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KGB

 
Dictionary: KGB   ('jē-bē') pronunciation
 
n.

The intelligence and internal security agency of the former Soviet Union.

[Russian, from K(omitet) G(osudarstvennoĭ) B(ezopasnosti) : komitet, committee + gosudarstvennoĭ, genitive of gosudarstvennyĭ, of the state + bezopasnosti, genitive of bezopasnost', security.]


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The state security police (1954-91) of the former USSR with responsibility for external espionage, internal counterintelligence, and internal “crimes against the state.”

Etymology: Russian, abbreviation of Komitet gosudarstvennoĭ bezopasnosti ‘Committee of State Security.’

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

 

Committee for State Security

The intelligence and security apparatus of the Soviet state. While known as the NKVD (then MVD), the body was responsible for the prison camps. In the post-Stalin period, it was placed under greater political control, though it remained powerful in foreign espionage and control of dissidents.

— Stephen Whitefield

 

("Committee for State Security") Soviet agency responsible for intelligence, counterintelligence, and internal security. It was the descendant of earlier agencies. The Cheka was established in 1917 to investigate counterrevolution and sabotage. Its successor, the GPU (later OGPU), was the new Soviet Union's first secret-police agency (1923); it also administered corrective labor camps and oversaw the forcible collectivization of Russia's farms. By 1931 it had its own army and its spies and informers were ubiquitous. In 1934 it was absorbed into the NKVD, which carried out extensive purges. In 1941 the state-security and espionage functions were combined in the MGB. In 1954 the KGB was created. At its peak, it was the world's largest secret-police and espionage organization. It lost power under Mikhail Gorbachev, especially after leading a failed coup d'état (1991). It was renamed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and its internal-security functions were segregated from its espionage and counterespionage operations.

For more information on KGB, visit Britannica.com.

 

Soviet espionage organization.

KGB, or Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security), was the Soviet Union's state security and political police agency, serving as the main internal and external intelligence and counterintelligence bureau, and external espionage and counterespionage organization from 1954 to 1991. It was somewhat similar to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and British MI-6. Under Communist Party control, it was the world's largest secret police and espionage organization, with seven directorates including foreign operations; internal political control; military counter-intelligence; surveillance; and border guards. The latter included 300,000 personnel dispersed in Eastern Europe and the Central Asian Republics. Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan were special targets.

Bibliography

Yost, Graham. The KGB: The Russian Secret Police from the Days of the Czars to the Present. New York: Facts On File, 1989.

CHARLES C. KOLB

 
Intelligence Encyclopedia: KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, USSR Committee of State Security)
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The KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti or Committee of State Security) was the preeminent Soviet intelligence agency and Soviet equivalent of the American CIA. The KGB was the primary organization for intelligence and counterintelligence matters during the later Soviet period. Although the NKVD was tasked with internal security, the KBG role in political security and counterintelligence was so broad that its operations often touched on internal security matters. For example, in 1957, Soviet border guards were placed under KGB supervision.

The KGB and Western intelligence services played a continual deadly game of "cat and mouse" (both as pursuers and the pursued) throughout the Cold War, with some of the most intense activity centered on Berlin (e.g., Operation Gold and the Berlin tunnel episode). In 1967, Yuri Andropov, then head of KGB and later Soviet premier, described the role of the KGB and other state security bodies as "a bitter and stubborn battle on all fronts, economic, political, and ideological."

Origin and formation of the KGB. The first Soviet state security organization, the Cheka (aka, Vecheka or All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-revolution and Sabotage) was created by the new Soviet leaders almost immediately following the November revolution in 1917. In 1922, the State Political Directorate (GPU) succeeded the Cheka and was then placed under the control of the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs).

When the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formally created the next year, the GPU became the OGPU (Unified State Political Directorate) and was made an independent directorate (disassociated from the NKVD) of the Soviet Council of People's Commissars. In the political infighting and turmoil of the early 1930s in the Soviet Union, the OGPU was renamed the GUGB (Chief Directorate of State Security) and simultaneously placed under the control of the also reformed All-Union NKVD.

This fusion of state security and intelligence functions produced powerful influence embodied in a string of leaders that included G. G. Yagoda, N. I. Yezhov (1936), and Lavrentii Beria (1938).

In 1941, during World War II, the GUGB was split from the NKVD and granted equal status as the NKGB. The first NKGB director, V. N. Merkulov, had worked directly with Beria and followed similar brutal methodologies. The NKGB was tasked with conducting both external espionage and counter-espionage activities as well as guaranteeing Communist Party rule by suppressing counter-revolutionary organizations.

