Ministry of State Security (Soviet Union)

First Main Directorate was responsible for foreign intelligence. The First Main Directorate maintained surveillance over the "Soviet colony" (SK—Sovetskaya koloniya), i.e., the personnel of Soviet diplomatic, trade, technical, cultural, and other agencies functioning abroad. It also sought to infiltrate foreign governmental bodies, businesses, public organizations, sensitive industrial plants, cultural and educational institutions, etc., placing MGB agents in strategic posts for intelligence-gathering and possible covert action.[7] In 1947 the GRU (military intelligence) and MGB's 1st Main Directorate were combined into the recently created foreign intelligence agency, the Committee of Information (KI), under the control of Vyacheslav Molotov, in an attempt to streamline the intelligence needs of the State. In 1948, the military personnel in KI were returned to the GRU. KI sections dealing with the new East Bloc and Soviet émigrés were returned to the MGB later that year. In 1951, the KI returned to the MGB, as a First Main Directorate of the Ministry of State Security.[8]

The Second Main Directorate focused on domestic counterintelligence and acted as an internal security and political police force. The goal of this department was to combat foreign intelligence operations within the USSR and its territories. The Second Directorate worked mainly inside the country to combat foreign espionage and to study the forms and methods used by foreign intelligence services on the territory of the U.S.S.R. The work it did abroad aimed to organize operational-technical intelligence, i.e., the investigation of the forms, working methods and regulations of the intelligence, counterintelligence, and police and administrative organs of foreign countries.[9]

The Third Main Directorate was concerned with military counterintelligence. It carried out many of the same tasks as SMERSH, which it absorbed, as it conducted political surveillance of armed forces.[10] It relied heavily on the Army Special Section to ensure the loyalties of the soldiers and officers.[11] The MGB operatives were used to supervise personnel and daily action, as well as to carry out counterintelligence operations.

The Fifth Main Directorate evolved out of the Main Secret Political Administration. It was responsible for regulating and repressing real or imagined dissent within the party apparatus and Soviet society. This involved supervising almost every aspect of Soviet life, including the intelligentsia, bureaucracy, general administrative agencies, cultural organizations, educational institutions, and even the party apparatus itself. They investigated the political reliability of the entire population of the Soviet Union, with particular attention to the Party and Soviet apparatus, up to the highest leaders of the Party and government. They also secretly supervised the activity of the entire administrative and economic apparatus of the state and all scientific, public, church, and other organizations. The goal was to hunt down "deviations from the general line," "opposition leanings" within the party to ferret out and eliminate "bourgeois nationalism" in the Soviet satellites, i.e., anti-Soviet movements under the guise of nationalism.[12]

At the beginning of the MGB, the Fourth Directorate was designed as a proto-terrorist force to combat the anti-Soviet underground, nationalist formations, and hostile elements.[13] However, Viktor Abakumov dissolved this department in 1946, but kept the main players in a Special Service group so that they could continue with the same pattern of violence that the Fourth Directorate was known for. The group was also ultimately dissolved in 1949.[14] Upon the destruction of the Fourth Directorate as a terrorist group, the department was transitioned into Transportation Security. It was responsible for the preparation and security of mobilization and transport. The department was also responsible for counterintelligence and surveillance operations within their transport programs.[15]

This department was a short-lived organization designed to collect and process Signals Intelligence, or SIGINT. The department was initially composed of the NKGB’s 5th Directorate (responsible for wartime communications) and an independent cryptography department, the 2nd Special Department. However, this Directorate was competing with another better-funded communications organization, Department ‘R’, which specialized in radio counterintelligence. The 6th Directorate was dissolved in 1949, and its resources and personnel absorbed into the Special Services Department (GUSS), a cryptanalysis and information security branch of the Central Committee.[16]

Known as the ‘K’ Division, this organization supervised the economy and ran economic counterintelligence and industrial security. They were concerned with the implementation of security programs and requirements, as well as the supervision and monitoring of the workers, leading them to make extensive use of the Special Sections within the state and local organizations.[17]

Sometimes called the Seventh Directorate, this section was responsible for providing the tools, techniques, and manpower to accommodate the physical surveillance needs of the MGB. They offered facilities, devices, and methodology to help with the demands of the intelligence departments. They were able to do both outdoor (tailing) and photographic surveillance, as well as being able to tap phone lines, monitor conversations in other rooms through hidden microphones and covertly examining mail. They also had sections devoted to codes, cryptography, and ciphers.[18]

Otherwise known as the Guards Directorate, they were charged with the personal security of the top party officials. The Division provided personal security to members and alternates of the Presidium of the Central Committee, ministers of the U.S.S.R. and their deputies, secretaries of the Central Committee, and a number of high officeholders specifically listed. The Division was also responsible for guarding important agencies and installations of the secret police themselves.[19]

A number of the top officials from this department were implicated in the Doctors' Plot, showing the inherent mistrust and suspicion within the Soviet security apparatus.[20]