Ministry for State Security (USSR)
Encyclopedia
The Ministry of State Security (MGB) was the name of Soviet secret police
from 1946 to 1953.
, the Checka were in power, relinquishing it to the less violent State Political Directorate
(GPU) in 1922 after the fighting was over. The GPU was then renamed The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) in 1934. From the mid-1930s and until the creation of the KGB
, this “Organ of State Security” was re-organized and re-named multiple times depending on the needs and fears of the leadership. In 1941, the state-security function was separated from the NKVD and became the People's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB), only to be reintegrated a few months later during the Nazi invasion
of the Soviet Union. In 1943, the NKGB was once again made into an independent organization in response to the Soviet occupation of parts of Eastern Europe. SMERSH
, coming from the phrase “Death to Spies,” which was designed to be a counter-intelligence unit within the Red Army to ensure the loyalty of the army personnel. Following the end of the war, both the NKGB and the NKVD were converted to Ministries and redubbed the Ministry for Internal Affairs (MVD) and the Ministry for State Security (MGB). The MGB and MVD merged again in 1953, orchestrated by Lavrenty Beria, who was then arrested and executed. The KGB
took on the mantle of the NKGB/ MGB and, in 1954, broke off from the reformed MVD.
and counterespionage, as well as enacting a policy of supervision and surveillance to keep control and to prevent disloyalty. After the war, the MGB was used to bring the newly acquired Eastern Bloc under Soviet control. It enforced rigid conformity in the satellite states of Eastern Europe and infiltrated and destroyed anticommunist, anti-Soviet, or independent groups.
The protection, policing, and supervision of the Soviet Union fell to this new agency, as it was the main agency responsible for the security of the Union. The MGB directed espionage networks at home and abroad, and also organized both domestic and foreign counterintelligence. They were also responsible for enforcing security regulations, monitoring and censoring information leaving or coming into the country; and supervising the vast majority of Soviet life, including the planting and organizing of agents to track and monitor public opinion and loyalty; as well as ensuring the safety of important government and party officials.
The MGB above all else, was a security organization, and as such, was designed for overt and clandestine surveillance and supervision. The intelligence apparatus was able to permeate every level and branch of state administration, with agents planted in collective farms, factories, and local governments, as well as throughout the upper level and rank and file of Soviet bureaucracy. Each department within the government also had their own official supervisor, a “Special Section” staffed by the MGB to keep tabs on and regulate the employees, and to ensure the absence of disloyalty.
The Ministry retained a high level of autonomy and a remarkable amount of freedom of operation within the Soviet system, as the agency was only responsible to the Central Committee
. MGB agents had the power to arrest and sentence opponents upon receiving approval from a higher authority, a clause oft ignored. The OSO (the Special Council of the State Security Ministry) convicted arrestees charged with committing political crimes, including espionage and could banish them from certain areas, or from the USSR entirely. . In Stalin’s last years, between 1945 and 1953, more than 750,000 Soviet citizens were arrested and punished. Many of the arrests made by the MGB were founded on flimsy or fabricated evidence, most notably on the “Suspicion of Espionage” (podozreniye shpionazha) or (PSh). Since in many cases it is impossible to prove any espionage activities or even an intention to spy, the case is built on the "suspicion of espionage," making acquittal impossible.
The MGB was composed of several departments or directorates with a specific purpose within the organization.
In 1947 the GRU
(military intelligence) and MGB's 1st Directorate were combined into the recently created foreign intelligence agency, the Committee of Information (KI), under the control of Vyacheslav Molotov
, in an attempt to streamline the intelligence needs of the State. In 1948, the military personnel in KI were returned to the GRU. KI sections dealing with the new East Bloc and Soviet émigrés were returned to the MGB later that year. In 1951, the KI returned to the MGB, as a First Chief Directorate of the Ministry of State Security.
The Third Main Directorate was concerned with military counterintelligence. It carried out many of the same tasks as SMERSH
, which it absorbed, as it conducted political surveillance of both the Army and Navy. It relied heavily on the Army Special Section to ensure the loyalties of the soldiers and officers. The MGB operatives were used to supervise personnel and daily action, as well as to carry out counterintelligence operations.
dissolved this department in 1946, but kept the main players in a Special Service group so that they could continue with the same pattern of violence that the Fourth Directorate was known for. The group was also ultimately dissolved in 1949. Upon the destruction of the Fourth Directorate as a terrorist group, the department was transitioned into Transportation Security. It was responsible for the preparation and security of mobilization and transport. The department was also responsible for counterintelligence and surveillance operations within their transport programs.
