KGB: Masters of the Soviet Union

New York: Hippocrene Books, [1990]. First? Edition. First? Printing. Hardcover. very good/very good. 24 cm,xxiv, 466, [4] pages, footnotes, charts, notes, bibliography, index, pencil erasure residue on front endpaper. Peter Deriabin (1921-1992) was a Russian Communist Party member, World War II veteran, SMERSH agent, and KGB agent who later defected to the United States. He started working for the Central Intelligence Agency, went to graduate school, and wrote several books on the KGB. He died in 1992 at age 71. He was a member of the Communist Party. He went to Biysk Teachers College as well as the Institute for Marxism-Leninism. In World War II he was wounded four times and reassigned to the Soviet Navy's SMERSH (military counterintelligence group). He was later an investigator in State Security. He eventually moved up to the KGB headquarters. In 1953 he was stationed in Vienna, Austria as Chief of Soviet Counterintelligence as well as Communist Party boss for the entire Austro-German section. In 1954 he defected to the United States. In retaliation, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR gave him a death sentence. He testified before the Senate and the HUAC in 1959, and co-wrote a book about his time in the KGB. He also went to graduate school at the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia. He also joined the CIA. Deriabin retired from the CIA in 1981. Focuses on the dominant role of the KGB within the Soviet Union.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 constituted 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. 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.