The Kgb Essay Example

The KGB Throughout the years most country's governments have established some sort of secret police. No matter what the government called it, whether it is the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or her Majesty's secret service (MI6), whatever name the government used, the international term of "secret police" could always be applied. Many agencies of secret police have had their success and failures, some more than others. The KGB, which in English means "the Committee of Public Safety," has had their share of both successes and failures. Most secret police agencies have been used primarily to obtain information from other countries. This was also a primary goal for the KGB, but one of their other goals, which was just as important, was to keep unwanted outside information from the Russian people. This was only one out of many the KGB's objectives. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to prove that the actions of the KGB were, all in all, a success. The currently named KGB was founded by Feliks Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky in 1917 under the name of the "Cheka." This Cheka was the name of Russia's first secret police after the rule of the Tsar's. The full name of these secret police was "All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution, Sabotage and Speculation" (Deriabin, KGB: Masters of the Soviet Union XI). The Cheka would eventually evolve into the KGB in 1954. However, between the years of 1917 and 1954 the KGB was given a variety of different names. Next in line, after the Cheka, was the OGPU. This lasted from 1926 to 1934 and was headed by Vyacheslav Rudolfovich Menzhinsky. In 1934 it became the NKVD which lasted until 1941 when it was named the NKGB. The NKGB only lasted seven months until it was renamed has the NKVD and it kept that name for another two years. Through the years of 1943 and 1954 it was called the MGB until it finally adopted its final name, the KGB, which has laster to this day since 1954.