As the Nazi invasion pushed deeper into Russia, the NKGB was once again briefly fused with NKVD under its old title as the GUGB to streamline efforts to coordinate an effective defense against the Nazi forces. As the front stabilized and the Soviets began to push the Germans back, the GUGB was once again given independent status as the NKGB.

Derived from special sections of the NKVD Army (NKO) and Navy (NKVMF), a powerful new element,

SMERSH (SMERrt SHpionam or "Death to Spies") became a forerunner to KGB assassination teams. In 1940, Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City by SMERSH. Trotsky had long been a rival of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who recognized that Trotsy's role in launching the Bolshevik takeover of Russia alongside V. I. Lenin gave him much greater revolutionary legitimacy. SMERSH agents tracked Trotsky for more than a decade before the assassination.

Following World War II, the Soviet government renamed the People's Commissariats as ministries and the NKVD became the MVD and the NKGB became the MGB. In March, 1953, the day after Stalin died, Beria united the MGB and MVD into one organization (retaining the title MVD). After Beri's trial and execution in 1954, espionage activities were assigned to a reconstituted unit designated as the KGB and placed under the direction of the Soviet Council of Ministers. In 1978, the KGB chairman was assured a place on the Soviet Council of Ministers.

As part of his attempted reforms of the Soviet Union (e.g., glasnost), the last Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev also attempted to reform the KGB before it was dissolved in 1991 but these attempts were met with resistance within the KGB hierarchy and eventually created tension significant to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The fate of the KGB was sealed when its leader, Colonel General Vladimir Kryuchkov, ordered KGB agents to participate in the failed August, 1991, coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev. KGB-directed forces surrounded Gorbachev's Crimean dacha (house) for three tense days before the coup collapsed.

The Soviet Union collapsed and splintered in 1991. The KGB was dissolved and the Federal'naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, or Federal Security Service (FSB), Russian Federal Counterintelligence Service (FSK), and Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) were formed (from resources that included some former KGB elements) to serve the intelligence needs of the new Russian Federation.

KGB tactics. KGB operatives were masters at tactics ranging from disinformation (in Russian, dezinformatsiya) to assassination. As did their Western counterparts, KGB operatives also employed technology specifically designed for espionage operations. KGB agents employed a range of weapons, including exotic devices like poison pens that fired hydrocyanic acid gas or pellets of ricin. Another celebrated example involved the KGB development of the lipstick pistol, or "kiss of death." Created by KGB scientists, the lipstick pistol contained a 4.5-mm single-shot pistol encased in rubber and disguised as a tube of lipstick. The deadly poison ricin came to widespread public attention in 1978, when it was used during the KGB assassination of Bulgarian dissenter Georgi Markov in the United Kingdom. Markov, a BBC broadcaster, died several days after being jabbed by an umbrella at a bridge in London. The poison-tipped umbrella injector was designed by KGB scientists.

KGB operatives used disinformation not only directly against Western governments, but also against governments not following pro-Soviet policies. For example, KGB operatives used disinformation tactics in attempts to destabilize Egyptian president Anwar Sadat for his increasingly pro-Western policies by issuing false statements and writing attributed to Islamist fundamentalists. The disinformation not only contributed to the assassination of Sadat, but also helped fuel Islamist terrorism.

To avoid direct conflict with the U.S., the KGB funded subversive groups and domestic terrorists within the United States (e.g., the Weathermen, a 1960s radical group) through intermediaries such as Cuba.

Spy vs. spy. As did their Western intelligence counterparts, KBG officers continually attempted to recruit agents and plant moles in Western intelligence organizations. The KGB's success in this effort was unparalleled, the most infamous success coming with the compromise of British intelligence by the Cambridge University spy ring and mole Kim Philby.

KGB methods of suppression of moles and traitors could be brutal. According to one eyewitness account, when KGB officers discovered a fellow officer had provided information to the CIA, he was thrown feet first into a roaring furnace while his colleagues watched.

The most well known mole for Western intelligence operating within the KGB was Colonel Oleg Penkovsky. Penkovsky initially served the Soviet regime faithfully, but when he became disillusioned with communism and the Soviet leadership, Penkovsky ultimately offered his services to British intelligence. United States President John F. Kennedy used information provided by Penkovsky during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The KGB subsequently arrested Penkovsky. After being convicted of treason, Penkovsky was executed.

The Legacy of the KGB. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the KGB, access to secret archives and testimony of former KGB officers and agents has exposed several double agents. The extent of the Walker family espionage activities became apparent, and specific sensitive U.S. Navy and National Security Agency documents were discovered in the KGB archives.