Interestingly, a number of the top officials from this department were implicated in the Doctors' Plot
, showing the inherent mistrust and suspicion within the Soviet System.
Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies
There was a succession of Soviet secret police agencies over time. The first secret police after the Russian Revolution, created by Vladimir Lenin's decree on December 20, 1917, was called "Cheka"...
from 1946 to 1953.
Origins of the MGB
The MGB was just one of many incarnations of the Soviet State Security apparatus. Since the revolution, the Bolsheviks relied on a strong political police or security force to support and control their regime. During the Russian Civil WarRussian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...
, the Checka were in power, relinquishing it to the less violent State Political Directorate
State Political Directorate
The State Political Directorate was the secret police of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1934...
(GPU) in 1922 after the fighting was over. The GPU was then renamed The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) in 1934. From the mid-1930s and until the creation of the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
, this “Organ of State Security” was re-organized and re-named multiple times depending on the needs and fears of the leadership. In 1941, the state-security function was separated from the NKVD and became the People's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB), only to be reintegrated a few months later during the Nazi invasion
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
of the Soviet Union. In 1943, the NKGB was once again made into an independent organization in response to the Soviet occupation of parts of Eastern Europe. SMERSH
SMERSH
SMERSH was the counter-intelligence agency in the Red Army formed in late 1942 or even earlier, but officially founded on April 14, 1943. The name SMERSH was coined by Joseph Stalin...
, coming from the phrase “Death to Spies,” which was designed to be a counter-intelligence unit within the Red Army to ensure the loyalty of the army personnel. Following the end of the war, both the NKGB and the NKVD were converted to Ministries and redubbed the Ministry for Internal Affairs (MVD) and the Ministry for State Security (MGB). The MGB and MVD merged again in 1953, orchestrated by Lavrenty Beria, who was then arrested and executed. The KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
took on the mantle of the NKGB/ MGB and, in 1954, broke off from the reformed MVD.
Functions of the MGB
The MGB essentially inherited the “secret police” function of the old NKVD, conducting espionageEspionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
and counterespionage, as well as enacting a policy of supervision and surveillance to keep control and to prevent disloyalty. After the war, the MGB was used to bring the newly acquired Eastern Bloc under Soviet control. It enforced rigid conformity in the satellite states of Eastern Europe and infiltrated and destroyed anticommunist, anti-Soviet, or independent groups.
The protection, policing, and supervision of the Soviet Union fell to this new agency, as it was the main agency responsible for the security of the Union. The MGB directed espionage networks at home and abroad, and also organized both domestic and foreign counterintelligence. They were also responsible for enforcing security regulations, monitoring and censoring information leaving or coming into the country; and supervising the vast majority of Soviet life, including the planting and organizing of agents to track and monitor public opinion and loyalty; as well as ensuring the safety of important government and party officials.
The MGB above all else, was a security organization, and as such, was designed for overt and clandestine surveillance and supervision. The intelligence apparatus was able to permeate every level and branch of state administration, with agents planted in collective farms, factories, and local governments, as well as throughout the upper level and rank and file of Soviet bureaucracy. Each department within the government also had their own official supervisor, a “Special Section” staffed by the MGB to keep tabs on and regulate the employees, and to ensure the absence of disloyalty.
The Ministry retained a high level of autonomy and a remarkable amount of freedom of operation within the Soviet system, as the agency was only responsible to the Central Committee
Central Committee
Central Committee was the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, whether ruling or non-ruling in the twentieth century and of the surviving, mostly Trotskyist, states in the early twenty first. In such party organizations the...
. MGB agents had the power to arrest and sentence opponents upon receiving approval from a higher authority, a clause oft ignored. The OSO (the Special Council of the State Security Ministry) convicted arrestees charged with committing political crimes, including espionage and could banish them from certain areas, or from the USSR entirely. . In Stalin’s last years, between 1945 and 1953, more than 750,000 Soviet citizens were arrested and punished. Many of the arrests made by the MGB were founded on flimsy or fabricated evidence, most notably on the “Suspicion of Espionage” (podozreniye shpionazha) or (PSh). Since in many cases it is impossible to prove any espionage activities or even an intention to spy, the case is built on the "suspicion of espionage," making acquittal impossible.
