KGB Security Troops: Difference between revisions

The KGB Security Troops were the uniformed security troops engaged in military-related activities that are not mentioned in legislation governing the Soviet Armed forces. The KGB controlled elite units that guard the highest party officials and stand a continuous ceremonial guard at the Lenin Mausoleum. The special KGB signal troops also operated communications linking the party with the Ministry of Defense and the major territorial commands. Another KGB armed force guarded sensitive military, scientific, and industrial installations in the Soviet Union and, until the late 1960s, controlled Soviet nuclear warhead stockpiles. They also guarded government installations (nuclear weapons, etc.), operated the Moscow VIP subway, and secure Government–Party telephony.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin transformed it to the Federal Protective Service (FPS).

The security were controlled by the Ninth Chief Directorate (Guards and KGB Protection Service), the Eighth Chief Directorate which monitored/managed national, foreign, and overseas communications, cryptologic equipment, and research and development, and possibly the Sixteenth Directorate (SIGINT and communications interception) which operated the national and government telephone and telegraph systems.

The KGB's Security Troops, which numbered about 40,000 in 1989, provided the KGB with a coercive potential. Although Soviet sources did not specify the functions of these special troops, Western analysts thought that one of their main tasks was to guard the top leadership in the Kremlin, as well as key government and party buildings and officials at the republic and regional levels. Such troops were presumably under the Ninth Directorate of the KGB.

The Security Troops also included several units of signal troops, which were reportedly responsible for installation, maintenance, and operation of secret communications facilities for leading party and government bodies, including the Ministry of Defense. These troops were probably under the command of the Eighth Chief Directorate. Other special KGB troops were intended for counterterrorist and counterinsurgency operations. Such troops were reportedly employed, along with the MVD's Internal Troops, to suppress public protests and disperse demonstrations, such as that of the Crimean Tatars in July 1987 and those in the republics of Armenia and Azerbaydzhan in March 1988. Special KGB troops also were trained for sabotage and diversionary missions abroad.

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• Yevgenia Albats and Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia — Past, Present, and Future Farrar Straus Giroux (1994) ISBN 0-374-52738-5.
• John Barron, KGB: The Secret Works of Soviet Secret Agents Bantam Books (1981) ISBN 0-553-23275-4
• Vadim J. Birstein. The Perversion Of Knowledge: The True Story of Soviet Science. Westview Press (2004) ISBN 0-8133-4280-5
• John Dziak Chekisty: A History of the KGB, Lexington Books (1988) ISBN 978-0669102581
• Sheymov, Victor (1993). Tower of Secrets. Naval Institute Press. p. 420. ISBN 1-55750-764-3.
• Бережков, Василий Иванович (2004). Руководители Ленинградского управления КГБ : 1954-1991. Санкт-Петербург: Выбор, 2004. ISBN 5-93518-035-9 (in Russian)
• Кротков, Юрий (1973). «КГБ в действии». Published in «Новый журнал» №111, 1973 (in Russian)

• For Cold War KGB activity in the US, see Alexander Vassiliev's Notebooks from the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP)
• KGB Information Center from FAS.org
• Viktor M. Chebrikov et al., eds. Istoriya sovetskikh organov gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti ("History of the Soviet Organs of State Security"). (1977) [1]
• Slaves of KGB. 20th Century. The religion of betrayal (Russian), by Yuri Shchekochikhin

• Russian Federal Protective Service
• Security police
• OSNAZ - KSB Special Forces