In 1994, long-time CIA veteran Aldrich Ames was discovered to be a KGB mole. The information he sold to the KGB included the names of Russian double agents and operatives working for the U.S. within the Soviet intelligence community, ultimately leading to their capture, imprisonment, or execution by Soviet authorities.

In 2001, FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen was arrested for conspiracy to commit espionage. Hanssen eventually pled guilty to charges that he had spied for the KGB.

Although the predominant sentiment in contemporary Russia is one of relief from fear of the KGB, some express the sentiment that the once omnipresent intelligence-gathering entity was so powerful and invasive that it minimized the commission of ordinary crimes, which now plague Russia.

Some of the bizarre disinformation created by the KGB has become a source of urban legends occasionally regurgitated by ill-informed or profoundly anti-U.S. critics. For example, documents in the KGB archives provide evidence that operatives mounted a disinformation campaign laden with pseudo-scientific "proofs" that the United States had deliberately created the AIDS virus in the laboratory to use as a biological weapon.

The KGB mounted a major disinformation campaign during the Korean War that resulted in lasting influences on North Korean and Western relations. KGB operatives disseminated information that accused U.S.-led United Nations forces of using biological and chemical warfare against North Korean civilians, information that is still propagated by the North Korean government and so continues to poison public opinion against the U.S. and other Western powers.

Further Reading

Books

Bittmann, Ladislav. The KGB and Soviet Disinformation. Washington: Pergamon-Brassey's International Defense Publishers, 1985.

Kessler, Ronald. Moscow Station: How the KGB Penetrated the American Embassy. New York: Scribner's, 1989.

Mitrokhin, Vasily, ed. KGB Lexicon: The Soviet Intelligence Officer's Handbook. London: Frank Cass, 2002.

Periodicals

Gordievsky, Oleg. "The KGB Archives."Intelligence and National Security 6, no. 1 (Jan. 1991): 7–14.

Waller, Michael J. "State within a State: The KGB and its Successors" Perspective IV, no. 4 (1994).

Other

Romerstein, Herbert. "Disinformation as a KGB Weapon in the Cold War." Prepared for a Conference on Germany and Intelligence Organizations: The Last Fifty Years in Review, sponsored by Akademie fur Politische Bildung Tutzing, June 18–20, 1999.

 
Politics: KGB
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The secret police of the former Soviet Union.

 
Wikipedia: KGB
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Committee for State Security
Комитет государственной безопасности
Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti
The KGB Sword-and-Shield emblem.
The KGB Sword-and-Shield emblem.
Agency overview
Formed 1954
Preceding agency MGB - Ministry for State Security
Dissolved 1995 (disputed)
Jurisdiction Council of Ministers of the USSR
Headquarters Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
55°45′31.2″N 37°37′32.16″E / 55.758667°N 37.6256°E / 55.758667; 37.6256

The KGB (КГБ, Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti) was the national security agency of the USSR. From 1954 until 1991, the Committee for State Security was the Communist state’s premier secret police, internal security, and espionage organisation, whose coat of arms — the Shield and the Sword — illustrate a national military hierarchy. The Russian pronunciation of KGB is (Russian: ru-KGB.ogg Комитет государственной безопасности ;

The contemporary State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus uses the Russian name KGB. Linguistically, among the Western press, KGB denotes “secret service” in referring to the the FSB.[1] Most information remains classified, yet two on-line documentary sources are available.[2][3]

Contents

Origins

The KGB originated as the Cheka (Chrezvychainaya Komissiya po Borbe s Kontr-revolutisnei i Sabotazzhem – Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolutions and Sabotage) established 20 December 1917, headed by Felix Dzerzhinsky, and based upon the Tsarist Okhrana intelligence-security agency; Cheka (Extraordinary Committee) derives from the two initial letters of each word in Chrezvychainaya Komissiya, and its agents are Chekists (Chekisty). [4][5] To protect Soviet national security, the Cheka (1917–22) often changed name and structure — becoming, among others, the State Political Directorate (OGPU) in 1923; the People's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB) in 1941; and and the Ministry for State Security (MGB) in 1946, yet always remained the Cheka, the Sword and Shield of the USSR.

