If you ’re pass the time by bust - watching episode of the critically - acclaimed TV serial " The Americans , " you may have grown mesmerized with the story of a married couple living in the Washington , D.C. suburbs during the 1980s , who struggle to protect a dark closed book . They ’re in reality operatives for the KGB , the Soviet spy agency that during the Cold War battled clandestinely with theU.S. Central Intelligence Agencyand other westerly nations ' intelligence organizations . The KGB — a Russian acronym that stands for Committee for State Security — became infamous in those years , thanks to its prowess at stealingsecretsand assassinate perceive enemies overseas , as well as crush domestic protest . In the summons it provided dependent material for numerous moving-picture show and literary thrillers by novelists such as John le Carré and Martin Cruz Smith .
Since the Soviet Union itselfceased to subsist back in 1991 , you might assume that the KGB vanish with it . Indeed , after the power hammer - and - reaping hook flag on the Kremlin was put back by the tricolour of theRussian Federationthat nation ’s first president , Boris Yeltsin , dismantled the agencyand spread out its purpose among various other parts of the newfangled government . In reality , though , intelligence expert say the KGB never really went aside . rather , like spies often do , it simply has resurfaced with a unlike name , FSB , whose letter stand in Russian for Federal Security Service . And today , with a former KGB agent and FSB head namedVladimir Putinas the forefront of United States Department of State , the system once known as the KGB seems to have regained much of its old range and power .
" Now , it ’s the favored tool of Putin , " explain John Sipher . He ’s a CIA veteran who served in Moscow in the nineties and afterward as surrogate of the worldwide Russia program at CIA headquarters , where he lick on the taking into custody ofRobert Hanssen , an FBI agent who spot for the Soviet Union and Russia . Since leaving the agency , he ’s become a widely publish writer on intelligence issues , and is the conscientious objector - founder ofSpycraft Entertainment , a world-wide production caller that work out with former intelligence officer to evolve media undertaking such as television series , films and podcasts .
A Brief History of the KGB
As Sipher explains it , the roots of the KGB and FSB go back to before long after the creation of the Soviet Union . In December 1917 , Soviet leaderVladimir Lenincreated a secret law agency scream the Cheka . " They called themselves the punishing steel of the rotation , " he says . " Their whole goal was to keep the leadership in king . " Part of that mission involved arresting and imprisoning potential opponents , keeping the universe under surveillance , and exerting censorship to keep opposing theme from spreading . to boot , the organisation and its successors branched out into espionage and covert action alfresco of the USSR , to defend against and strike at the government ’s external foe .
Though the name of the organization has vary several times over the year , they ’ve basically been doing the same thing ever since , Sipher say . " Even intelligence officers in Russia today call themselves gallant Chekists , " he note . " And Putin makes certain he ’s in Moscow on Dec. 8 forCheka Day . "
The organisation developed guileful scheme and tactics to crush opposition . betimes in the USSR ’s existence , for exercise , the ex-wife - czarists , socialist and European anti - communist who want the government to fail joined forces in an umbrella organization called the Monarchist Union of Central Russia . What they did n’t realize , until too tardily , was that the jointure was a artifice — a honeypot set up by the soviet themselves . " They created their own foe , their own resistance campaign , " Sipher says . " So that they knew everybody . Eventually , they kill them all . "
During World War II , Soviet spy were extraordinarily efficient at squirm their way into the Manhattan Project , the U.S. effort to develop the nuclear dud . " They knew more about the creation of the atomic bomb than [ President Harry ] Truman , " Sipher says .
The spy ' thieving of enigma eventually start the Soviet Union toacquire the bombmore chop-chop than its own scientists could have done , reject an advantage that might have given the U.S. the clear upper handwriting over Soviet leaderJoseph Stalin .
" Soviet atomic espionage was one of few instances where espionage directly changed macrocosm history , " explainsCalder Walton , a Research Fellow for the Intelligence Project at Harvard University ’s Kennedy School of Government and general editor of the multivolume"Cambridge chronicle of Espionage and Intelligence . " . Walton also is working on an forthcoming book on the struggle between British , U.S. and Soviet intelligence during the Cold War .
In plus to spies who posed as diplomat posted to embassies , Sipher tell the Soviets also deploy " illegals " – agent who consider on new indistinguishability and disguise their interior origin . After occupy Finland during World War II , for deterrent example , Soviet officials look through Finnish records for infants who had died at birth , and then steal their identity , using them to acquire additional papers and build what ’s call a " legend . "
" This fake person would journey around the world , being a Finn , looking like a Finnish man of affairs , " Sipher explains .
Soviet spies ' effectiveness , however , was limited by their ability to convinceStalinthat their information was more reliable than his premise . As Sipher detail in thisarticle in The Atlantic , the Soviet drawing card famously refused to heed a warning from ace Soviet spy Richard Sorge , who was forge undercover as a German journalist in Japan , about the creation and timing of Hitler ’s programme to invade the Soviet Union in 1940 .
In 1954 , the Soviet intelligence agencyofficially was reorganize as the KGB , but it continued the same commission . Its 250,000 staffers – a vastly bountiful work force than any western Intelligence agency – handled sprawling overseas province , rate from spying , electronic surveillance and codebreaking to disinformation drive against strange enemies . But its most important job stay crushing anyone who might dispute communist leaders inside the Soviet Union .
