History of the Federal Security Service of Russia

The FSB, or the Federal Security Service of Russia, is one of the heirs of 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 - VCHK - OGPU - KGB - FSB

The history of the FSB includes a number of changes in its name and reorganization after the revolution in Russia in 1917. Officially it was known as the KGB for 46 years, from 1954 to 1991. Repressive organizations have long been part of Russia's political structure. The functions of these organizations were significantly expanded in comparison with the role of political police played by the Okhrana during the reign of Tsar Nicholas II.

In 1917, Vladimir Lenin from the remnants of the tsarist secret police created the Cheka. This new organization, which eventually turned into the KGB, was engaged in a wide range of tasks, including spying, 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 Federal Security Service of Russia

In 1880, Tsar Alexander II formed the Office for the Protection of Public Security and Order, known as the "Okhrana". This organization in the late XIX - early XX century. Engaged in various radical groups within Russia - overseeing their members, introducing them and neutralizing them. Having members of the secret police in the leadership of various revolutionary groups, the tsar was constantly aware of the events 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 Department. Nicholas II was so confident in his power over these groups that in November 1916 he ignored the warnings about the inevitable revolution.

After the February democratic revolution, Lenin and his party of the Bolsheviks secretly organized forces and from the second attempt made a coup d'état. Lenin was a staunch supporter of terror and admired the Jacobins, the most radical French revolutionists of 1790. He appointed Felix Dzerzhinsky 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 effectiveness of the NKVD. The Extraordinary Commission became the basis for the later KGB. Its chairman, Lenin appointed 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 headquarters of the organization from St. Petersburg to the former office of the All-Russian Insurance Company, where it remains to this day. The Cheka itself conducted the investigation, itself made arrests, itself judged, kept in concentration camps and executed.

The history of the FSB-Cheka includes the killing of more than 500,000 people from the time it was created in 1917 to the renaming in 1922. The usual practice was the "Red Terror". From each village, the Chekists took 20-30 hostages and held them until the peasants gave all their available supplies of food. If this did not happen, the hostages were shot. Although this system proved effective in maintaining Lenin's ideology, the Cheka was dissolved and replaced by an equally 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 fewer powers than the Cheka. With the support of Lenin, Dzerzhinsky remained chairman and eventually regained his former power. With the adoption of the USSR Constitution in July 1923, the GPU was renamed the OGPU, or the United State Political Administration.

The Holodomor

In 1924 Lenin died, and Joseph Stalin replaced him. Dzerzhinsky, who supported him in the battle for power, retained his post. After the death of Iron Felix in 1926, the head of the OGPU became Menzhinsky. One of the main tasks of the organization 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 grain and grain for its sale for export, creating a famine that killed more than five million people.

From Berry to Yezhov

In 1934, Menzhinsky died under mysterious circumstances and was replaced by Henry Yagoda, a pharmacist by education. Under his leadership, the OGPU began to conduct research in the field of biological and chemical weapons. Berry liked to conduct experiments on prisoners personally. He was shot at Stalin after the recognition in the murder of Menzhinsky to lead the OGPU.

During the administration of Nikolai Yezhov, Yagoda's successor, terror in the USSR reached its apogee. The history of the FSB includes this fact: between 1936 and 1938, Only the employees of the OGPU were shot by three thousand people. Fearing the growing influence of Yezhov, Stalin judged and shot him in 1938.

15 Years of Beria

After Yezhov, the post of head of the NKVD for fifteen years was occupied by Lavrenty Beria. He expanded the organization to such an extent that in 1941 the security service was allocated to a separate organization. The NKGB was responsible for internal security, counterintelligence, border security, forced labor camps, as well as partisan and clandestine struggle against Germany during World War II. The head of the NKGB, Vsevolod Merkulov, was controlled by Beria. In 1950, he was replaced by Viktor Abakumov, whose loyalty to the head of the NKVD was not so blind. As a result, Beria convinced Stalin to convict him of conspiracy against the leader of all nations. In 1951, Abakumov was shot.