In 1953, the ambitious Lavrentiy Beria consolidated the MVD (Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs) and the MGB into an enlarged MVD. In 1954, a year after his execution, his MVD monolith became two agencies — the MVD (secret police) and the KGB (espionage), answerable only to the Council of Ministers about intelligence and national security. In 1978, the KGB was re-named KGB of the Soviet Union (USSR KGB), and its Chairman was a council minister. Besides being the Union’s KGB, it was the republican KGB for Russia proper. [6]

Established to protect the Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic against imperialism and counter-revolution, the Cheka also pursued revenge against the enemies of the State and of Joseph Stalin — among them, the monarchist White movement, Ukrainian Nationalists, and Leon Trotsky, usually defeated by way of deception. [7] Besides Chekist cunning, early success is partly owed to the lax national security of Western countries, allowing easy NKVD penetration of government and intelligence agencies — thus how Melita Norwood betrayed the British nuclear weapons programme, and the Cambridge Five delivered nuclear weapon and Manhattan Project secrets stolen by the scientist–spies, Klaus Fuchs and Theodore Hall.

During the Cold War (1945–91), the KGB maintained the one-party Soviet State by suppressing “ideological subversion” (political dissent) and anti-Soviet public figures (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, et al.). It kept Russia technologically-abreast of the West by collecting the British and French industrial intelligence that made feasible the Tupolev Tu-144 SST aeroplane, (the Russian Concorde). It shared the infiltration of Chancellor Willy Brandt’s West German Government (1969–74) with the East German Stasi (MfS). Yet, among its failures are the spy networks compromised in 1945 by defectors Elizabeth Bentley in the US, and the defection of SIS mole Oleg Gordievsky, the London KGB legal resident, in 1985, and the loss of ideological agents because of Soviet suppression of Hungarian and Czechoslovak nationalism. Still, mercenary agents, such as US Navy officer Aldrich Ames and FBI agent Robert Hanssen volunteered to serve the KGB as moles.

The thirty-seven-year history of the USSR KGB ended when its Chairman, Col.-Gen. Vladimir Kryuchkov, led the 19–21 August 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt to depose Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. [8] On 23 August, Chairman Kryuchkov was arrested and replaced by Gen. Vadim Bakatin, who, in October 1991, dismantled the USSR KGB into three discrete agencies: (i) the Interrepublican Security Service (national security), (ii) the Central Intelligence Service (espionage), and (iii) the Committee for Protection of the State Border (border patrol).

In the event, the Supreme Soviet formally disestablished the USSR KGB on 3 December 1991. Moreover, on 25 December 1991, the USSR metamorphosed into the Russian Federation, that, by January 1992, had five agencies doing KGB’s work: (i) the MB (Ministerstvo Bezopasnosti – Ministry of Security), (ii) the FAPSI (Federal’noe agentsvo pravitel’-stvennoi sviazi i informatsii – Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information), (iii) GUO (Glavnoe upravlenie okhrany – Main Guards Directorate), (iv) the Border Guard Service, and (v) the FIS (Foreign Intelligence Service). [9]

On 21 December 1995, Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin replaced the KGB with two agencies the national security FSB (Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti – Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) and the espionage SVR (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki – Foreign Intelligence Service).[citation needed]

Modus operandi

In its time, the KGB was the world’s most effective intelligence agency.[10] It operated legal and illegal espionage residencies in target countries where the legal resident spied from the Soviet embassy, and, if caught, was protected with diplomatic immunity from prosecution; at best, the compromised spy either returned to Russia or was expelled by the target country government. The illegal resident spied unprotected by diplomatic immunity and worked independently of the Soviet diplomatic and trade missions, (cf. the non-official cover CIA agent). In its early history, the KGB valued illegal spies more than legal spies, because illegals penetrated their targets more easily. The KGB residency executed four types of espionage: (i) political, (ii) economic, (iii) military-strategic, and (iv) disinformation, effected with “active measures” (PR Line), counter-intelligence and security (KR Line), and scientific–technologic intelligence (X Line); quotidian duties included SIGINT (RP Line) and illegal support (N Line).[11]

At first, using the romantic and intellectual allure of “The First Worker–Peasant State” (1917), “The Fight Against Fascism” (1936–39), and the “Anti-Nazi Great Patriotic War” (1941–45) the Soviets recruited many idealistic, high-level Westerners as ideological agents . . . but the Russo–German Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (1939) and the suppressed Hungarian Uprising (1956) and Prague Spring (1968) mostly ended ideological recruitment. By the 1960s and 1970s, the Red Army’s invasions and the infirm Brezhnev’s corrupt, poor leadership repelled young, left-wing radicals from the Soviet Socialist cause — so, the KGB blackmailed and bribed Westerners into spying for the Soviet Union.