" It is loose to think of it as an intelligence service , but that was n’t quite ripe , " Walton excuse . " It was really was a secret police . It had foreign intelligence agency capability , but its primary determination was domestic repression . It was , from the outset , designed to be the sword and carapace of the party , to smite its enemies at home and abroad , and defend the regime . "
To squash any internal resistor , the KGB guide everything from the land ’s force of border guards to the tremendous Gulag , the organisation of forced labor camps that imprisonedmillions of Russians .
" When one thinks of secluded police knock on the door in the middle of the nighttime , that ’s the KGB , " Walton says .
Over the 10 , the KGB also retain to be successful at planting spies in high places , including veteran CIA officerAldrich Ames , who pled shamed to espionage charges in 1994 . But despite those success , it had circumscribed influence , the experts say . Stalin ’s tendency to execute functionary who told him things he did n’t want to learn had create a persistent civilisation in which nobody dare to mouth Sojourner Truth to power . " The KGB furnish essentially sycophantic word in successive Soviet leaders , " Walton says . " They would see to intelligence information that confirmed their preexisting worldview . "
But the KGB did break with one Soviet loss leader . After ascending to power in the mid-1980s , Mikhail Gorbachevand his reform policies did n’t sit well with other Soviet official . That lead KGB chiefVladimir Kryuchkovto guide an essay coup against Gorbachev , which he reportedly hatched during a meeting in a Moscow bagnio , consort to this 2011New York Times accountby journalist Victor Sebestyen . That plot of ground failed , and the Soviet Union decay .
Though the KGB officially was disbanded by the new Russian government , its citizenry essentially preserve doing the same problem under Modern office name calling . " The KGB ceased to exist in name but not in function and was quickly resurrected as the FSB and theSVR(Foreign Intelligence Service ) , " say Walton .
" Yeltsin rive it up , and there was the survey it would change , but it never did , " Sipher explains . A new chief was bring in by Yeltsin , supposedly to impose reforms , but he did n’t last long . " We saw in the street , the way people were treated by Russian intelligence that things had n’t changed . "
The spy apparatus even provided Yeltsin ’s eventual heir . Putin , who had joined KGB in the mid-1970safter being ravish by a moving-picture show thrillerabout a daring WWII Russian spy , managed to rise high enough in the organization that he finally get his first foreign bill – to Dresden , in then - communist East Germany – just before the Soviet Union ’s demise . His takeaway from that , as Sipher sees it , was that " when the Soviet state call for to be powerful and crack heads , it did n’t and … and it fell apart . "
Putin finally resurfaced as the head word of the Modern FSB under Yeltsin , whom he followed as Russian president in 2000 . Under Putin , the objet d’art of the old KGB increasingly coalesced , leading tonews reportsthat he was even considering formally merging other agencies with the FSB . Though that has n’t happened , the various parting of the Russian intelligence community — admit GRU , the military intelligence agency – all operate in concert to endure Putin ’s clutch on power . " They all mold for the Kremlin , " Sipher explain .
Walton concurs . " It ’s really not gossamer , the distinction between GRU and FSB and SVR , " he say .
Current Activities of the Soviet FSB
Russian intelligence ’s attempt to interfere in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election campaign – document in the2019 reportissued by special counsel Robert Mueller – let in tricks roam from the release of stolen email to using fake accounts to bombard Twitter and Facebook with messages intended to touch up discord among Americans . Russian operatives perplex online , for example , as both Tea Party activist and Black Lives Matter protesters .
While many Americans were offend by the notion that a foreign power would attempt to interfere in that fashion , Sipher says it ’s really just something out of the old KGB playbook . Back in the 1980s , he says , the FSB ’s predecessor waged a similar disinformation campaign , in which it set narrative in the outside press that the Pentagon had create the AIDS computer virus to use against developing res publica . What ’s different now is that applied science speeds up the process . " Now , rather of need four or five days to get the info out , they can apply trolling and bot and pump out 100,000 things an time of day to get it into our system , " he says .
Walton lays out the story of Soviet - style " dezinformatsia " in elections in thisarticlefor the Brown Journal of World Affairs .
Similarly , Walton also notes the2006 execution of former FSB undercover agent Alexander Litvinenko , who was kill by radioactive polonium-210 think to have been slipped into his teatime , and the apparent 2018 attempt to kill former Russian agent Sergei Skripal withnerve poisonat his base in the U.K. Both incident are reminiscent of past KGB elbow grease to assassinate defector and other perceived opponents of the regime , he says
" There ’s a long history of the Kremlin assassinating people in most atrocious way , to extinguish foe but to also send a message , " Walton says . One example is the 1940 blackwash of former Soviet revolutionaryLeon Trotsky , who was killed with an ice pick in Mexico City . " Stalin was more obsessed with Trotsky than Hitler , " he says .
But despite the Russians ' recent clandestine successes , Walton and Sipher both admonish against taking them for a sign of metier . " The U.S. presidential election was a highly successful operation , but you could argue that they overdo it and now everyone has heightened awareness as a result , " Walton explain .
Just as the KGB did in the past , Putin ’s spies engage in asymmetrical war because they ’re face a hard resister . " At the conclusion of the day , if the strong ( state ) opt to push back , it is much stronger , " Sipher says .
