KGB is an a Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, which translates to Committee for State Security.
The KGB is the organization which covered internal security, intelligence, and the secret police in the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991.
The Cheka was first created under Lenin to defend the Bolsheviks and the October Revolution from the White Army. From its start the organization began suppression of counter-revolution activity by using domestic terror and international deception. The group was renamed to the State Political Directorate. The Soviet Union had a secret police agency from the very beginning, in 1917, and at various levels of power and connection to the central government, survived the whole length of time in which the Soviet Union lasted.
By the time it became the KGB, the secret police and intelligence organization of the Soviet Union had helped defend the Bolshevik revolution in 1918 (at that time called the Cheka,) been a key instrument in carrying out the Great Purge of 1936-38 (then called the NKVD,) and had sent many legal and illegal spies on successful espionage operations into the West.
The KGB Officially started under that name shortly after Stalin died and when the Ministry of Foreign affairs and Ministry for State Security were combined. Fearing a coup’ d’état, Khrushchev had the leader of the State Security under Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria, purged from the Communist party and executed. After then the Ministry of Security detached from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was renamed the Committee for State Security after it was dropped from cabinet to committee level.
The KGB had a crucial port in the conspiracy against Khrushchev while under the leadership of Vladimir Semichastny, and with Alexander Shelepin, former KGB head, exercising great influence towards the whole ordeal. Under Brezhnev's rule, the KGB infiltrated most, if not all, anti-government organizations, which ensured that there was little to no opposition against him or his power base. The KGB regained much of its powers they had under Stalin, but did not replicate the purges
The KGB during Brezhnev’s regime offered up the intelligence that would give the approval towards the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Under disguise, KGB and GRU operatives led an assault on Tajbeg Presidential Palace, leading up to the assassination of Afghan Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin.
The KGB favored what they would call “Active Measures,” or disinformation, propaganda, counterfeiting official documents, assassinations, and political repression, such as penetration of churches, and persecution of political dissidents.
An important aspect of the KGB’s workings was the anti-corruption investigations into Moscow Trade Unions during the 1980’s. This started when Yuri Andropov, former director of the KGB, became general secretary of the party in 1982. The KGB uncovered the bribery and favoritism among party members who were connected with the trade unions, and yet as the organization seemed at its peak again, it only declined in power from there
Its violent methods for interrogating and “purging” were reminiscent of the NKVD era, which was criticized and ultimately led to its downfall in 1991 when the KGB was discovered to be intricately involved in a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev.
The ministries and organizations that adopted the duties of the KGB in 1991 delegated thier powers and responsibilities into The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) in 1995, thus creating a pseudo-KGB organization that is still in action today
