Russian State Security Agencies

Before it was disbanded in 1991, the KGB was a massive organization, employing over half a million uniformed officers as well as a network of millions of informers. A highly disciplined and militarized service, it controlled almost every aspect of life in the USSR and adhered with utmost loyalty to the Communist Party line, even across state borders. It was ultimately divided into several new organizations, including the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the Federal Protection Service (FSO) and the body considered the true KGB successor, the Federal Security Service (FSB).

To better understand the various State Security Agencies, I have tried to provide additional information and resource links below (listed alphabetically by acronym).

FSB The Federal Security Service (FSB - Federal'naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, previously known as Federal Counterintelligence Service - FSK) is the most powerful of the successors to the KGB. In the years since the fall of the Soviet Union, the FSB slowly took on the responsibilities of a number of agencies. Most recently, it absorbed FAPSI, the Russian equivalent of the United States' National Security Agency. The FSB's power is rooted in the influence of President Vladimir Putin, a former director, and a vast network of former officers that has permeated all sectors of Russian government and society.


FSO The Federal Protective Service (FSO - Federal'naya Sluzhba Okhrani) is one of the successors of the KGB, assuming functions of the Ninth Directorate which guarded the Kremlin and key offices of the CPSU. The FSO, headquartered in Block 14 in the Kremlin, supervises top-level government communications, operates and protects underground command centers, maintains the special underground train system that connects key government facilities in the Moscow area, and protects other strategic facilities, and executive aircraft and special trains.


SVR The Foreign Intelligence Service (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki) is the name of Russia's primary external intelligence agency. The SVR performs intelligence gathering operations abroad and also enters into anti-terrorist cooperation and intelligence-sharing arrangements with foreign intelligence agencies. The SVR also conducts counterproliferation operations, environmental intelligence gathering, and special counternarcotics intelligence operations. The service also provides analysis and dissemination of intelligence to Russian Federation policymakers. Unlike the FSB, which is an investigative-enforcement organization, the SVR is an intelligence organization and does not operate as a law enforcement agency.

Other Russian State Security Agencies can be researched at FAS Intelligence Resource Program, including the FAPSI, FBS, GRU, MBR, MVD, PSB, and SOUD.