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KGB
The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti) was the main security agency for the Soviet Union from 13 March 1954 until 3 December 1991. As a direct successor of preceding agencies such as the Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKGB, NKVD and MGB, it was attached to the Council of Ministers. It was the chief government agency of "union-republican jurisdiction", carrying out internal security, foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence and secret-police functions. Similar agencies operated in each of the republics of the Soviet Union aside from the Russian SFSR, with many associated ministries, state committees and state commissions. The agency was a military service governed by army laws and regulations, in the same fashion as the Soviet Army or the MVD Internal Troops. W ...
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First Chief Directorate
The First Main Directorate () of the Committee for State Security under the USSR council of ministers (PGU KGB) was the organization responsible for foreign operations and intelligence activities by providing for the training and management of covert agents, intelligence collection administration, and the acquisition of foreign and domestic political, scientific and technical intelligence for the Soviet Union. The First Chief Directorate was formed within the KGB directorate in 1954, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union became the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR RF). The primary foreign intelligence service in Russia and the Soviet Union has been the GRU, a military intelligence organization and special operations force. History of foreign intelligence in the Soviet Union From the beginning, foreign intelligence played an important role in Soviet foreign policy. In the Soviet Union, foreign intelligence was formally formed in 1920 as a foreign department of Cheka (''Inostr ...
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Lubyanka Building
The Lubyanka ( rus, Лубянка, p=lʊˈbʲankə) is the popular name for the building which contains the headquarters of the FSB, and its affiliated prison, on Lubyanka Square in the Meshchansky District of Moscow, Russia. It is a large Neo-Baroque building with a facade of yellow brick designed by Alexander V. Ivanov in 1897 and augmented by Aleksey Shchusev from 1940 to 1947. It was previously the national headquarters of the KGB. Soviet hammer and sickles can be seen on the building's facade. Description The Lubyanka building is home to the Lubyanka prison, the headquarters of the Border Guard Service, a KGB museum, and a subsection of the FSB. Part of the prison was turned into a prison museum, but a special authorization is required for visits. The lower floors are made of granite with emblazoned Soviet crests. History Origins The Lubyanka was originally built in 1898 as the headquarters of the All-Russia Insurance Company (''Rossiya Insurance Company'' ...
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Ministry Of State Security (Soviet Union)
The MGB (russian: МГБ), an initialism for ''Ministerstvo gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti SSSR'' ( rus, Министе́рство госуда́рственной безопа́сности СССР, p=mʲɪnʲɪˈsʲtʲerstvə ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ ; translated in English as Ministry for State Security), was the name of the Soviet state security apparatus dealing with internal and external security issues: secret police duties, foreign and domestic intelligence and counterintelligence, etc. from 1946 to 1953. Origins of the MGB The MGB was just one of many incarnations of the Soviet State Security apparatus. After the revolution, the Bolsheviks relied on a strong political police or security force to support and control their regime. During the Russian Civil War, the Cheka were in power, relinquishing it to State Political Directorate (GPU) in 1922 after the fighting was over. The GPU was then renamed The People's Commissariat for Internal A ...
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Vadim Bakatin
Vadim Viktorovich Bakatin (russian: link=no, Вадим Викторович Бакатин; 6 November 1937 – 31 July 2022) was a Russian politician who served as the last chairman of the KGB in 1991. He was the last surviving former chairman of this organization. He was appointed to dismantle the KGB, but he was unable to control this organization and to fulfill the task Yevgenia Albats and Catherine A. Fitzpatrick. ''The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia—Past, Present, and Future.'' 1994. due to political reasons. However, he was able to fulfill a plan to disintegrate the intelligence agency into separate organizations.J. Michael Waller. Ibid. He ran for the Russian presidency as an independent candidate in June 1991. Early life and education Vadim Bakatin was born in Kiselyovsk, Kemerovo Oblast in 1937. He was a graduate of the Novosibirsk Civil Engineering Institute and the Academy of Social Sciences under the CPSU Central Committee. Career Fro ...
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Ivan Serov
Ivan Alexandrovich Serov (russian: Ива́н Алекса́ндрович Серóв; 13 August 1905 – 1 July 1990) was a Russian Soviet intelligence officer who served as the head of the KGB between March 1954 and December 1958, as well as head of the GRU between 1958 and 1963. He was Deputy Commissar of the NKVD under Lavrentiy Beria, and played a major role in the political intrigues after Joseph Stalin's death. Serov helped establish a variety of secret police forces in Central and Eastern Europe after the creation of the Iron Curtain, and played an important role in crushing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Serov headed both the political intelligence agency (KGB) and the military intelligence agency (GRU), making him unique in Soviet/Russian history. Inside the Soviet security forces, Serov was widely known for boasting to his colleagues that he could "break every bone in a man's body without killing him".U.S. News & World ReportThe Bone Breaker. The mystery of General ...
