Brian J. Kelley, an American counterintelligence expert who helped focus attention on a possible Russian spy in Washington, only to be wrongly suspected of being a K.G.B. mole himself, died on Monday at his home in Vienna, Va. He was 68. Mr. Kelley appeared to have died in his sleep, his wife, Patricia, said. The cause is not known. Starting in the...
Victor Sebestyen is a Hungarian-born journalist and the author of ''Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire.'' London THE plot was hatched at a bathhouse in downtown Moscow. At midmorning on Saturday, Aug. 17, 1991, the head of the K.G.B., Vladimir A. Kryuchkov, summoned five senior Soviet officials for a highly secretive meeting that he...
Robert Zaretsky is a professor of history at the University of Houston, Honors College, and the author of ''Albert Camus: Elements of a Life.'' Houston HOW absurd. What better response to the news that, a half-century after Albert Camus's death, an Italian scholar claims that the car accident that took his life was not an accident at all, but...
KGB er en forkortelse for Komitet gosudarstvennoj besopasnosti, dvs. Komiteen for den statslige sikkerhed. Efter Berijas fald i 1953 betegnelse for Sovjetunionens hemmelige statspoliti.
KGB havde sin baggrund i det efter Oktoberrevolutionen i 1917 oprettede hemmelige politi Tjekaen, hvis officielle formål var bekæmpelse af kontrarevolution.
Tjekaen blev afløst i 1921 af GPU med organisationer i hver enkelt sovjetrepublik, men 1923-34 var det hemmelige politi atter centralt ledet (under organisationen OGPU), hvorefter det kom ind under folkekommissariatet for indre anliggender, NKVD, som skiftede navn i 1946 til KGB og under Berijas ledelse kom til at spille en vigtig rolle. I 1954 blev det underlagt en komité direkte under ministerrådet. Formanden havde status som minister for indre sikkerhed. Fold ud