevich Fedorchuk 1982 (May-December)
Viktor Mikhailovich Chebrikov 1982-1988
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov 1988-1991
3 Successive heads of the KGB's First Main Directorate (General Directorate of Foreign Intelligence)
Mikhail Abramovich Trilisser 1921-1929
Artur Heris Djanovich Artuzov 1929-1934
Abram Aronovich Slutsky 1934-1938
Mikhail Spiegelgrass 1938 (February-July)
Vladimir Georgievich Djekanozov 1938-1940
Pavel Mikhailovich Feigin 1940-1946
Peter Vasilievich Fedotov 1946-1949
Sergei Romanovich Savchenko 1949-1953
Vasily Stepanovich Riassnoy 1953 (March-June)
Yarisanda Semyonovich Panushkin 1953-1956< /p>
Yarisanda Mikhailovich Sakharovsky 1956-1971
Fyodor Konstantinovich Molgin 1971-1974
Vladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov 1974 -1988
Leonid Vladimirovich Shebarshin 1988