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Kkb Research Paper

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Soviet rule over the satellites and KGB involvement “I wanted to choose somewhere public, because I was scared of the KGB.” (Mathias Rust). At the time, many of the citizens of Russia were extremely fearful of the Russian Intelligence and spy service. The Russian KGB was important in maintaining and enforcing obedience in the satellite states of the Soviet Union because of their intelligence gathering and propaganda campaigns in the Soviet block. During the Cold War the KGB’s role was to monitor public and private opinion, internal espionage and detect revolutionary plots in the Soviet Bloc. They were also involved in seeking army intelligence and military plans. Some examples in which their intelligence operations were successful include …show more content…

They also participated in the kidnappings and assassinations of state leaders or political dissenters. These people were either sent to the gulags or the state run psychiatric hospitals. The KGB is set up as a mix of legal and illegal residencies in their target countries. Legal residencies operated in the local embassy and under the protection of diplomatic immunity. Illegal residencies operated without detection but didn’t have immunity. The KGB recruited new recruits through blackmail and bribes for the illegal residencies. The legal residencies were organized into four categories: political, economic, military strategic intelligence and disinformation, which were active measures, counterintelligence and security, scientific and technological intelligence. Illegal residencies were generally left to gather information and feed it to a specific person without a chain of command. During the Cold War the KGB also looked to produce anti-western propaganda to keep their control over the masses. This campaign was supposedly against “ideological subversion” by the western countries. The campaign was targeted towards anti-communist political and religious ideas and key leaders of those ideals. This was framed as a national security issue for it was to discourage the influence of foreign powers. Key leaders of the USSR at the time either lessened the oppression or imposed stricter measures while they were in power.

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