Active reserve (KGB) officers with a military rank who worked undercover in the Soviet Union. "Trusted contacts" were high placed civilians who collaborated with the KGB without signing any official working agreements, such as directors of personnel departments at various institutions, academics, deans, or writers and actors. Informers were citizens secretly recruited by the KGB, sometimes using forceful recruitment methods, such as blackmail. The precise number of people from various categories remains unknown, but one of the estimates was 11 million "informers" in the Soviet Union, or one out of every eighteen adult citizens The active reserve was established by Yuri Andropov in
KGB the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation. After breaking away from Georgia in the early 1990s with Russian help, the self-proclaimed Republic of South Ossetia established its own KGB (keeping this unreformed name). A "Time" magazine article in 1983 reported that the KGB was the world's most effective information-gathering organization. It operated legal and illegal espionage residencies in target countries where a "legal resident" gathered intelligence while based at the Soviet embassy or consulate, and, if caught, was protected from prosecution by diplomatic immunity. At best, the compromised spy was either returned to the Soviet Union or was declared