Structure
The general structure of the MGB is much the same as both the organization it came from, the NKGB, and the organization that followed, the KGBThe MGB was composed of several departments or directorates with a specific purpose within the organization.
First Main Directorate
This Directorate was responsible for foreign intelligence. The First Directorate maintained surveillance over the "Soviet colony" (SK -- Sovetskaya koloniya), i.e., the personnel of Soviet diplomatic, trade, technical, cultural, and other agencies functioning abroad. It also sought to infiltrate foreign governmental bodies, businesses, public organizations, sensitive industrial plants, cultural and educational institutions, etc., placing MGB agents in strategic posts for intelligence-gathering and possible covert action.In 1947 the GRU
GRU
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...
(military intelligence) and MGB's 1st Directorate were combined into the recently created foreign intelligence agency, the Committee of Information (KI), under the control of Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...
, in an attempt to streamline the intelligence needs of the State. In 1948, the military personnel in KI were returned to the GRU. KI sections dealing with the new East Bloc and Soviet émigrés were returned to the MGB later that year. In 1951, the KI returned to the MGB, as a First Chief Directorate of the Ministry of State Security.
Second and Third Main Directorates
The Second Main Directorate focused on domestic counterintelligence and acted as an internal security and political police force. The goal of this department was to combat foreign intelligence operations within the USSR and its territories. The Second Directorate worked mainly inside the country to combat foreign espionage and to study the forms and methods used by foreign intelligence services on the territory of the U.S.S.R. The work it did abroad aimed to organize operational-technical intelligence, i.e., the investigation of the forms, working methods and regulations of the intelligence, counterintelligence, and police and administrative organs of foreign countries.The Third Main Directorate was concerned with military counterintelligence. It carried out many of the same tasks as SMERSH
SMERSH
SMERSH was the counter-intelligence agency in the Red Army formed in late 1942 or even earlier, but officially founded on April 14, 1943. The name SMERSH was coined by Joseph Stalin...
, which it absorbed, as it conducted political surveillance of both the Army and Navy. It relied heavily on the Army Special Section to ensure the loyalties of the soldiers and officers. The MGB operatives were used to supervise personnel and daily action, as well as to carry out counterintelligence operations.
The Fifth Main Directorate
The Fifth Main Directorate evolved out of the Main Secret Political Administration. Its was responsible for regulating and repressing real or imagined dissent within the party apparatus and Soviet society. This involved supervising almost every aspect of Soviet life, including the intelligentsia, bureaucracy, general administrative agencies, cultural organizations, educational institutions, and even the party apparatus itself. They investigated the political reliability of the entire population of the Soviet Union, with particular attention to the Party and Soviet apparatus, up to the highest leaders of the Party and government. They also secretly supervised the activity of the entire administrative and economic apparatus of the state and all scientific, public, church, and other organizations. The goal was to hunt down "deviations from the general line," "opposition leanings” within the party to ferret out and eliminate "bourgeois nationalism" in the Soviet satellites, i.e., anti-Soviet movements under the guise of nationalism.the Fourth Directorate
At the beginning of the MGB, the Fourth Directorate was designed as a proto-terrorist force to combat the anti-Soviet underground, nationalist formations, and hostile elements. However, Viktor AbakumovViktor Abakumov
Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov , was a high level Soviet security organs official, from 1943 to 1946 the head of SMERSH in the USSR People's Commissariat of Defense, and from 1946 to 1951 Minister of State Security or MGB . Abakumov was a notoriously brutal official who was known to torture prisoners...
dissolved this department in 1946, but kept the main players in a Special Service group so that they could continue with the same pattern of violence that the Fourth Directorate was known for. The group was also ultimately dissolved in 1949. Upon the destruction of the Fourth Directorate as a terrorist group, the department was transitioned into Transportation Security. It was responsible for the preparation and security of mobilization and transport. The department was also responsible for counterintelligence and surveillance operations within their transport programs.
