What Is The Kgb And Its Impact On Modern Day Russia

The KGB, or the Committee for State Security, was a Soviet intelligence agency and security force established in 1954. The agency's primary responsibility was to maintain the Soviet Union's domestic security, as well as conduct intelligence operations abroad. The KGB's tactics were known for being ruthless, including censorship, propaganda, and the use of secret police to suppress dissent and maintain the Communist Party's power. During its existence, the KGB had a significant impact on Soviet society and politics, shaping foreign policy, contributing to economic and political isolation from the rest of the world, and creating a culture of fear and paranoia. Today, the KGB's legacy continues to shape modern-day Russia, as many former KGB officials

Although it was feared all around the globe, the KGB still had a very major impact in Russia. Its first impact was instilling fear into its spies, and some examples are if the spy fails, everyone the spy knows and loves will get tortured or killed. This pressured the spies into doing everything they can to succeed and also led to a high volume of extremely loyal spies. Whenever people heard “KGB” people would get scared because they might be the target. The public was extremely terrified of the KGB. “ Its primary role within Russia and the satellite republics of the Soviet Union was to quell dissent, by first identifying dissidents promoting anti-communist political and/or religious ideas and then silencing them. To perform this task, KGB agents often used extremely violent means” (“KGB: Meaning, Agents and Vladimir Putin - HISTORY”). Altogether, the KGB didn’t really have a restraining policy on how their spies were supposed to spy on Russians. Another impact the KGB had on Russia was that it caused neighbors to accuse neighbors for being spies, for having the most minute changes in their daily schedule. In turn, the KGB also took a lot of civilians to be trained to be spies as the KGB was an extremely extensive network. The KGB also had a method where one of their spies would have to become a friend of the target for years so the spy could get as much information as possible,

Perhaps the most feared spy agency of all, the KGB was familiarized with terror and cruelty and many people tremble just by hearing it. The KGB showed the world that espionage could work, and later the USA donned both the CIA and the FBI espionage agencies to gather info on other rival nations. At the time the KGB was feared, but it dissipated after the fall of the USSR and still years later, officials from the KGB became political leaders in Russia such as Vladimir Kuzichkin (Inside the KGB: My Life in Soviet Espionage | Office of Justice Programs). The KGB deeply believed in the method of human resources. That is where you make a spy become friends with the target that you need information on, and as they get closer, you hope your target slips up and spills the beans to your spy. This especially added to the Red Scare, which was already scaring non-Russians all over the globe. This was the main thing that led to Americans getting suspicious of anybody or anything that is out of the ordinary (Davidson). The main target of the KGB was obviously the information from the Manhattan Project, which contained blueprints for the atomic bomb. Everybody was afraid of the atomic bomb as people saw firsthand the deadliness and ruthlessness of it in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even though the KGB didn’t have the gadgets like the CIA, they were perhaps the better spy