After Stalin's death 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 trial and executed him in 1953. In March 1954, the KGB appeared, which was responsible for controlling the police, conducting secret operations, guarding borders and internal security.

The history of the creation of the FSB. The KGB (1954-1991)

The State Security Committee was formed on March 13, 1954. Its first chairman was Ivan Serov. The initial task of the committee was to "cleanse" the government of the people of Beria, who tried to seize control of the USSR after Stalin's death.

Since 1958, with the appointment of Alexander Shelepin as the new chairman of the KGB (Serov was headed by the Main Intelligence Agency), Khrushchev brought some changes to the operational functions of the Committee. His goal was to return the Soviet Union, and the KGB in particular, to a course similar to the Dzerzhinsky Cheka of 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 murders and terrorism sponsored by the USSR.

At the same time, the KGB tried to change the repressive image created by Stalin's dictatorship. Literary works were created that extolled the heroic contribution of the KGB to the preservation of the Soviet Union, and postage stamps depicting Dzerzhinsky were produced.

In December 1961 Shelepina was succeeded by Vladimir Semichastny.

The Epoch of Andropov

The history of the development of the FSB after the overthrow of Khrushchev on October 11, 1964 and the coming 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 the socialist countries. He became chairman of the "long-liver", surviving until May 1982.

The new leader continued the restructuring of the KGB, begun by Khrushchev and Shelepin in the 1960s. He opposed political, intellectual, national and religious opposition; Expanded the system of labor camps and links; Used psychiatry to fight dissenters. In addition, he increased the collection of scientific and technical intelligence information, helped create an organizational infrastructure for financing and controlling the military, defense industry and aviation. Under the leadership of Andropov, the KGB was engaged in disinformation, falsification of documents of Western special services, financed campaigns in the Western press, and also expanded the 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, took over the chairmanship of the Committee.

Only seven months later, the latter became Minister of Internal Affairs. In December 1982, Viktor Chebrikov, first deputy. Fedorchuk, took the vacant seat. In October 1988, he was succeeded 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 launched a failed coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev, 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 officially became known as the State Security Committee, and also found its main organizational structure.

Then there was a significant decrease in her 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 submitted to the Council of Ministers in accordance with the Charter. The history of the FSB bodies is clouded by the fact that the Charter of the Committee has never been published, unlike most other Soviet laws. Many aspects of the organization, however, were made public in textbooks and individual cases of disclosure of state secrets.

The KGB had an umbrella structure that consisted of similar committees in each of the 14 republics of the USSR. In the RSFSR, however, the regional organization was not. State security committees across Russia were subordinated directly to the central body in Moscow.

The leadership of the KGB was carried out by the chairman, approved by the Supreme Soviet on the recommendation of the Politburo. He had 1-2 first and 4-6 simple deputies. They, along with the leaders 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 four areas: protecting the state from foreign spies and agents, identifying and investigating political and economic crimes, protecting state borders and state secrets. To fulfill these tasks, from 390 to 700 thousand people served in six main departments.

Organizational structure

The 1st Main Directorate was responsible for all foreign operations and intelligence gathering. It consisted of several units, which were divided into operations (intelligence training, collection and analysis), and geographic regions of the world. The specifics of the work required selection of the most qualified personnel from all departments; Recruits had good academic performance, knew one or several languages, and firmly believed in communist ideology.

The 2nd GU exercised the internal political control of Soviet citizens and foreigners residing in the USSR. This department prevented contacts of foreign diplomats with the inhabitants of the country; Investigated political, economic crimes and contained a network of informants; Followed the tourists and foreign students.

The 3rd PG was engaged in military counterintelligence and political supervision of the armed forces. It consisted of 12 divisions, supervising various military and paramilitary groups.

The 5 th GU together with the 2nd was engaged in internal security. Created in 1969 to combat political dissent, it was responsible for the detection and neutralization of opposition among religious organizations, national minorities and the intellectual elite (including the literary and artistic community).

The 8th GU was in charge of government communications. In particular, it conducted monitoring of foreign communications, created ciphers used by KGB units, sent messages to agents abroad, and developed secure communication equipment.

