ABSTRACT
The Soviet institution that holds perhaps the most fascination for Westerners is the infamous KGB—the Committee for State Security, a Soviet combination of our FBI and CIA under one roof. The origin of that organization goes back to the beginnings of the revolution. On December 20, 1917, only a few weeks after the Bolshevik victory, an Extraordinary Commission for the Suppression of Counterrevolution, known by its Russian initials as the "Cheka," was created. A good picture of the activities of the KGB and its predecessors can be derived from the list of major mass deportations conducted by the state security organs. KGB types have also evolved. Originally, some Cheka agents were revolutionary idealists; others were uneducated brutes using "Red terror" as a way of self-affirmation. With time, both types either died out or were purged. Those who remained adapted themselves and became regular bureaucrats, while numbers of simple opportunists joined their ranks.
