KGB is the Russian-language acronym for State Security Committee, Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti).\n\nFrom March 13, 1954 to November 6, 1991 KGB was the umbrella organisation name for:\n\n    * the principal Soviet security agency;\n\n    * the principal intelligence agency;\n\n    * the principal secret police agency.\n\nRoughly, the KGB's operational domain encompassed functions and powers like those exercised by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the counterintelligence (internal security) division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Federal Protective Service, and the Secret Service.\n\nIn March 1953, Lavrenty Beria consolidated the MVD and the MGB into one body--the MVD; within a year, Beria was executed and MVD was split. The re-formed MVD retained its police and law enforcement powers, while the second, new agency, KGB, assumed internal and external security functions, and was subordinate to the Council of Ministers. On July 5, 1978 the KGB was re-christened as the "KGB of the Soviet Union", with its chairman holding a ministerial council seat.\n\nThe KGB was dissolved when its chief, Colonel-General Vladimir Kryuchkov, used the KGB's resources in aid of the August 1991 coup attempt to overthrow Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. On August 23, 1991 Colonel-General Kryuchkov was arrested, and General Vadim Bakatin was appointed KGB Chairman--and mandated to dissolve the KGB of the Soviet Union. On November 6, 1991, the KGB officially ceased existing, though its successor national state security organisation, the Russian Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti (FSB), is functionally much like the Soviet KGB.\n\nBelarus is the only post-Soviet Union era country where the successor state security organization continues to be known as KGB. Belarus is also the birthplace of Felix Dzerzhinsky, one of the founders of the KGB.\nFelix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky\nFelix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky\n\nTasks and organization\n\nIts tasked responsibilities were external espionage, counter-espionage, the liquidation of anti-Soviet and counter-revolutionary organisations within the Soviet Union, guarding the national borders, guarding the Communist Party and State leaders, and critical state property. Also, it investigated and prosecuted thieves of State and socialist property and white collar criminals. Unlike Western intelligence agencies, the KGB (theoretically) was uninterested in learning the enemy's intentions--only their capabilities; intentions were political decisions based upon Marxist theory.\n\nIn espionage, the KGB mostly relied on human intelligence (HUMINT), unlike their Western counterparts, who relied more on technology--imagery intelligence (IMINT) and signals intelligence (SIGINT). Using ideological attraction, the Soviets successfully recruited many high-level spies. Most notable are the KGB successes in gathering US atomic secrets, and, in the UK, the Cambridge Five, especially Kim Philby of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). Ideological recruitment abroad was nearly impossible after the Soviet Union crushed the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Instead, KGB was forced to rely upon blackmail and bribery to control most of its defectors. Still, this achieved notable successes, such as CIA mole Aldrich Ames and FBI mole Robert Hanssen, but fewer than in earlier decades.\n\nParalleling developments at MI5 and the CIA, the KGB had, before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, commercialized its advanced technologies for business applications. Artificial intelligence software which was formerly used to sort and filter signals intelligence has become available through companies such as Autonomy (an MI5 spin-off) and InfoTame (ex-KGB technologists).\n\nNotable KGB operations\nNKVD Headquarters on Lubyanka Square were designed by Aleksey Schusev.\nEnlarge\nNKVD Headquarters on Lubyanka Square were designed by Aleksey Schusev.\n\nDuring the 1945-1991 Cold War, the KGB of the Sov