Committee for State Security (KGB)
국가보안위원회(KGB)
The Soviet Union’s security and intelligence agency from 13 March 1954 to December 1991, created out of the Ministry of Internal Affairs after Beria’s fall; it combined foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence, political policing and the border troops.
In depth
Its line of descent runs from the Cheka through the GPU/OGPU, the NKVD and the MGB; it was set up as a committee attached to the Council of Ministers and became a full state committee in 1978. Its chairmen were Ivan Serov (1954–1958), Aleksandr Shelepin (1958–1961), Vladimir Semichastny (1961–1967), Yuri Andropov (1967–1982), Vitaly Fedorchuk (1982), Viktor Chebrikov (1982–1988) and Vladimir Kryuchkov (1988–1991). The First Chief Directorate ran foreign intelligence and the Second counter-intelligence, and the Fifth Directorate, set up under Andropov in 1967, fought dissidents and religious and nationalist movements, renamed Directorate Z by 1989.
Kryuchkov was one of the leaders of the August 1991 coup against Mikhail Gorbachev; after its failure he was arrested and Vadim Bakatin took over to dismantle the agency. In the autumn of 1991 it was split into the Central Intelligence Service, the Inter-Republican Security Service and the Committee for the Protection of the State Border, and on 3 December 1991 the KGB was formally abolished. Its functions passed to the Russian SVR and to the security service that became the FSB.