The KGB classed its spies as agents (intelligence providers) and controllers (intelligence relayers). The false-identity legend assumed by a Russian-born illegal spy was elaborate, the life of either a “live double” (participant to the fabrication) or a “dead double” (whose identity is tailored to the spy). The agent then substantiated his or her legend by living it in a foreign country, before emigrating to the target country; thus the sending of US-bound illegal residents via the Soviet residency in Ottawa, Canada. Tradecraft included stealing and photographing documents, code-names, contacts, targets, and dead letter boxes, and working as “friend of the cause” agents provocateur who infiltrate the target’s group to sow dissension, influence policy, and arrange kidnaps and assassinations.

History

The Cheka was established to defend the October Revolution and the nascent Bolshevik state from its enemies — principally the monarchist White Army. To ensure the Bolshevik régime’s survival, it suppressed counter-revolution with domestic terror and international deception. The scope of foreign intelligence operations prompted Lenin to authorise the Cheka’s creation of the INO (Innostranyi Otdel – Foreign-intelligence Department) — the precursor to the First Chief Directorate (FCD) of the KGB. In 1922, Stalin’s régime re-named the Cheka as the State Political Directorate (OGPU). [12]

The OGPU expanded Soviet espionage nationally and internationally, and provided Stalin’s bodyguard Nikolai Vlasik. The vagaries of Stalin’s paranoia influenced the OGPU’s performance and direction in the 1930s, i.e. fantastic Trotskyist conspiracies, etc. Acting as his own analyst, Stalin unwisely subordinated intelligence analysis to collecting it; eventually, reports pandered to his conspiracy fantasies. The middle history of the KGB culminates in the Great Purge (1936–38) killings of civil, military, and government people deemed politically unreliable — among them, chairmen Genrikh Yagoda (1938) and Nikolai Yezhov (1940); later, Lavrentiy Beria (1953) followed suit. Ironically, Yezhov denounced Yagoda for executing the Great Terror, which from 1937 to 1938 is called Yezhovshchina, the especially cruel “Yezhov era”. [13]

In 1941, under Chairman Lavrentiy Beria, OGPU became NKGB (People's Commissariat for State Security, integral to the NKVD) and recovered from the Great Purge of the thirties. Yet, the NKGB unwisely continued pandering to Stalin’s conspiracy fantasies — whilst simultaneously achieving its deepest penetrations of the West. Next, Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov centralised the intelligence agencies, re-organising the NKGB as the KI (Komitet Informatsii – Committee of Information), composed (1947–51) of the MGB (Ministry for State Security) and the GRU (Foreign military Intelligence Directorate). In practice making an ambassador head of the MGB and GRU legal residencies in his embassy; intelligence operations are under political control; the KI ended when Molotov incurred Stalin’s disfavour. Despite its political end, the KI’s contribution to Soviet Intelligence was reliance upon illegal residents, spies able to establish a more secure base of operations in the target country.[14]

Moreover, expecting to succeed Stalin as leader of the USSR, the ambitious MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) head, Lavrentiy Beria merged the MGB and the MVD on Stalin’s death in 1953. Anticipating a coup d'état, the Presidium swiftly eliminated Beria with treasonous charges of “criminal anti-Party and anti-state activities” and executed him. In the event, the MGB was renamed KGB and detached from the MVD.

Mindful of ambitious spy chiefs — and after deposing Premier Nikita Krushchev — Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and the CPSU knew to manage the next over-ambitious KGB Chairman, Aleksandr Shelepin (1958–61), who facilitated Brezhnev’s Stalinist palace coup d’état against Khrushchev in 1964 — despite Shelepin not then being in KGB. With political reassignments, Shelepin protégé Vladimir Semichastny (1961–67) was sacked as KGB Chairman, and Shelepin, himself, was demoted from chairman of the Committee of Party and State Control to Trade Union Council chairman.

Yuri Andropov (1967–82) proved the most-influential and long-tenured Chairman, his inquisitorial KGB relentlessly combated all ideological subversion. He manœuvered the infirm Brezhnev to name him his political heir and successor-leader of the USSR, in 1982.

In the 1980s, the glasnost liberalisation of Soviet society provoked KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov (1988–91) to lead the August 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt to depose President Mikhail Gorbachev. By then, however, Soviet society’s disrespect for the KGB had (among other reasons) exhausted popular support for the régime of the CPSU. The thwarted coup d’état ended the KGB on 6 November 1991. The KGB’s successors are the secret police agency FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) and the espionage agency SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service).

International activity during the Cold War

Heydar Aliyev, ex-Azerbaijani President, was an Azeri KGB member who led Azerbaijan to independence.

