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
Ivan Agayants he had acquired in the 1930s. On his return to Moscow Agayants was appointed to head the Western European Department of what would become the KGB. After working on forgeries of memoirs sponsored by the Soviet secret police to further the leadership's political goals, and, as part of Operation Seat 12, helping to produce a play The Deputy that maligned Pius XII, he was appointed the first head of Department D (disinformation) of the KGB First Chief Directorate. In 1967 Agayants was appointed deputy head of the First Chief Directorate, but died on 12 May 1968. He is buried in