When the President of the Republic of Serbia meets with Russian intelligence officers today, they are usually representatives of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation (SVR). Last July, the head of that service, Sergej Naryshkin, came to Belgrade. In Brussels, such visits are registered rather sullenly, because Naryshkin is on the list of persons from the Kremlin who are under sanctions. Theoretically, Belgrade should harmonize its foreign policy behavior with Brussels, if it wants to join the EU. But that's just a theory, like freedom of the media, the rule of law, the depoliticization of institutions or the liberation of society from the party octopus.
Be that as it may, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service inherits only one part of the tradition of that organization which, under the name of the KGB, gave the worst kind of headache to Western counterintelligence until the nineties. And which in the cultural industry gave birth to a number of Cold War villains in spy novels and Hollywood thrillers. But also a series of main rivals of the film British agent 007 - James Bond. By the way, they say that Ian Fleming, the writer who created the character of James Bond, among other things, was inspired by the character and work of Fitzroy McClain, Churchill's confidant who was on a wartime military mission to Tito. And McClain once wrote that the Russians are dominant in two skills - espionage and the circus.
The collapse of the coup, the collapse of the Service
This was certainly true in imperial times and in the first decades of the existence of Soviet power, to some extent immediately after the Second World War. But then, as in the Soviet system, came decades of stagnation and losing breath in the race with the West. When Gorbachev tried to rescue the Soviet Union from the historical and economic impasse through reforms, the head of the KGB. Vladimir Kryuchkov, who came to that position in 1988, decided against Gorbachev. He belonged to a group of conspirators who gathered in the Archive and Library Center of the KGB. They formed the State Committee for the State of Emergency. When you look at the list of conspirators today, it is a miracle that the August coup failed: the vice president of the Soviet Union, the prime minister, the minister of the interior, the minister of defense, the head of the KGB, the secretary of the Central Committee of the party, the president of the country's peasant union, the vice president joined the committee of the Union of Industry and Science. However, the army refused to support the coup plotters and they ended up in prison, only to be pardoned in 1994. The Minister of the Interior, Latvian Boris Pugo, and his wife Valentina committed suicide.
But there was no pardon for the KGB. General Vladim Viktorovič Bakatin came to head the service as its bankruptcy administrator. His task was to dissolve her. The KGB officially ceased to exist on November 6, 1991.
The first main branch of the KGB that was in charge of foreign affairs - from diplomatic missions to secret spy networks - was separated into the Foreign Intelligence Service, and the rest was reformed and turned into the FSB (Federal Security Service), a service in charge of internal security, counterintelligence and protection of the constitutional order.
It should be noted that Lukashenka's Belarus still calls its service the KGB, and that the founder of the Soviet secret service from 1917, Felix Dzerzhinsky, is still a national hero.
From the Guard to the Cheka
Once upon a time, the Russian secret services were all-powerful, or at least they were accompanied by such a voice. To understand what kind of Service was abolished in 1991, one must go back a whole century.
The Russian Empire at the end of the 19th century had a wide variety of internal opponents, from disgruntled nobles to left-wing revolutionaries. That is why the Department for the Protection of Public Safety and Order was founded in 1880. People pronounce the name of the new imperial secret police in a whisper - Ohrana, which means protection in Russian. Because her agents and informants could be literally everywhere.
Special agents of the National Guard infiltrated revolutionary and terrorist organizations, the top of opposition parties, and founded some of them themselves. They even organized assassinations. The most famous example is Jevno Azef, who was the leader of the armed wing of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, but also one of the best-paid agents-provocateur, whose handwriting was recognizable in the background of the assassination of the Imperial Minister of the Interior von Plewe in 1904 and the Imperial grandson, Grand Duke Sergei Romanov in 1905. And Lenin's friend Roman Malinovski, a high-ranking Bolshevik functionary, was a professional agent of the Security Service, which estimated that the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries were a greater danger, so they even helped the Bolsheviks.
For everyone who experienced the breakup of Yugoslavia, which was preceded by the introduction of a multi-party system, this practice of creating and supporting their radical opposition with the help of the Service sounds familiar.
In addition to professional spies, of whom there were around 1.000 on the eve of the First World War, the Guard also had "auxiliary agents", informants who were paid "per performance", depending on the weight of the information. There were over 70.000 of them.
In Ohrana, there was a department of "perlustrators" - they opened and read personal mail. This tradition was established by Aleksandar Hristoforovič von Benkendorf, who in 1826 became the head of the Privy Office of His Imperial Majesty Nicholas I. In that office, the Third Administration was the emperor's secret police. It is recorded that in 1913, Ohrana opened and read 237.000 letters, and transcribed 35.000 passages from them. The so-called "black offices" were introduced in the post offices of all major cities.