GU Border troops engaged in the protection of borders on land and at sea. It was divided into 9 border areas, which covered 67 thousand km of the USSR borders. The main duties of the troops were the reflection of a potential attack; Suppression of illegal movement across the border of people, weapons, explosives, smuggling and subversive literature; Monitoring of Soviet and foreign vessels.

In addition to these six PIs, there were at least a few more offices, smaller in size and volume:

• The 7th was engaged in surveillance and provided personnel and technical equipment to monitor the activities of foreigners and suspicious Soviet citizens.
• The 9th provided protection for key party leaders and members of their families in the Kremlin and other government facilities throughout the country.
• The 16th provided the work of telephone and radio communication lines used by government agencies.

As an extensive and complex organization, the KGB, in addition to these departments, had an extensive apparatus that ensured the day-to-day functioning of the organization. This is the human resources department, the secretariat, the technical support staff, the finance department, the archive, the administration department, and the party organization.

Decline of the KGB

On August 18, 1991, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was visited by several conspirators on the government dacha on the Black Sea coast in Crimea, including Lieutenant-General Yuri Plekhanov, head of the presidential security service, and Valery Boldin, the head of the Gorbachev administration, who felt that the party Is under threat. They offered him either to resign or to give up presidential authority in favor of Vice-President Gennady Yanayev. After Gorbachev's refusal, the guards surrounded his house, preventing him from leaving or contacting the outside world.

At the same time in Moscow, the Alfa group of the 7th KGB Directorate was ordered to attack the Russian parliament building and seize control of it. The unit was to conduct a hidden reconnaissance of the building on August 19, and then penetrate and seize it on August 20th and 21st. Contrary to the expectations of the members of the Emergency Committee, the group, headed by Mikhail Golovatov, decided not to conduct the operation. They postponed it until the opposition forces, led by Boris Yeltsin, gathered to protect 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 State Emergency Committee. Some of the putschists were arrested, and the coup was suppressed.

The "gang of eight" included the vice president, the chairman of the KGB, the minister of defense, the prime minister, a member of the Defense Council, a member of the Supreme Council, the chairman of the Association of State Enterprises and the Minister of Internal Affairs. Seven of them were arrested and convicted. The eighth shot through his head before he was arrested.

After the attempted coup, Vladimir Kryuchkov, former chairman of the KGB for three years, was replaced by Vadim Bakatin, previously a minister of the interior from 1988 to 1990, who then called for the dismantling of the State Security Committee. This position was then the reason for his displacement and the appointment in his place of Boris Pugo, who subsequently supported the coup.

And on October 24, 1991, the KGB of the USSR was officially dissolved.

Revival

Although formally the KGB ceased to exist, in 1991 it was divided into parts, which together performed the same functions as the Committee.

The Foreign Intelligence Service, established in October 1991, took over the tasks of the 1st State Administration for conducting foreign operations, collecting and analyzing intelligence.

The Federal Agency for Government Communication and Information was formed on the basis of the 8th GU and the 16th Directorate and is responsible for the security of communications and the transfer of intelligence.

8-9 thousand military personnel, who once formed the 9th Department, were attached to the Federal Security Service and the President's 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 Security Ministry was disbanded in 1993. It included 75,000 people from the second, third and fifth GU. He is responsible for internal security in the Russian Federation.

Forward to the past...

After many years of terror of Soviet citizens who constantly feared cruel interrogations of KGB officers or sentences to work in the 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 blatant facts. Writers whose works were considered anti-Soviet and who have never seen their books in print, were victims of the 5th KGB State Administration. Families broke up when agents arrested, tried and sentenced millions of people to imprisonment in labor camps in Siberia or to death. Most of the convicts did not commit any crimes - they became victims of the circumstances, finding themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, or because of an imprudent remark made at home. Some of them were killed simply because KGB agents had to fulfill 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.

It seemed that this nightmare had gone forever. But the history of the Cheka-KGB-FSB does not end there. The recently announced plans to create a Ministry of State Security on the basis of the SVR and the FSB make one recall the eponymous Stalin structure, which was designed to protect the interests of the ruling party.