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The most extreme weather events of In pictures. As a state committee with ministerial status, the KGB operated on the basis of a statute polozhenie , confirmed by the Council of Ministers, that set forth in legal terms the KGB's powers and duties. Unlike the majority of statutes governing ministerial agencies, the KGB's statute was not published.
Nevertheless, Soviet textbooks on administrative law offered useful statements about the KGB's role and functions. The KGB's tasks were generally defined in official Soviet publications as encompassing four areas: the struggle against foreign spies and agents, the exposure and investigation of political and economic crimes by citizens, the protection of state borders, and the protection of state secrets.
In addition, the KGB was charged with a wide range of preventive tasks, which were designed to eliminate the causes of both political and ordinary crimes.
In other words, the KGB was tasked with ferreting out potential threats to the state and preventing the development of unorthodox political and social attitudes among the population. Western estimates of KGB manpower have ranged from , in to , in There are no published estimates of the KGB budget. Many KGB personnel were institutions to which they were assigned, and the KGB received support and services from the military and other institutions, rendering a meaningful budgetary accounting particularly problematic.
Official Soviet sources did not discuss the internal structure of the KGB in detail. Soviet spy services under any name struggled to get a foothold in the United States in the early postwar period. This was due in part to the investigations spurred by the so-called Red Scare of the late s and s, during which time U.
The Red Scare led to the Congressional hearings spearheaded by Senator Joseph McCarthy , who attempted to identify, and thwart, Communist influence in American society. These events are credited with bringing down much of the U. Despite this resistance, the Soviets were not easily deterred, and they would ultimately succeed in recruiting U. He would later be accused, and convicted, of providing information to the Soviets, including classified naval communications, which allowed them to track ship movements and other activities.
Walker allegedly worked for the KGB until well in the s, when he was arrested. The KGB also recruited CIA officer Aldrich Ames, who divulged the locations and activities of multiple CIA officers stationed all over the world before he was arrested and convicted of espionage in Ames remains in prison to this day.
To perform this task, KGB agents often used extremely violent means. The KGB famously crushed the Hungarian Revolution of , by first arresting the leaders of the movement prior to scheduled negotiations with Soviet officials in Budapest. Twelve years later, the KGB took a lead role in crushing similar reform movements in the country then known as Czechoslovakia. These latter events, known as the Prague Spring , which occurred in , initially resulted in changes in how Czechoslovakia was governed.
However, Soviet troops were ultimately sent into the country to re-establish Communist Party control. KGB officers then targeted dissidents, including those staging non-violent acts of protest, jailing and, reportedly in some cases, executing them.
These agents would appear to sympathize with the cause while later informing on the activities of the group and its leaders. It is an instrument for subversion, manipulation and violence, for secret intervention in the affairs of other countries.
Still, despite its heavy handedness, it failed to defeat a worker-led reform movement in Poland, then a Soviet satellite republic, in the s. It is said that the successful efforts on the part of the anti-Soviet reformers in Poland may have ultimately spurred the downfall of the Communist Bloc.
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