The aftermath of the Second Red Scare (1947–57), McCarthyism, and the destruction of the CPUSA hampered recruitment. The last, major illegal resident, Rudolf Abel ("Willie" Vilyam Fisher) was betrayed by his assistant, Reino Häyhänen, in 1957.

Recruitment then emphasised mercenary agents, an approach especially successful in scientific and technical espionage — because private industry practiced lax internal security, unlike the US Government. In late 1967, the notable KGB success was the walk-in recruitment of US Navy Chief Warrant Officer John Anthony Walker who individually and via the Walker Spy Ring for eighteen years enabled Soviet Intelligence to decipher some one million US Navy messages, and track the US Navy.[15]

In the late Cold War, the KGB was lucky with intelligence coups with the cases of the mercenary walk-in recruits, FBI man Robert Hanssen (1979–2001) and CIA Soviet Division officer Aldrich Ames (1985). [16]

KGB in the Soviet Bloc

KGB prison doors displayed in the Museum of Occupations, Tallinn, Estonia.

It was Cold War policy for the KGB of the Soviet Union and the satellite-state KGBs to extensively monitor public and private opinion, internal subversion, and possible revolutionary plots in the Soviet Bloc. In supporting those Communist governments, the KGB was instrumental in crushing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and the Prague Spring of “Socialism with a Human Face”, in 1968 Czechoslovakia.

During the Hungarian revolt, KGB chairman Ivan Serov, personally supervised the post-invasion “normalization” of the country. In consequence, KGB monitored the satellite-state populations for occurrences of “harmful attitudes” and “hostile acts”; yet, stopping the Prague Spring, deposing a nationalist Communist government, was its greatest achievement.

The KGB prepared the Red Army’s route by infiltrating to Czechoslovakia many illegal residents disguised as Western tourists. They were to gain the trust of and spy upon the most outspoken proponents of Alexander Dubček’s new government. They were to plant subversive evidence, justifying the USSR’s invasion, that right-wing groups — aided by Western intelligence agencies — were going to depose the Communist government of Czechoslovakia. Finally, the KGB prepared hardline, pro-USSR members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC), such as Alois Indra and Vasil Biľak, to assume power after the Red Army’s invasion. The courage of the betrayed Prague Spring leaders did not escape KGB notice; the defector Oleg Gordievsky later remarked, “It was that dreadful event, that awful day, which determined the course of my own life” (The Sword and the Shield, p.261).

The KGB’s Czech success in the 1960s was matched with the failed suppression of the Solidarity labour movement in 1980s Poland. The KGB had forecast political instability consequent to the election of the priest Karol Wojtyla, as the first Polish Pope, John Paul II, whom they had categorised as “subversive”, because of his anti-Communist sermons against the one-party PUWP régime. Despite its accurate forecast of crisis, the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP) hindered the KGB’s destroying the nascent Solidarity-backed political movement, fearing explosive civil violence if they imposed the KGB-recommended martial law. Aided by their Polish counterpart, the Służba Bezpieczeństwa (SB), the KGB successfully infiltrated spies to Solidarity and the Catholic Church, and in Operation X co-ordinated the declaration of martial law with Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski and the Polish Communist Party; however, the vacillating, conciliatory Polish approach blunted KGB effectiveness — and Solidarity then fatally weakened the Communist Polish government in 1989.

Suppressing ideological subversion

Monument to KGB victims, Vilnius, Lithuania.

During the Cold War, the KGB actively suppressed “ideological subversion” — unorthodox political and religious ideas and the espousing dissidents. In 1967, the suppression increased under new KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov, who said all dissent threatened the Soviet state — including anti-Communist religious movements. Most arrested dissidents were sentenced to indefinite terms in Gulag-adminstered forced labour camps — where their dissension lacked the strength it might have had in public. Moreover, Yale University archive documents record that suppressing “ideological subversion” was the principal preoccupation of Yuri Andropov and Vitali Fedorchuk when each was KGB Chairman. [2]

After denouncing Stalinism in his secret speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences (1956), Nikita Khrushchev lessened suppression of “ideological subversion”. Resultantly, critical literature re-emerged, notably the novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; however, after Khrushchev’s deposition in 1964, Leonid Brezhnev reverted the State and KGB to actively harsh suppression — routine house searches to seize documents and the continual monitoring of dissidents. To wit, in 1965, such a search-and-seizure operation yielded Solzhenitsyn (code-name PAUK, “spider”) manuscripts of “slanderous fabrications”, and the subversion trial of the novelists Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel; Sinyavsky (alias “Abram Tertz”), and Daniel (alias “Nikolai Arzhak”), were captured after a Moscow literary-world informant told KGB when to find them at home.

