The KGB: Sword And Shield Of The Communist Party

The KGB was a soviet organization, that acted as the “Sword and Shield” of the communist party. The KGB, standing for the Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti (Committee of State Security), is the equivalent of the United States CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The KGB’s many responsibilities included those of “arresting, imprisoning, or executing enemies of the soviet union”. However the main responsibility of the KGB was the gathering of intelligence (britannica.com/topic/KGB). Their ability to infiltrate organizations outside of Soviet Russia served as a major role in the paranoia felt by many American citizens during the time of the Cold War with the United States (coldwar.org/articles/50s/kgb). There are several accounts of the KGB’s

Originally the Cheka was responsible for investigating counter revolution and sabotage. Soon after however the Cheka “assumed responsibility for arresting, imprisoning, and executing ‘enemies of the state’. The Cheka grew and developed over time, and went under many names such as the GPU and the OGPU (academic.mu.edu). I believe the Cheka stood as the foundation of the KGB and because of this is considered the ‘early life’ of the KGB. The KGB began its existence on March 13 1954, “to serve as the sword and shield of the Communist Party”. The new security service was designed to be carefully controlled by senior communist officials. “It was divided into twenty directorates the most important of which were those responsible for foreign intelligence, domestic counterintelligence, technical intelligence, protection of the political leadership, and the security of the country’s frontiers. For the next twenty years the KGB became increasingly zealous in its pursuit of enemies (britanica.com/topic/KGB).” They were recorded harassing, arresting, and sometimes exiling human rights advocates, Christian and Jewish activists, and intellectuals judged to be disloyal to the regime

However, in the end human nature had its way. The KGB’s political corruption grew at an alarming rate (academic.mu.edu) until it was finally disbanded in 1991. The KGB had a large number of recorded successes that ranged anywhere from the infiltration of foreign governments to the controlling of the Russian citizens on Russian soil. It’s a shame that political corruption did in the KGB because at the height of their power… it was a sight to behold. There many successes included that of infiltrating the United States government, which was a big reason the U.S. population feared them. In George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm he tells of a group of farm animals that represent many figures that were present in the Russian revolution. In this story the KGB was represented by a group of dogs. These dogs served as the royal guards of the pigs on the