KGB
   HOME



picture info

KGB
The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Political Directorate, OGPU, and NKVD. Attached to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, Council of Ministers, it was the chief government agency of "union-republican jurisdiction", carrying out internal security, Intelligence agency, foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence and secret police functions. Similar agencies operated in each of the republics of the Soviet Union aside from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR, where the KGB was headquartered, 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 Ministry of Internal Affairs (Soviet Union), MVD Internal Troops. Wh ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




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 agency, 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 (Russia), Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR RF). The primary foreign intelligence service in Russia and the Soviet Union has been the GRU (Soviet Union), 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 ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Lubyanka Building
Lubyanka (, ) is the popular name for the building which contains the headquarters of the FSB 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 still 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 a revenue house by the All-Russia Insurance Company (''Rossiya Insurance Company''), on the spot where Catherine the Great had once headquartere ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Ministry Of State Security (Soviet Union)
The Ministry of State Security (, ), abbreviated as MGB (), was a ministry of the Soviet Union from 1946 to 1953 which functioned as the country's secret police. The ministry inherited the intelligence and state security responsibilities of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) and People's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB). The MGB was led by Viktor Abakumov from 1946 to 1951, then by Semyon Ignatiev until Stalin's death in 1953, upon which it was merged into an enlarged Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). 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 Affairs (NKVD ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) secret police organization, and thus had a monopoly on intelligence and state security functions. The NKVD is known for carrying out political repression and the Great Purge under Joseph Stalin, as well as counterintelligence and other operations on the Eastern Front of World War II. The head of the NKVD was Genrikh Yagoda from 1934 to 1936, Nikolai Yezhov from 1936 to 1938, Lavrentiy Beria from 1938 to 1946, and Sergei Kruglov in 1946. First established in 1917 as the NKVD of the Russian SFSR, the ministry was tasked with regular police work and overseeing the country's prisons and labor camps. It was disbanded in 1930, and its functions dispersed among other agencies before being reinstated as a commissariat of the Soviet Union ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Vadim Bakatin
Vadim Viktorovich Bakatin (; 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 the June 1991 election. Early life and education Vadim Bakatin was born in Kiselyovsk, Kemerovo Oblast, in 1937. He graduated from the Novosibirsk Civil Engineering Institute and the Academy of Social Sciences under the CPSU Central Committee. Career From 1960 to 1971, Bakatin was supervisor, chief enginee ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


People's Commissariat For State Security
The People's Commissariat for State Security () 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 from 1943 to 1946, 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 the GUGB was abolished and staff were moved to the newly created People's Commissariat for St ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Ivan Serov
Ivan Alexandrovich Serov (; 13 August 1905 – 1 July 1990) was a Soviet intelligence officer who served as Chairman of the KGB from March 1954 to December 1958 and Director of the GRU from December 1958 to February 1963. Serov was NKVD Commissar of the Ukrainian SSR from 1939 to 1941 and Deputy Commissar of the NKVD under Lavrentiy Beria from 1941 to 1954. Serov was active in organising NKVD activities against anti-Soviet forces during the Soviet Invasion of Poland and World War II, including the Katyn massacre. Serov issued the Serov Instructions and helped organise the mass deportations of people from Poland, Baltic states and the Caucasus. Serov helped establish secret police forces in the Eastern Bloc after the war and played an important role in suppressing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Serov was removed from power in 1963 after his protégé, GRU Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, was exposed as a mole passing classified documents to both British and American inte ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Ministry Of Internal Affairs (Soviet Union)
The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR (MVD; ) 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 by its branches in the post-Soviet states. History The Ministry of Inte ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Cheka
The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə, links=yes), abbreviated as VChK ( rus, ВЧК, p=vɛ tɕe ˈka), and commonly known as the Cheka ( rus, ЧК, p=tɕɪˈka), was the first Soviet secret police organization. It was established on by the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian SFSR, and was led by Felix Dzerzhinsky. By the end of the Russian Civil War in 1921, the Cheka had at least 200,000 personnel. Ostensibly created to protect the October Revolution from "class enemies" such as the bourgeoisie and members of the clergy, the Cheka soon became a tool of repression wielded against all political opponents of the Bolshevik regime. The organization had responsibility for counterintelligence, oversight of the loyalty of the Red Army, and protection of the country's borders, as well ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Counter-intelligence
Counterintelligence (counter-intelligence) or counterespionage (counter-espionage) is any 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 organizations focusing on a different aspect of counterintelligence, such as domestic, international, and counter-terrorism. Some states will formalize 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 intelligenc ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Secret Police
image:Putin-Stasi-Ausweis.png, 300px, Vladimir Putin's secret police identity card, issued by the East German Stasi while he was working as a Soviet KGB liaison officer from 1985 to 1989. Both organizations used similar forms of repression. Secret police (or political police) are police, Intelligence agency, intelligence, or Security agency, security agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, ideological, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of Authoritarianism, authoritarian and Totalitarianism, totalitarian regimes. They protect the political power of a dictator or regime and often operate outside the law to repress dissidents and weaken political opposition, frequently using violence. They may enjoy legal sanction to hold and charge suspects without ever identifying their organization. History Africa Egypt Egypt is home to Africa and the Middle East's first internal security service: The Stat ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Security Agency
A security agency is a governmental organization that conducts intelligence activities for the internal security of a state. They are the domestic cousins of foreign intelligence agencies, and typically conduct counterintelligence to thwart other countries' foreign intelligence efforts. For example, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is an internal intelligence, security and law enforcement agency, while the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an external intelligence service, which deals primarily with intelligence collection overseas. A similar relationship exists in Britain between MI5 and MI6. The distinction, or overlap, between security agencies, national police, and gendarmerie organizations varies by country. For example, in the United States, one organization, the FBI, is a national police, an internal security agency, and a counterintelligence agency. In other countries, separate agencies exist, although the nature of their work causes them to ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]