The FSB, or the Federal Security Service of Russia, is one of the heirs to the USSR State Security Committee (KGB), an organization known for its terror and intelligence activities that operated in the Soviet Union in the 20th century.
Security - Cheka - OGPU - KGB - FSB
The history of the FSB includes a number of changes in its name and reorganizations after the revolution in Russia in 1917. Officially, it was called the KGB for 46 years, from 1954 to 1991. Repressive organizations have long become part of the political structure of Russia. The functions of these organizations were significantly expanded in comparison with the role of the political police, played by the secret police during the reign of Tsar Nicholas II.
In 1917, Vladimir Lenin created the Cheka from the remains of the tsarist secret police . This new organization, which eventually turned into the KGB, was engaged in a wide range of tasks, including espionage, counterintelligence, and isolating the Soviet Union from Western goods, news, and ideas. In 1991, the USSR collapsed, which led to the fragmentation of the Committee into many organizations, the largest of which is the FSB.
The history of the creation of the FSB of Russia
In 1880, Tsar Alexander II formed the Public Security and Order Division, known as the Okhrana. This organization in the late XIX - early XX century. She was engaged in various radical groups within Russia - spying on their members, introducing them into and neutralizing them. With members of the secret police in the leadership of various revolutionary groups, the king was constantly up to date and could easily prevent any potential attack. For example, between 1908 and 1909, 4 out of 5 members of the St. Petersburg Committee of the Bolshevik Party were members of the Security Division. Nicholas II was so confident in his power over these groups that in November 1916 he ignored warnings about the imminent revolution.
After the February democratic revolution, Lenin and his party of Bolsheviks secretly organized forces and carried out a coup d'etat on the second attempt. Lenin was a staunch supporter of terror and admired the Jacobins, the most radical French revolutionaries of 1790. He appointed Felix Dzerzhinsky the chairman of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD), whose main goal was to fight the enemies of the regime and prevent sabotage throughout the country. The history of the Cheka (FSB) began with its creation on December 20, 1917 to increase the efficiency of the NKVD. The emergency commission became the basis for the later KGB. Lenin was appointed its chairman by Dzerzhinsky, a Polish nobleman who spent 11 years in prison for terrorist activities against the tsar.
Red terror
Soon, Iron Felix began to make changes to the Cheka. The history of the FSB in December 1920 was marked by the transfer of the organization’s headquarters from St. Petersburg to the former office of the All-Russian Insurance Company, where it remains to this day. The VChK itself conducted an investigation, made arrests, judged itself, kept in concentration camps and executed.
The history of the FSB-Cheka includes the killing of more than 500,000 people from the time of its creation in 1917 until it was renamed in 1922. “Red terror” has become common practice. From each village, the Chekists took 20-30 hostages and held them until the peasants gave up all their food supplies. If this did not happen, the hostages were shot. Although such a system proved to be effective in supporting Lenin's ideology, the Cheka was dissolved and replaced by a no less brutal organization, the State Political Administration (GPU), to improve economic relations with the West.
Initially, the GPU was under the jurisdiction of the NKVD and had less authority than the Cheka. With the support of Lenin, Dzerzhinsky remained the chairman and eventually returned to its former power. With the adoption of the Constitution of the USSR in July 1923, the GPU was renamed OGPU, or the United State Political Administration.
Famine
In 1924, Lenin died and was replaced by Joseph Stalin. Dzerzhinsky, who supported him in the battle for power, retained his post. After the death of Iron Felix in 1926, Menzhinsky became the head of the OGPU. One of the organization’s main tasks at that time was to maintain order among Soviet citizens, when Stalin turned 14 million peasant farms into collective farms. The bloody history of the FSB includes the following fact. To meet the needs for foreign currency, the OGPU forcibly seized bread and grain for sale for export, creating hunger, which killed more than five million people.
From Berry to Yezhov
In 1934, Menzhinsky died under mysterious circumstances and was replaced by Heinrich Yagoda, a pharmacist by training. Under his leadership, the OGPU began to conduct research in the field of biological and chemical weapons. Berry loved to experiment with prisoners personally. He was shot under Stalin after confessing to the murder of Menzhinsky in order to head the OGPU.
During the administration of Nikolai Yezhov, Yagoda's successor, terror in the USSR reached its zenith. The history of the FSB of the Russian Federation includes the following fact: between 1936 and 1938. Three thousand people were shot by OGPU employees alone. Fearing the growing influence of Yezhov, Stalin tried and shot him in 1938.
15 years of Beria
After Yezhov, the post of head of the NKVD for fifteen years was held by Lavrenty Beria. He expanded the organization to such an extent that in 1941 the security service was separated into a separate organization. The NKGB was responsible for internal security, counterintelligence, border guards, forced labor camps, and the partisan and underground struggle against Germany during World War II. The head of the NKGB Vsevolod Merkulov was controlled by Beria. In 1950, he was replaced by Victor Abakumov, whose loyalty to the head of the NKVD was not so blind. As a result, Beria convinced Stalin to convict him of a conspiracy against the leader of all peoples. In 1951, Abakumov was shot.
