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The KGB
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Country of Origin
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Motto
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The Sword and the Shield
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Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti KGB, (Комитет государственной безопасности) Committee for State Security , 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. Then, the official name of this organization was changed to FSB (ФСБ, Федеральная служба безопасности), although the word KGB may apply to the secret police of various epochs.
The KGB's operational domain encompassed functions and powers like those exercised by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the counter-intelligence (internal security) division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Security Agency, the Federal Protective Service, and the Secret Service in the United States, or by the twin organizations MI5 and Secret Intelligence Service (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.