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KGB (transliteration of "КГБ") is the Russian-language abbreviation for '''State Security Committee''', ( Russian : ; ''Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti''). From March 13 , 1954 to November 6 , 1991 KGB was the umbrella organization name for the principal Soviet Security Agency , the principal Intelligence Agency , and the principal Secret Police Agency . Roughly, the KGB's operational domain encompassed functions and powers like those exercised by the United States ' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) , the Counterintelligence (internal security) division of the Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI) , the Federal Protective Service , and the Secret Service . In March 1953 , Lavrenty Beria consolidated the MVD and the MGB into one body--the MVD; within a year, Beria was executed and MVD was split. The re-formed MVD retained its police and law enforcement powers, while the second, new agency, KGB, assumed internal and external security functions, and was subordinate to the Council of Ministers. On July 5 , 1978 the KGB was re-christened as the "KGB of the Soviet Union ", with its chairman holding a ministerial council seat. The KGB was dissolved when its chief, Colonel-General Vladimir Kryuchkov , used the KGB's resources in aid of the August 1991 Coup Attempt to overthrow Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev . On August 23 , 1991 Colonel-General Kryuchkov was arrested, and General Vadim Bakatin was appointed KGB Chairman--and mandated to dissolve the KGB of the Soviet Union. On November 6 , 1991 , the KGB officially ceased to exist, although its successor national state security organisation, the Russian '' Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti '' (FSB), is functionally much like the Soviet KGB. Belarus is the only post-Soviet Union era country where the Successor State Security Organization continues to be known as KGB. Belarus is also the birthplace of Felix Dzerzhinsky , one of the founders of the Cheka , a forerunner of the KGB. TASKS AND ORGANIZATION Its tasked responsibilities were external Espionage , Counter-espionage , the liquidation of anti-Soviet and counter-revolutionary organizations within the Soviet Union, guarding the national borders, guarding the Communist Party and State leaders, and critical state property. Also, it investigated and prosecuted thieves of State and socialist property and white collar criminals. In espionage, the KGB mostly relied on human intelligence ( HUMINT ), unlike their Western counterparts, who relied more on technology--imagery intelligence ( IMINT ) and signals intelligence ( SIGINT ). Using ideological attraction, the Soviets successfully recruited many high-level spies. Most notable are the KGB successes in gathering US Atomic Secrets , and, in the UK, the Cambridge Five , especially Kim Philby of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6 . Ideological recruitment abroad was nearly impossible after the Soviet Union crushed the 1956 Hungarian Uprising . Instead, KGB was forced to rely upon blackmail and bribery to control most of its defectors. Still, this achieved notable successes, such as CIA mole Aldrich Ames and FBI mole Robert Hanssen , but fewer than in earlier decades. Paralleling developments at MI5 and the CIA, the KGB had, before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, commercialized its advanced technologies for business applications. Artificial intelligence software which was formerly used to sort and filter signals intelligence has become available through companies such as Autonomy (an MI5 spin-off) and InfoTame (ex-KGB technologists). NOTABLE KGB OPERATIONS During the 1945-1991 Cold War, the KGB of the Soviet Union affected these operations against the West, some under its previous names (NKVD, MGB, etc.):
James Jesus Angleton , the CIA's counter-intelligence chief, feared that the KGB had moles in two key places: (i) the CIA's counter-intelligence section, and (ii) the FBI's counter-intelligence department. With said moles in place, the KGB would be aware of and therefore could control U.S. counter-spy efforts to detect, capture, and arrest their spies; it could protect their moles by safely re-directing investigations that might uncover them, or provide them sufficient advance warning to allow their escape. Moreover, KGB counter-intelligence vetted foreign sources of intelligence, so that moles in that area were positioned to stamp their approval of double agents sent against the CIA. In retrospect, in the context of the capture of the Soviet moles Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, it appears Angleton's fears--then deemed paranoid--were well-grounded. Still, his officially disbelieved assertions cost him his counter-intelligence post in the CIA. Occasionally, the KGB conducted Assassination s abroad--mainly of Soviet Bloc Defector s, and often helped other Communist country Security Service s with their assassinations. An infamous example is the September 1978 killing of Bulgarian émigré Georgi Markov , in London, where Bulgaria n secret agents used a KGB-designed Umbrella gun to shoot Markov dead with a Ricin -poisoned pellet. ORGANIZATION , head of the KGB from 1967-1982. He also served as General-Secretary of the CPSU from 1982-1984.]]
Senior Staff
Directorates
Other Sections The KGB also contained these independent sections and detachments:
TRIVIA
SEE ALSO
EXTERNAL LINKS
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