After the death of Stalin in 1953, Beria tried to take his place as dictator of the USSR. But several key leaders of the Soviet Army supported Nikita Khrushchev, brought Beria to court and executed him in 1953. In March 1954, the KGB appeared, which was entrusted with the responsibility for controlling the police, conducting covert operations, guarding the borders and internal security.
The history of the creation of the FSB. KGB (1954-1991)
The State Security Committee was formed on March 13, 1954. Ivan Serov became its first chairman. The initial task of the committee was to “cleanse” the government of the people of Beria, who was trying to seize control of the USSR after the death of Stalin.
Since 1958, with the appointment of Alexander Shelepin as the new chairman of the KGB (Serov headed the Main Intelligence Directorate), Khrushchev introduced some changes to the operational functions of the Committee. His goal was the return of the Soviet Union, and the KGB in particular, to a course similar to the Dzerzhinsky Cheka in the early 1920s. Western countries were called the main "enemies" of the USSR, including the United States, Britain and Japan. They should be destabilized and weakened. As a result, under Khrushchev there was an increase in the number of political killings and Soviet-sponsored terrorism.
At the same time, the KGB was trying to change the repressive image created by the Stalinist dictatorship. Literary works were created that extolled the KGB's heroic contribution to the preservation of the Soviet Union, and postage stamps depicting Dzerzhinsky were issued.
In December 1961, Shelepin was replaced by Vladimir Semichastny.
The era of Andropov
The history of the development of the FSB after the overthrow of Khrushchev on October 11, 1964 and the rise to power of Leonid Brezhnev makes a turn: Semichastny was dismissed from the post of chairman of the KGB. In May 1967, his place was taken by Yuri Andropov, head of the department for relations with socialist countries. He became the long-lived chairman, holding out until May 1982.
The new leader continued the KGB restructuring begun by Khrushchev and Shelepin in the 1960s. He opposed political, intellectual, national, and religious opposition; expanded the system of labor camps and exiles; used psychiatry to fight dissidents. In addition, he increased the collection of scientific and technical intelligence information, helped create organizational infrastructure for financing and control of the military, defense industry and aviation. Under the leadership of Andropov, the KGB was engaged in misinformation, falsification of documents of Western intelligence agencies, financed campaigns in the Western press, and also expanded its agent network abroad. In May 1982, Andropov became the leader of the CPSU, and Vitaly Fedorchuk, the former chairman of the regional KGB in Ukraine, assumed the chairmanship of the Committee.
Just seven months later, the latter became Minister of the Interior. In December 1982, Victor Chebrikov, first deputy. Fedorchuk, took the vacant seat. In October 1988, he was replaced by Vladimir Kryuchkov, head of the First Main Directorate of the KGB.
Kryuchkov served as chairman of the KGB until August 18, 1991, when he and seven other key members of the Soviet government made a failed coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the CPSU from 1985 until the dissolution of the party on December 25, 1991.
Organization and activities of the KGB
In 1954, the history of the KGB-FSB began, the political police of the Soviet Union, which became officially called the State Security Committee, and also found its basic organizational structure.
Then there was a significant decrease in its status from the ministry to the committee. However, despite this, the KGB retained greater autonomy than most other Soviet government departments, and was independent of the Council of Ministers, the body that delegated power to the USSR. As a state committee, the KGB formally subordinated to the Council of Ministers in accordance with the Charter. The history of the FSB is obscured by the fact that the Committee’s Charter was never published, unlike most other Soviet laws. Many aspects of the organization, however, were disclosed in textbooks and individual cases of disclosure of state secrets.
The KGB had an umbrella structure, which consisted of similar committees in each of the 14 republics of the USSR. In the RSFSR, however, there was no regional organization. State security committees throughout Russia reported directly to the central authority in Moscow.
The leadership of the KGB was carried out by the chairman, approved by the Supreme Council on the proposal of the Politburo. He had 1-2 first and 4-6 just deputies. They, along with the heads of some departments, formed a collegium - the body that made important decisions regarding the actions of the organization.
The main tasks of the KGB covered 4 areas: protecting the state from foreign spies and agents, identifying and investigating political and economic crimes, protecting state borders and state secrets. To carry out these tasks, six main departments served from 390 to 700 thousand people.
Organizational structure
The 1st Main Directorate was responsible for all foreign operations and intelligence gathering. It consisted of several divisions, divided both by the operations performed (intelligence training, collection and analysis), and by geographical regions of the world. The specifics of the work required the selection of the most qualified personnel from all departments; recruits had good academic performance, knew one or several languages, and also firmly believed in communist ideology.
The 2nd State Directorate exercised internal political control of Soviet citizens and foreigners living in the USSR. This department prevented the contacts of foreign diplomats with the inhabitants of the country; investigated political, economic crimes and contained a network of informants; watched tourists and foreign students.
The 3rd GU was engaged in military counterintelligence and political oversight of the armed forces. It consisted of 12 departments in charge of various military and paramilitary groups.