After suppressing the Prague Spring, KGB Chairman Andropov established the Fifth Directorate to monitor dissension and eliminate dissenters. He was especially concerned with the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov, “Public Enemy Number One”. [17] Andropov failed to expel Solzhenitsyn before 1974; but did internally-exile Sakharov to Gorky city [Nizhny Novgorod] in 1980. KGB failed to prevent Sakharov’s collecting his Nobel Peace Prize in 1975, but did prevent Yuri Orlov collecting his Nobel Prize in 1978; Chairman Andropov supervised both operations.

KGB dissident-group infiltration featured agents provocateur pretending “sympathy to the cause”, smear campaigns against prominent dissidents, and show trials; once imprisoned, the dissident endured KGB interrogators and sympathetic informant-cell mates. In the event, Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost policies lessened persecution of dissidents; he was effecting some of the policy changes they had been demanding since the 1970s. [18]

Notable operations

  • With the Trust Operation, the OGPU successfully deceived some leaders of the right-wing, counter-revolutionary White Guards back to the USSR for execution.
  • NKVD infiltrated and destroyed Trotskyist groups; in 1940, the Mexican agent Ramón Mercader assassinated Trotsky in Mexico City.
  • KGB favoured active measures (e.g. disinformation), in discrediting the USSR’s enemies.
  • For war-time, KGB had ready sabotage operations arms caches in target countries.

In the 1960s, acting upon the information of KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn, the the CIA counter-intelligence chief, James Jesus Angleton, believed KGB had moles in two key places — the counter-intelligence section of CIA and the FBI’s counter-intelligence department — through whom they would know of, and control, US counter-espionage to protect the moles and hamper the detection and capture of other Communist spies. Moreover, KGB counter-intelligence vetted foreign intelligence sources, so that the moles might “officially” approve an anti-CIA double agent as trustworthy. In retrospect, the captures of the moles Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, proved Angleton — ignored as over-cautious — was correct, despite costing him his job at CIA, which he left in 1975.

Occasionally, the KGB assassinated the enemies of the USSR — principally Soviet Bloc defectors, either directly or by aiding Communist country secret services — the (alleged) air-crash assassination of Dag Hammarskjöld in 1961; the surreptitious ricin poisoning of the Bulgarian émigré Georgi Markov, shot with an umbrella-gun of KGB design, in 1978; and the (alleged) attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981. [19]

The highest-ranking Communist intelligence officer to defect, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, said the Romanian Communist party leader Nicolae Ceauşescu told him about the “ten international leaders the Kremlin killed, or tried to kill”: Laszlo Rajk and Imre Nagy of Hungary; Lucretiu Patrascanu and Gheorghiu-Dej of Romania; Rudolf Slansky, the head of Czechoslovakia, and chief diplomat Jan Masaryk; Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran; Palmiro Togliatti of Italy; US President John F. Kennedy; and Mao Zedong of China via Lin Biao; and noted that “among the leaders of Moscow’s satellite intelligence services, there was unanimous agreement that the KGB had been involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.” [20]

Organisation of the KGB

Senior staff

The Chairman of the KGB, First Deputy Chairmen (1–2), Deputy Chairmen (4–6). Its policy Collegium comprised a chairman, deputy chairmen, directorate chiefs, and republican KGB chairmen.

The Directorates

  • Second Chief Directorate — counter-intelligence, internal political control.
  • Third Chief Directorate (Armed Forces) — military counter-intelligence and armed forces political surveillance.
  • Fourth Directorate (Transportation security)
  • Fifth Chief Directorate — censorship and internal security against artistic, political, and religious dissension; renamed “Directorate Z”, protecting the Constitutional order, in 1989.
  • Sixth Directorate (Economic Counter-intelligence, industrial security)
  • Seventh Directorate (Surveillance) — of Soviet nationals and foreigners.
  • Eighth Chief Directorate — monitored-managed national, foreign, and overseas communications, cryptologic equipment, and research and development.
  • Fifteenth Directorate (Security of Government Installations)
  • Sixteenth Directorate (SIGINT and communications interception) operated the national and government telephone and telegraph systems.
  • Operations and Technology Directorate — research laboratories for recording devices and Laboratory 12 for poisons and drugs.

Other units

  • KGB Personnel Department
  • Secretariat of the KGB
  • KGB Technical Support Staff
  • KGB Finance Department
  • KGB Archives
  • KGB Irregulars
  • Administration Department of the KGB, and
  • The CPSU Committee.

