II.

Functions

The Soviet leadership needed an extensive security and intelligence system in order to ensure the political loyalty of the population at home and to promote its goals as a superpower abroad. The KGB’s domestic functions included closely monitoring the Soviet people and suppressing expressions of political discontent. The KGB was also responsible for guarding Soviet borders, protecting party and government leaders, and enforcing security in the Soviet armed forces.

The KGB relied on a vast network of secret informers and a sophisticated surveillance technology to carry out its domestic mission. Authorized by law to conduct investigations of people suspected of anti-Soviet behaviour, the KGB sent hundreds of so-called dissidents off to forced labour camps (see Gulag). In some cases the KGB avoided court trials by simply having people declared insane and committed to psychiatric hospitals.

The KGB had the largest and most active foreign intelligence apparatus in the world. Its primary mission was to further Soviet foreign policy goals by gathering secret political, military, and technological information abroad and by conducting propaganda and disinformation campaigns, directed mainly against the West. In carrying out its operations the KGB relied heavily on the intelligence services of Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe.