Talk:Vladimir Putin/KGB

KGB career
In 1975, Putin joined the KGB, and trained at the 401st KGB school in Okhta, Leningrad.

He then worked in the Second Chief Directorate (counter-intelligence), before he was transferred to the First Chief Directorate, where among he monitored foreigners and consular officials in Leningrad.

From 1985 to 1990, Putin served in Dresden, East Germany, using a cover identity as a translator.

According to his official biography, during the Fall of the Berlin Wall, he burned KGB files to prevent demonstrators from obtaining them.

After the collapse of the communist East German government, Putin returned to Leningrad, where in June 1991, he worked with the International Affairs section of Leningrad State University, reporting to Vice-Rector Yuriy Molchanov. There he looked for new KGB recruits, and watched the student body. There he renewed his friendship with his former professor, Anatoly Sobchak, then mayor of Leningrad.

Putin resigned with the rank of lieutenant colonel on 20 August 1991, on the second day of the KGB-supported abortive putsch against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Putin said: "As soon as the coup began, I immediately decided which side I was on", although he also noted that the choice was hard because he had spent the best part of his life with "the organs". In 1999, he described communism as "a blind alley, far away from the mainstream of civilization".