Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence

the Baltic. Nevertheless, the KGB was unable to prevent the dra-

matic failure of the regime in 1991.

• Scope of Activity: Between 1910 and 1917, the Okhranawas run-
  ning approximately 600 informers in Russia, 116 of them in
  Moscow. Twenty years later, the NKVD had literally millions of in-
  formers across the Soviet Union.^3 A historian of Russian counter-
  intelligence during World War II estimated that more than 20 mil-
  lion Russian soldiers and civilians were serving as informants.^4


• Cost: There is no real butcher bill for the Lenin and Stalin years.
  How many people were executed, died in camps, or were simply
  murdered at a leader’s whim remains unknown and unknowable.
  The number of imprisoned, exiled, and executed lies in the tens of
  millions. Between 1929 and 1953, as a recent history of the forced
  labor camp system shows, 28.7 million people received sentences
  of prison or exile, of which 2.7 million were executed or died of
  hunger or overwork in the camps and jails. One former political
  prisoner noted that the difference between Adolf Hitler and Joseph
  Stalin was that Hitler killed only his enemies.^5

In the decades of Soviet power, the KGB built a network of organ-

izations that ensured Communist Party control. The personnel section

(Perviy otdel, or First Section) of every institution was staffed by

KGB alumni who recruited informants and acted as talent scouts for

the service. Another critical KGB ally was Glavlit, the regime’s “ide-

ological KGB,” which employed 70,000 censors. The organization

worked in concert with the KGB to ensure ideological control of lit-

erature and the arts.

In the end the KGB could no more save the Soviet state than the

Okhranacould save imperial Russia. The KGB had no answers to the

growth of corruption and ethnic unrest that characterized Soviet society

in the 1970s and 1980s. Surveillance of dissidents and punishment of

religious believers in the end was largely counterproductive, ruining the

reputation of the communist regime abroad, and reducing the resources

necessary for policing the corrupt.

The KGB took a prominent part in the failed 1991 August putsch. It

was ready to arrest thousands, and it had ordered tens of thousands of

blank arrest warrants and handcuffs months before the putsch took

place. Thankfully, they were never used. The KGB leadership in 1991

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