The KGB’s evolution

Dates Organisation
December 1917 Cheka
February 1922 Incorporated to NKVD (as GPU)
July 1923 OGPU
July 1934 Re-incorporated to NKVD (as GUGB)
February 1941 NKGB
July 1941 Re-incorporated to NKVD (as GUGB)
April 1943 NKGB
March 1946 MGB
October 1947–November 1951 Foreign Intelligence to the KI
March 1953 Merged to and enlarged MVD
March 1954 KGB
November 1991 FSK


Organization Chairman Dates
Cheka–GPU–OGPU Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky 1917–26
OGPU Vyacheslav Rudolfovich Menzhinsky 1926–34
NKVD Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda 1934–36
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov 1936–38
Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria 1938–41
NKGB Vsevolod Nikolayevich Merkulov 1941 (Feb–Jul)
NKVD Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria 1941–43
NKGB–MGB Vsevolod Nikolayevich Merkulov 1943–46
MGB Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov 1946–51
Semyon Denisovich Ignatyev 1951–53
Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria 1953 (Mar–Jun)
Sergei Nikiforovich Kruglov 1953–54
KGB Ivan Aleksandrovich Serov 1954–58
Aleksandr Nikolayevich Shelepin 1958–61
Vladimir Yefimovich Semichastny 1961–67
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov 1967–82
Vitali Vasilyevich Fedorchuk 1982 (May–Dec)
Viktor Mikhailovich Chebrikov 1982–88
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov 1988–91
Vadim Viktorovich Bakatin 1991 (Aug–Nov)

See also

References

  1. ^ Safe as houses: the KGB-proof mansion - Times Online
  2. ^ a b http://www.yale.edu/annals/sakharov/sakharov_list.htm, The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov, Joshua Rubenstein and Alexander Gribanov eds., in Russian and English.
  3. ^ http://psi.ece.jhu.edu/~kaplan/IRUSS/BUK/GBARC/buk.html archive of documents about KPSS and KGB, collected by Vladimir Bukovsky.
  4. ^ Richard Deacon A History of the Russian Secret Service (1972) Frederick Muller Ltd:London, p.207
  5. ^ Mark Lloyd The Guiness Book of Espionage (1994) Guinness Publishing Ltd:London pp.91–2
  6. ^ Amy Knight Spies Without Cloaks: The KGB’s Successors (1996) pp.30–7
  7. ^ Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield (1999) p.31
  8. ^ The Sword and the Shield (1999) p.550
  9. ^ Spies Without Cloaks: The KGB’s Successors (1996) pp.30–7
  10. ^ Eyes of the Kremlin
  11. ^ The Sword and the Shield (1999) p.38
  12. ^ The Sword and the Shield (1999) p.28
  13. ^ The Sword and the Shield (1999) p.23
  14. ^ The Sword and the Shield (1999) p.146
  15. ^ The Sword and the Shield (1999) p.205
  16. ^ The Sword and the Shield (1999) p.435
  17. ^ The Sword and the Shield (1999) p.325
  18. ^ The Sword and the Shield (1999) p.561
  19. ^ Italian Panel: Soviets Behind Pope Attack
  20. ^ The Kremlin’s Killing Ways, by Ion Mihai Pacepa, National Review Online, 28 November 2006

Sources

  • John Barron, KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents, Reader’s Digest Press (1974) ISBN 0-88349-009-9
  • Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World, Basic Books (2005) ISBN 0465003117

Additional readings

  • Yevgenia Albats and Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia — Past, Present, and Future Farrar Straus Giroux (1994) ISBN 0-374-52738-5.
  • John Barron, KGB: The Secret Works of Soviet Secret Agents Bantam Books (1981) ISBN 0-553-23275-4
  • Vadim J. Birstein. The Perversion Of Knowledge: The True Story of Soviet Science. Westview Press (2004) ISBN 0-8133-4280-5
  • Sheymov, Victor (1993). Tower of Secrets. Naval Institute Press. pp. 420. ISBN 1-55750-764-3. 
  • Бережков, Василий Иванович (2004). Руководители Ленинградского управления КГБ : 1954-1991. Санкт-Петербург: Выбор, 2004. ISBN 5-93518-035-9 (in Russian)
  • Кротков, Юрий (1973). «КГБ в действии». Published in «Новый журнал» №111, 1973 (in Russian)

External links

  • Viktor M. Chebrikov et al., eds. Istoriya sovetskikh organov gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti (“History of the Soviet Organs of State Security”). (1977) [1]

Coordinates: 55°45′31″N 37°37′32″E / 55.7587°N 37.6256°E / 55.7587; 37.6256


 
 

 

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