KGB - Simple English Wikipedia

# KGB

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The KGB emblem and motto: The sword and the shield

KGB (transliteration of "КГБ") is the Russian-language abbreviation for State Security Committee, (Russian: Комите́т Госуда́рственной Безопа́сности ?; 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 had similar functions and powers to 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 merged 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.

Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky

## [edit] External links

- KGB Info from FAS.org
- Chebrikov, Viktor M., et al, eds. Istoriya sovetskikh organov gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti. (1977) [1]

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