informantsemployed by the KGB, but several former officials put
the number slightly in excess of 10 million.
While Khrushchev’s reforms sought to reduce the role of the secu-
rity police in the surveillanceof the Communist Party leadership,
every party leader from Khrushchev to Mikhail Gorbachevrelied on
the KGB for close surveillance of the population, as well as for for-
eign intelligence and counterintelligence. While never obtaining the
reputation for ruthlessness of the Stalinist service, the KGB was a
highly effective security service, with informants in every corner of
Soviet society. Former KGB officers like Russian President
Vladimir Putinbelieve the KGB was the least corrupt of all Soviet
institutions. At the national level, this may have been true. In the
provinces, however, the KGB often protected corrupt party officials.
See alsoKGB ORGANIZATION.KGB ORGANIZATION.The KGB—like its predecessors—was man-
aged by a collegium composed of the organization’s most important
leaders. In the 1970s the collegium was chaired by the KGB chair and
included two first deputy chairs, the heads of the first and second
chief directorates, and the chiefs of the Moscow and Leningrad KGB
offices, as well as other officials. The KGB, like its predecessors, was
an integrated intelligence community packed into one organization: it
conducted foreign intelligence, domestic counterintelligence, and
border security operations. It was also responsible for the security of
the Red Army as well as the protection of the party’s leadership and
important government installations. In 1954 the KGB was reorgan-
ized into chief directorates and directorates, which reflected respon-
sibilities of the security police’s components dating back to the for-
mation of the Chekain 1917.
The First Chief Directorate had responsibility for foreign intelli-
gence. It operated hundreds of foreign rezidenturasabroad and was
responsible for intelligence officers under official cover as well as il-
legals. The First Chief Directorate essentially was the Soviet Union’s
Central Intelligence Agency.
The Second Chief Directorate was responsible for domestic coun-
terintelligence. It operated against foreign agents as well as émigré
political and religious organizations seeking to penetrate the Soviet
Union. It ran agents with access to foreign diplomatic and consular128 •KGB ORGANIZATION06-313 G-P.qxd 7/27/06 7:56 AM Page 128