Looking at the history of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, it is not difficult to find that secret service politics has run through the entire social development of the Soviet Union. Secret service politics ensured the sustainable development of Soviet politics and completely buried this huge empire.
Just as the so-called "secret agent" is also a "secret agent", the defeat is also a "secret agent". From the Cheka to the KGB, Soviet society grew without secret service politics. Whether in the political struggles of the Soviet Union or in the midst of internal strife, the secret service agencies were always with the highest levels of the Soviet Union, and even played a "leading role" in a certain period. It can be seen that the history of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union is actually a history of the development of secret agents.
As we all know, the Russians are much inferior to the Western countries in the financial economy, but once they engage in the secret police industry, they are familiar with the road, not only are not inferior to the intelligence agencies of other countries at all, but also repeatedly make their peers feel frightened. It can be said that from the beginning of the establishment of the Cheka, the secret agent gene has penetrated into all corners of Soviet society.
In 1917, in response to the counterattack of reactionary forces at home and abroad, the Central Committee of the Soviet Union decided to establish a state defense agency, with Dzerzhinsky as the first chairman, mainly responsible for stopping all subversive activities. The full name of the body is "All-Russian Extraordinary Committee for the Suppression of Counter-Revolution and Sabotage", and the word "Cheka" is a transliteration of the Russian abbreviation of the Committee.
Dzerzhinsky once described the Cheka this way: "It is an institution that uses revolutionary means to deal with counter-revolution. From this perspective, the Cheka's main task is internal repression, with counterintelligence and intelligence work being only a small part of his function. Of course, by the end of World War II, the Cheka's intelligence apparatus had grown rapidly to become one of the world's four largest intelligence organizations, which was also a bonus.
Because the Cheka had a great deal of power to arrest and shoot all counter-revolutionaries without instructions, for a time the Cheka became the epitome of the "institution of violence." Relying on this terrorist activity, the young Soviets soon consolidated state power.
However, unchecked power will eventually be eaten back. The Cheka became a nightmare for ordinary Soviet citizens in the last century, and various unjust, false and wrongly decided cases created during the "purge" were not uncommon. Although many soviet leaders expressed dissatisfaction with the Cheka's arbitrary power and believed that the Cheka's power must be restrained, the radicals still had the upper hand, and the Cheka was able to survive for a long time.
By 1922, the Cheka's powers were further expanded, and the body was reorganized into the State Political Protection Bureau (i.e., the "Gebeu"), which was subordinate to the People's Commissariat of internal affairs of the Soviet Union. After the establishment of the "GEBEU", both in form and in the division of tasks, it was far more mature than in the Cheka period. However, because of the cheka's fame during the Soviet period, people still habitually called the Soviet State Political Protection Bureau "Cheka".
After Stalin came to power, in order to maintain personal rule, the "GEBEU" was reorganized into the People's Commissariat of internal affairs, responsible for internal repression. Compared with the KGB, which later became essentially an intelligence agency, the NKVD at this time can be said to be in a position of great power and life and death.
According to records, during the Great Purge of the Soviet Union alone, the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs arrested more than 500,000 political prisoners, including Zinoviev, one of the Soviet troikas, and the economist Bukharin. From the 1930s onwards, the Ministry of Internal Affairs became a tool for political purges by soviet rulers, a far cry from Dzerzhinsky's original political ideals.
In 1953, after Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders overthrew Beria, in order to eliminate the negative influence of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs during the Great Purge, the Central Committee of the Soviet Union decided to reorganize the Ministry of Internal Affairs into the State Security Council, which is transliterated as "KGB".
After the establishment of the KGB, although it nominally belonged to the jurisdiction of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, in fact it was directly controlled by the supreme leader of the Soviet Union, after all, the example of Beria was right in front of him, and no one wanted to let violent institutions such as the KGB lose control.
According to the records, the main institutions of the KGB are the "Foreign Intelligence Bureau, the Domestic Counter-Espionage Bureau, the Military Administration, the Border Protection Administration, and the General Affairs Bureau", and their work scope covers the entire territory of the Soviet Union. At one point, the KGB staff in its heyday reached tens of thousands. In addition, the KGB has a large number of informants and spies abroad. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that the KGB is present wherever there are people.
During the Cold War, due to the excessive functions of the KGB and its scope, it once became a power institution above the ministries and commissions of the Soviet Union, and became the face of the Red Terror internationally. In terms of its specific mandate, the KGB's areas of responsibility are roughly equivalent to those of the CIA, but the powers between the two are not the same.
Of course, for the KGB, the Soviet people also had a complicated mentality. On the one hand, the KGB, with its power to decide the lives and deaths of others, was often regarded by the Soviet populace as a flood beast. On the other hand, the privileges enjoyed by the KGB are also envied by people, and you see that Putin was not a living example?