ABSTRACT
[The immense power of the KGB (Committee for State Security), the Soviet Secret Police, reaches into every nook and cranny of Soviet life, and its activities contrast with the pursuit of 'socialist legality' proclaimed after the revelations of Stalinist abuses at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956. Soviet dissenters have made a point of insisting on their legal rights, with occasional success, but whenever the issue or individual involved has been important to the KGB, the latter have not hesitated to use their power over the judiciary, or any other facet of Soviet life, to impose their will. Grigorenko calculates the sheer economic cost of keeping him under surveillance.]
