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The KGB, an initialism for ''Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti'' (, translated in English as Committee for State Security), was the main security agency for the Soviet Union from 1954 until its break-up in 1991. Formed in 1954, as a direct successor of such preceding agencies as the Cheka, NKGB, and MGB, the committee was attached to the Council of Ministers. It was the chief government agency of "union-republican jurisdiction", acting as internal security, intelligence, and secret police. Similar agencies were instated in each of the republics of the Soviet Union aside from Russia and consisted of many ministries, state committees, and state commissions. The KGB was a military service and was governed by army laws and regulations, similar to the Soviet Army or MVD Internal Troops. While most of the KGB archives remain classified, two online documentary sources are available.〔(Yale.edu ), The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov, Joshua Rubenstein and Alexander Gribanov eds., in Russian and English.〕〔(JHU.edu ), archive of documents about Communist Party of the Soviet Union and KGB, collected by Vladimir Bukovsky.〕 Its main functions were foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, operative-investigatory activities, guarding the State Border of the USSR, guarding the leadership of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Soviet Government, organization and ensuring of government communications as well as combating nationalism, dissent, and anti-Soviet activities. After the dissolution of the USSR, the KGB was split into the Federal Security Service and the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation. After breaking away from the Republic of Georgia in the early 1990s with Russian help, the self-proclaimed Republic of South Ossetia established its own KGB (keeping this unreformed name). ==Mode of operation== A 1983 ''Time'' magazine article 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 ''persona non grata'' and expelled by the government of the target country. The ''illegal resident'' spied, unprotected by diplomatic immunity, and worked independently of Soviet diplomatic and trade missions, (''cf.'' the non-official cover CIA officer). In its early history, the KGB valued illegal spies more than legal spies, because illegal spies infiltrated their targets with greater ease. The KGB residency executed four types of espionage: (i) political, (ii) economic, (iii) military-strategic, and (iv) disinformation, effected with "active measures" (PR Line), counter-intelligence and security (KR Line), and scientific–technological intelligence (X Line); quotidian duties included SIGINT (RP Line) and illegal support (N Line).〔''The Sword and the Shield'' (1999) p. 38〕 The KGB classified its spies as ''agents'' (intelligence providers) and ''controllers'' (intelligence relayers). The false-identity or ''legend'' assumed by a USSR-born illegal spy was elaborate, using the life of either a "live double" (participant to the fabrications) or a "dead double" (whose identity is tailored to the spy). The agent then substantiated his or her ''legend'' by living it in a foreign country, before emigrating to the target country, thus the sending of US-bound illegal residents via the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, Canada. Tradecraft included stealing and photographing documents, code-names, contacts, targets, and dead letter boxes, and working as a "friend of the cause" or ''agents provocateur'', who would infiltrate the target group to sow dissension, influence policy, and arrange kidnappings and assassinations.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Soviet Use of Assassination and Kidnapping )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「KGB」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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