When the Soviet Union officially dissolved in December, 1991, many Westerners, Soviet dissidents, and Russian citizens believed that the feared Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti (KGB) would be dismantled forever. Russian and Western observers viewed the toppling of the “Iron Felix” Dzerzhinsky statue in August 1991 as the symbolic end of the era of Soviet political police repression. Subsequently, Gorbachev appointed Vadim Bakatin to reform the KGB. But what constituted reform? In December 1991, the KGB’s responsibilities were spread among several new agencies. Nevertheless, changing the name of organizations and re-drawing bureaucratic boundaries does not immediately eliminate or change the KGB’s 75 year old organizational culture and
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Is the FSB really stronger and more repressive than the Soviet secret police force that had over 400,000 officers, agents, and guards and sent millions of innocent Soviet citizens to the GULAG, supported international terrorism, and forced Solzhenitsyn into exile because his writings were considered politically dangers? Some key questions to consider are: To what degree are the Russian security services (FSB in particular) the KGB’s successors? Is the FSB more powerful than the USSR’s domestic security apparatus? Finally, if the FSB is more powerful than the KGB, what are some of the potential …show more content…
One of the particularities of Russian intelligence is continuity, loyalty to the best traditions of the services preceding it. Former KGB officer Nikolai Patrushev said in 1999, “The roots of the native special services go back into the depths of the centuries, to the times of the birth and formation of the centralized Russian state.” One of the West’s foremost experts on Russian history, Dr. Richard Pipes writes, “Russia is committed to authoritarian government.” A strong, centralized government protected by a powerful, pervasive security service is a reoccurring theme in Russian history since the early days of the Kievan Rus. According to Russian history professor Vladimir Plougin, “Oleg [of the early Kievan Rus] had a powerful system of counterintelligence [in the early 10th Century].” The structural model of Russia’s secret police began not with the Bolshevik revolution but with the reign of Ivan the Terrible, and his formation of the Oprichniki, which means ‘man aside,’ in the 17th Century. The most comprehensive history of Russian foreign intelligence, Ocherki Istorii Rossiskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, discusses the role of Ivan Grozny’s Oprichniki (Ivan the Terrible’s siloviki) protecting the tsar and the interests of Rurik Russia. 19th Century Russian historian Vasily Kliuchevsky writes, “The Oprichnina provided for the Tsar’s personal safety” and “Its [Oprichnina’s] tasking was to istrebit
Is the FSB really stronger and more repressive than the Soviet secret police force that had over 400,000 officers, agents, and guards and sent millions of innocent Soviet citizens to the GULAG, supported international terrorism, and forced Solzhenitsyn into exile because his writings were considered politically dangers? Some key questions to consider are: To what degree are the Russian security services (FSB in particular) the KGB’s successors? Is the FSB more powerful than the USSR’s domestic security apparatus? Finally, if the FSB is more powerful than the KGB, what are some of the potential …show more content…
One of the particularities of Russian intelligence is continuity, loyalty to the best traditions of the services preceding it. Former KGB officer Nikolai Patrushev said in 1999, “The roots of the native special services go back into the depths of the centuries, to the times of the birth and formation of the centralized Russian state.” One of the West’s foremost experts on Russian history, Dr. Richard Pipes writes, “Russia is committed to authoritarian government.” A strong, centralized government protected by a powerful, pervasive security service is a reoccurring theme in Russian history since the early days of the Kievan Rus. According to Russian history professor Vladimir Plougin, “Oleg [of the early Kievan Rus] had a powerful system of counterintelligence [in the early 10th Century].” The structural model of Russia’s secret police began not with the Bolshevik revolution but with the reign of Ivan the Terrible, and his formation of the Oprichniki, which means ‘man aside,’ in the 17th Century. The most comprehensive history of Russian foreign intelligence, Ocherki Istorii Rossiskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, discusses the role of Ivan Grozny’s Oprichniki (Ivan the Terrible’s siloviki) protecting the tsar and the interests of Rurik Russia. 19th Century Russian historian Vasily Kliuchevsky writes, “The Oprichnina provided for the Tsar’s personal safety” and “Its [Oprichnina’s] tasking was to istrebit