The 5th GU, together with the 2nd, was engaged in internal security. Created in 1969 to combat political dissent, it was responsible for detecting and neutralizing the opposition among religious organizations, national minorities, and the intellectual elite (including the literary and artistic community).
The 8th GU was responsible for government communications. In particular, it monitored foreign communications, created ciphers used by the KGB units, transmitted messages to agents abroad, and developed secure communication equipment.
The GU of the border troops was engaged in border protection on land and at sea. It was divided into 9 border regions, which covered 67 thousand km of the borders of the USSR. The main responsibilities of the troops were to repel a potential attack; suppression of illegal movement of people, weapons, explosives, smuggling and subversive literature across the border; monitoring of Soviet and foreign ships.
In addition to these six GUs, there were at least a few more departments, smaller in size and volume:
- 7th was engaged in surveillance and provided personnel and technical equipment to monitor the activities of foreigners and suspicious Soviet citizens.
- The 9th provided security for key party leaders and their families in the Kremlin and other government facilities throughout the country.
- The 16th provided for the operation of telephone and radio lines used by state bodies.
As an extensive and complex organization, the KGB, in addition to these departments, had an extensive apparatus that ensured the daily functioning of the organization. This is the human resources department, the secretariat, technical support personnel, the finance department, the archive, the administration department, and the party organization.
The decline of the KGB
On August 18, 1991, several conspirators, including Lieutenant General Yuri Plekhanov, the head of the presidential security service, and Valery Boldin, the head of the Gorbachev administration, visited the leader of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, at a government cottage on the Black Sea in Crimea. is at risk. They suggested that he either resign or renounce his presidency in favor of Vice President Gennady Yanayev. After Gorbachev’s refusal, security guards surrounded his house, not allowing him to go out or contact the outside world.
At the same time, in Moscow, the Alpha group of the 7th KGB Directorate received orders to attack the building of the Russian parliament and seize control of it. The unit was supposed to conduct covert reconnaissance of the building on August 19, and then penetrate and capture it on August 20 and 21. Contrary to the expectations of GKChP members, a group led by Mikhail Golovatov decided not to carry out the operation. They put it off until opposition forces led by Boris Yeltsin gathered to defend the building.
After the conspirators realized that the coup was poorly planned and would be unsuccessful, they tried to negotiate with Gorbachev, who was in their captivity. The president refused to meet with members of the Emergency Committee. Some of the putschists were arrested and the coup was suppressed.
The “gang of eight” included the vice president, chairman of the KGB, minister of defense, prime minister, member of the defense council, member of the Supreme Council, chairman of the Association of state enterprises and the minister of internal affairs. Seven of them were arrested and convicted. The eighth shot himself through the head before his arrest.
After the coup attempt, Vladimir Kryuchkov, who was the chairman of the KGB for three years, was replaced by Vadim Bakatin, who previously worked as the Minister of the Interior from 1988 to 1990, who then called for the dismantling of the State Security Committee. This position then became the reason for his removal and the appointment of Boris Pugo instead, who subsequently supported the coup.
And on October 24, 1991, the KGB of the USSR was officially dissolved.
Rebirth
Although formally the KGB ceased to exist, in 1991 it was divided into parts that together performed the same functions as the Committee.
The Foreign Intelligence Service, established in October 1991, took over the tasks of the 1st Main Directorate in conducting foreign operations, collecting and analyzing intelligence.
The Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information was formed on the basis of the 8th GU and 16th Directorate and is responsible for the security of communications and the transfer of intelligence.
8-9 thousand troops, who once made up the 9th Directorate, were attached to the Federal Security Service and the Presidential Security Service. These organizations are responsible for protecting the Kremlin and all important departments of the Russian Federation.
The history of the FSB of Russia under its current name began after the Ministry of Security was disbanded in 1993. It included 75,000 people from the second, third and fifth GU. Responsible for internal security in the Russian Federation.
Forward to the past...
After many years of terror by Soviet citizens, who constantly feared brutal interrogation of KGB officers or a sentence to work in harsh conditions of labor camps, the State Security Committee ceased to exist under its former name. However, many still live in fear of this brutal and repressive organization. The history of the FSB of Russia is full of egregious facts. Writers whose works were recognized as anti-Soviet and who never saw their books in print were the victims of the 5th GU KGB. Families broke up when agents of the Committee arrested, tried, and sentenced millions of people to imprisonment in Siberian labor camps or to death. Most of the convicts did not commit any crimes - they became victims of circumstances, finding themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, or because of a careless remark made at home. Some of them were killed simply because KGB agents had to comply with quotas, and if there were not enough spies within their jurisdiction, they simply took innocent people and tortured them until they confessed to crimes they did not commit.
This nightmare seemed to be gone forever. But the story of the Cheka-KGB-FSB does not end there. Recently announced plans to create a Ministry of State Security on the basis of the SVR and the FSB make one recall the Stalinist structure of the same name, which was designed to protect the interests of the ruling party.