The Sixth Directorate
This department was a short-lived organization designed to collect and process Signals Intelligence, or SIGINT. The department was initially composed of the NKGB’s 5th Directorate (responsible for wartime communications) and an independent cryptography department, the 2nd Special Department. However, this Directorate was competing with another better-funded communications organization, Department ‘R’, which specialized in radio counterintelligence. The 6th Directorate was dissolved in 1949, and its resources and personnel absorbed into the Special Services Department (GUSS), a cryptanalysis and information security branch of the Central Committee.Economic Administration
Known as the ‘K’ Division, this organization supervised the economy and ran economic counterintelligence and industrial security. They were concerned with the implementation of security programs and requirements, as well as the supervision and monitoring of the workers, leading them to make extensive use of the Special Sections within the state and local organizations.The Second Special Administration
Sometimes called the Seventh Directorate, this section was responsible for providing the tools, techniques, and manpower to accommodate the physical surveillance needs of the MGB. They offered facilities, devices, and methodology to help with the demands of the intelligence departments. They were able to do both outdoor (tailing) and photographic surveillance, as well as being able to tap phone lines, monitor conversations in other rooms through hidden microphones and covertly examining mail. They also had sections devoted to codes, cryptography, and ciphers.The Division for the Protection of Leaders
Otherwise known as the Guards Directorate, they were charged with the personal security of the top Party officials. The Division provided personal security to members and alternates of the Presidium of the Central Committee, ministers of the U.S.S.R. and their deputies, secretaries of the Central Committee, and a number of high officeholders specifically listed. The Division was also responsible for guarding important agencies and installations of the secret police themselves.Interestingly, a number of the top officials from this department were implicated in the Doctors' Plot
Doctors' plot
The Doctors' plot was the most dramatic anti-Jewish episode in the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin's regime, involving the "unmasking" of a group of prominent Moscow doctors, predominantly Jews, as conspiratorial assassins of Soviet leaders...
, showing the inherent mistrust and suspicion within the Soviet System.
MGB Ministers
- Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov 10/18/1946 – 09/ ??/ 1951
- Sergei OgoltsovSergei OgoltsovSergei Ivanovich Ogoltsov was a Russian member of the Soviet NKVD from 1936 until it was reorganized as the MGB in 1946. He served in the MGB until his arrest in 1953. He was the Deputy Director of State Security from July 14, 1951 to August 9, 1951...
Acting Head 09/1951- ??/1951 - Semyon IgnatyevSemyon IgnatyevSemyon Denisovich Ignatiev, also spelled Ignatyev was a Soviet politician.Ignatiev, the son of a peasant,an engineer, joined the Communist Party in 1926. For most of his career, he was a discreet regional apparatchik, serving as Party Secretary in Buryat ASSR, Bashkir ASSR, Byelorussian SSR and...
??/1951 - 03/15/1953
Major Campaigns
- Leningrad AffairLeningrad AffairThe Leningrad Affair, or Leningrad case , was a series of criminal cases fabricated in the late 1940s–early 1950s in order to accuse a number of prominent members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of treason and intention to create an anti-Soviet organization out of the Leningrad Party...
- Mingrelian AffairMingrelian AffairThe Mingrelian Affair, or Mingrelian Case was a series of criminal cases fabricated in 1951 and 1952 in order to accuse several members of the Georgian SSR Communist Party of Mingrelian extraction of secession and collaboration with the Western powers....
- Operation NorthOperation NorthOperation North was the code name assigned by the USSR Ministry of State Security to massive deportation of the members of the Jehovah's Witnesses and their families to Siberia in the Soviet Union on 1–2 April 1951.-Background:...
- Night of the Murdered PoetsNight of the Murdered PoetsOn August 12, 1952, thirteen Soviet Jews were executed in the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, Russia as a result of charges of espionage based on forced, false confessions resulting from coercion and torture. This massacre is known as the Night of the Murdered Poets....
- Doctors' PlotDoctors' plotThe Doctors' plot was the most dramatic anti-Jewish episode in the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin's regime, involving the "unmasking" of a group of prominent Moscow doctors, predominantly Jews, as conspiratorial assassins of Soviet leaders...
See also
- Eastern Bloc politicsEastern Bloc politicsEastern Bloc politics followed the Red Army's occupation of much of eastern Europe at the end of World War II and the Soviet Union's installation of Soviet-controlled communist governments in the Eastern Bloc through a process of bloc politics and repression...
- StasiStasiThe Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), commonly known as the Stasi (abbreviation , literally State Security), was the official state security service of East Germany. The MfS was headquartered...
- Structure of the KGB USSR