Portal:History/Featured article/December, 2008

KGB (transliteration of "КГБ") is the Russian abbreviation of Committee for State Security (Komityet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosty), which was the official name of the umbrella organization serving as the Soviet Union's premier security agency, secret police, and intelligence agency, from 1954 to 1991. The name of the largest of the Russian successors to the KGB is the FSB (ФСБ, Федеральная служба безопасности; Federalnaya Slujba Bezopasnosty; English: Federal Security Service).

The KGB's function was illustrated by its official emblem: bearing both shield and sword, the KGB was an organization with a military hierarchy aimed at providing national defense, specifically the defence of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). It was similar in function to the United States' CIA, with additional tasks of counter-espionage and national FBI, or by the twin organizations MI5 and MI6 in the United Kingdom.

On December 21, 1995, the President of Russia Boris Yeltsin signed the decree that disbanded the KGB, which was then substituted by the FSB, the current domestic state security agency of the Russian Federation.

In Belarus, a former Soviet republic, the official Russian name of the State Security Agency remains "KGB".

The term is also sometimes used figuratively in the Western press to refer to the current FSB committee after the 1991 renaming due to its recognition and public perception.

Most of the information about the KGB remains secret, although there are two sources of documents of KGB available online.