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Secret Police
Centuries of Spying
Russia has a long tradition of secret police. The Okhrana served the Czar, keeping watch over subversive groups. When the Bolsheviks seized power they created the Cheka, the group responsible for the Red Terror. As the Cheka grew and evolved, it was renamed and reorganized several times, emerging as the NKVD, the MGB and finally, in 1954, the infamous KGB. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, it has been renamed the Federal Security Service or FSB. |