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Vladimir Bukovsky
Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky (russian: link=no, Влади́мир Константи́нович Буко́вский; 30 December 1942 – 27 October 2019) was a Russian-born British human rights activist and writer. From the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, he was a prominent figure in the Soviet dissident movement, well known at home and abroad. He spent a total of twelve years in the psychiatric prison-hospitals, labour camps, and prisons of the Soviet Union. After being expelled from the Soviet Union in late 1976, Bukovsky remained in vocal opposition to the Soviet system and the shortcomings of its successor regimes in Russia. An activist, a writer, Jacket and a neurophysiologist,. he is celebrated for his part in the campaign to expose and halt the political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union. A member of the international advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a director of the Gratitude Fund (set up in 1998 to commemorate an ...
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People's Commissariat For State Security
The People's Commissariat for State Security (russian: Народный комиссариат государственной безопасности) or NKGB, was the name of the Soviet secret police, intelligence and counter-intelligence force that existed from 3 February 1941 to 20 July 1941, and again in 1943, before being renamed the Ministry for State Security ( MGB). Separate administration Changes in Soviet apparatus began in February 1941 with the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet decision. It started with Military Counterintelligence. On 3 February 1941, the 4th Department (Special Section, OO) of GUGB within the NKVD security service responsible for the Red Army military counter-intelligence, consisting of 12 Sections and one Investigation Unit, was separated from the GUGB NKVD. The official liquidation of the OO GUGB and GUGB as organized units within the NKVD was announced on 12 February 1941 by a joint order № 00151/003 of the NKVD and NKGB USSR. The rest of ...
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NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. Established in 1917 as NKVD of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the agency was originally tasked with conducting regular police work and overseeing the country's prisons and labor camps. It was disbanded in 1930, with its functions being dispersed among other agencies, only to be reinstated as an all-union commissariat in 1934. The functions of the OGPU (the secret police organization) were transferred to the NKVD around the year 1930, giving it a monopoly over law enforcement activities that lasted until the end of World War II. During this period, the NKVD included both ordinary public order activities, and secret police activities. The NKVD is known for its role in political repression and for carrying out the Great ...
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Ministry Of Internal Affairs (Soviet Union)
The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR (MVD; russian: Министерство внутренних дел СССР (МВД)) was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union from 1946 to 1991. The MVD was established as the successor to the NKVD during reform of the People's Commissariats into the Ministries of the Soviet Union in 1946. The MVD did not include agencies concerned with secret policing unlike the NKVD, with the function being assigned to the Ministry of State Security (MGB). The MVD and MGB were briefly merged into a single ministry from March 1953 until the MGB was split off as the Committee for State Security (KGB) in March 1954. The MVD was headed by the Minister of Interior and responsible for many internal services in the Soviet Union such as law enforcement and prisons, the Internal Troops, Traffic Safety, the Gulag system, and the internal migration system. The MVD was dissolved upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 and succeeded ...
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Cheka
The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə), abbreviated as VChK ( rus, ВЧК, p=vɛ tɕe ˈka), and commonly known as Cheka ( rus, Чека, p=tɕɪˈka; from the initialism russian: ЧК, ChK, label=none), was the first of a succession of Soviet secret-police organizations. Established on December 5 ( Old Style) 1917 by the Sovnarkom, it came under the leadership of Felix Dzerzhinsky, a Polish aristocrat-turned-Bolshevik. By late 1918, hundreds of Cheka committees had sprung up in the RSFSR at the oblast, guberniya, raion, uyezd, and volost levels. Ostensibly set up to protect the revolution from reactionary forces, i.e., "class enemies" such as the bourgeoisie and members of the clergy, it soon became the repression tool against all political opponents of the communist regime. At the ...
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Counter-intelligence
Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or other intelligence activities conducted by, for, or on behalf of foreign powers, organizations or persons. Many countries will have multiple organisations focusing on a different aspect of counterintelligence, such as domestic, international, and counter-terrorism. Some states will formalise it as part of the police structure, such as the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Others will establish independent bodies, such as the United Kingdom's MI5, others have both intelligence and counterintelligence grouped under the same agency, like the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). History Modern tactics of espionage and dedicated government intelligence agencies developed over the course of the late-19th centur ...
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Counterintelligence
Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or other intelligence activities conducted by, for, or on behalf of foreign powers, organizations or persons. Many countries will have multiple organisations focusing on a different aspect of counterintelligence, such as domestic, international, and counter-terrorism. Some states will formalise it as part of the police structure, such as the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Others will establish independent bodies, such as the United Kingdom's MI5, others have both intelligence and counterintelligence grouped under the same agency, like the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). History Modern tactics of espionage and dedicated government intelligence agencies developed over the course of the late-19th century. ...
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