From the Cheka to the NKVD
The October Revolution overturned the power relations between classes and peoples, but the need for a secret police of the new, Bolshevik masters of the country, who had not yet consolidated their power, remained the same. Although the Guard was brutal and cunning, its omnipotence was restrained by various laws. At least as obstacles that should have been avoided. But the Bolsheviks understood law and justice in a class-ideological way. It was an ideal biotope for secret agents.
Lenin entrusted the formation of the Bolshevik secret service to an experienced prisoner - Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky. The descendant of Polish nobles in Viljnus, then under Russian imperial rule, was expelled from the gymnasium for his revolutionary activities. As a revolutionary, he spent a total of 11 years in prisons and Siberian exile. There he also contracted tuberculosis, but in 1908 he also wrote the book "Diary of a Prisoner" in Siberia, which later became extremely popular. Dzerzhinsky founded Cheka. It goes without saying that it was built on the experiences of Ohrane, whose handwriting was literally written into Dzerzhinsk's skin.
Cheka is an abbreviation of the Russian name Чрезвичайная комисия - extraordinary commission. The leader of the October Revolution, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, established the secret police by decree of December 5, 1917. The "All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for the Fight against Counter-Revolution and Sabotage" was located in Lubyanka. The building of the All-Russian Insurance Company, built in 1898 on Lubyanka Square, became a symbol of state terror from that moment on. During the civil war, Lenin officialized the revolutionary violence against opponents as the "Red Terror". In 1922, commenting on a draft of a law, he wrote: "The court should not eliminate terror - it would be a fraud to promise something like that - but it should be principled and clearly explained and legally founded without twists and make-up".
The total number of victims of the "Red Terror" is estimated at at least 250.000, while some estimates go as high as one million. Tens of thousands of victims passed through the basements of Lubjanka. Back in Lenin's time, there was a network of camps for political opponents and counter-revolutionaries. Stalin only raised terror to a state-wide rationale.
In 1922, after the end of the civil war, the Cheka was renamed GPU (United State Political Administration). Dzerzhinsky remained at its head until his death in 1926. It is said that he died of a heart attack after a two-hour long speech against Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev in the Central Committee.
In the people, the name "Chekist" remained as a label for dangerous types who are easy with clubs and a revolver.
From the NKVD to the KGB
In 1934, the GPU became part of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs - NKVD. By then, the secret police had expanded their influence. Until 1927, a party member could not be subjected to investigation - he had to be formally expelled from the party before that. From that year, no one in the country or in the party could be safe from the guys in leather coats who came at night. This police force participated in violent collectivization. She opened camps where political prisoners were forced to dig the White Sea-Baltic Canal, which until 1961 was called Stalin's Canal.
At the same time, communists and Soviet sympathizers from all over the world work out of conviction for Soviet intelligence.
During Stalin's time, it was not advisable to be the head of the secret police. Genrih Jagoda, as the head of the political police, brutally killed tens of thousands of Stalin's opponents, including old Bolsheviks, but he himself was executed in 1938. His successor, Nikolai Yezhov, intensified the Great Purge on behalf of Stalin - under him, state violence surpassed anything seen under Soviet rule. The people called that period the reign of terror Hedgehog. Yezhov was also executed in 1940. Not because he did not fulfill Stalin's purge orders, but because he fulfilled them too thoroughly and extensively with great enthusiasm and joy. With unprecedented sadism.
KGB becomes a brand
Lavrentiy Beria - a native of Georgia like Stalin - the man who replaced Yezhov, forcibly resettled minorities throughout the Soviet Union, causing great suffering. Through his espionage, the Soviets obtained American atomic technology, so the Soviet Union tested the bomb in 1949.
After World War II, people's commissariats became ministries. Until then, the secret police was part of the NKVD under the name People's Commissariat of State Security (NKGB). The Ministry of State Security (MGB) was created from it. When Stalin died in 1953, and Beria - as the third in a row of Soviet intelligence chiefs - was killed, state security was subordinated to the political elite. The service was officially named the KGB in 1954 and was directly responsible to the Council of Ministers - the government of the Soviet Union.
While the American CIA was affectionately referred to as "the firm", some members of the KGB referred to their firm as a "committee". The other employees called him less gently Office of the Rough Bandits - "association of rough bandits".
Decades of Cold War outwitting with the West and pressure on domestic intelligence followed. But the KGB never again reached the bloody, paranoid "efficiency" of Stalin's time. While older sources spoke of millions arrested and killed at the time of the "Great Purge", the latest research speaks of 1,5 million arrested and 700.000 killed. Those are scary enough numbers.
Abroad, the KGB became a kind of brand, among other things, due to propaganda and entertainment clichés in the Cold War. Behind the scenes, Western services were slowly but surely gaining a technological edge that was turning into intelligence supremacy.
Vladimir Kryuchkov, the man who in 1991 wanted to use state security methods to stop the course of history, only, together with other conspirators against Gorbachev, accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the KGB. However, until his death in 2007, he was a welcome guest of his former KGB officer in East Germany, and then of the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
Bonus video:
