Твоя жизнь на каждом ранге в КГБ

A detailed narrative of a KGB agent's life from childhood to high rank, revealing the realities of Soviet espionage and surveillance.

Key Takeaways

KGB work involved meticulous surveillance and psychological manipulation rather than overt violence.
Informants and agents were often recruited young and shaped by the political climate and personal circumstances.
The Soviet security system relied heavily on fear, secrecy, and a network of civilian informants.
Advancement in the KGB came with increased moral ambiguity and power over others' lives.
Major historical events deeply influenced the operations and internal dynamics of the KGB.

What the video covers

The video traces the life of a boy growing up in post-WWII Soviet Union, living in a communal apartment and witnessing the fear instilled by secret police.
At 18, the boy becomes a student at the Institute of Foreign Languages and is recruited as an informant, marking his entry into state security work.
He graduates and joins the newly formed KGB, learning the trade of surveillance and tailing targets without being noticed.
By age 26, he becomes an operative commissioner, managing informants and distinguishing valuable intelligence from false reports.
The narrative highlights the psychological and social impact of living under constant surveillance and the mechanisms of control used by the state.
The video illustrates the gradual rise through KGB ranks and the increasing responsibilities and moral complexities involved.
It shows the shift in tactics from harsh arrests to preventive measures and manipulation through money, vanity, fear, and conviction.
The story includes the use of dead drops and covert communication methods essential for espionage.
It touches on the political changes affecting the KGB, including internal purges and the impact of major events like the Chernobyl disaster.
The video ends with the protagonist reaching the top of the agency just as it begins to dissolve, symbolizing the end of an era.

Chapters

What is the main focus of the video 'Твоя жизнь на каждом ранге в КГБ'?

The video focuses on the life journey of a KGB agent from childhood through various ranks, illustrating the realities of Soviet espionage and surveillance.

How does the video describe the recruitment process into the KGB?

The video shows recruitment starting early, with the protagonist being approached as a student to report on peers, eventually leading to full KGB service after graduation.

What methods of surveillance and espionage are highlighted in the video?

The video highlights tailing techniques, use of dead drops, detailed observation without eye contact, and cultivating informants to gather intelligence.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

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Level one. A boy from a communal apartment. The year forty-five. The war ended in the spring, but the city still lives by wartime habits. Queues, blacked-out windows, German POWs clearing ruins on the next street; you are 12. You live in a communal

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apartment with five families: one hallway, one kitchen, kerosene stoves on the windowsill, and a queue for the bathroom in the mornings. Father didn't return. His photograph in a wooden frame stands on the dresser, and mother adjusts it every morning, even though

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the frame hasn't moved. Mother works at the factory in two shifts: bread with ration cards, potatoes from the market, kerosene in a canister you carry yourself. In the courtyard, you play war, and everyone wants to be a scout.

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A scout is someone who is alone among enemies and always comes out alive. In the movies, they show exactly that. A calm man in a foreign uniform, sitting at a table with enemies and outsmarting an entire headquarters. But there is

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another truth. And you see it at night. A car arrives for the neighbor from the third floor around 2 AM. Two men in plainclothes, polite, quiet. They take the neighbor away in a coat thrown over his underwear. In the morning, no one

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asks any questions. His wife comes out to the kitchen, puts the kettle on, and the other women look into their pots. A week later, other people move into their room. And the former tenants are never mentioned again. You remember the

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most important thing, something even a child can see. There are people whom everyone fears, and no one knows them by sight. They don't shout or threaten.

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They don't need to. In school, German comes easily to you. The teacher tells your mother that the boy has an ear for it and that the enemy's language will be needed in this country for a long time. You notice something else about

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yourself, too. You remember faces. You remember who was wearing what. You remember who left the entrance after whom. You don't yet know the name for such a profession. You only know that one day you want to be on the other

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side of that night call. Level two. The student who agreed. The year fifty-one. You are 18, and you have enrolled in the Institute of Foreign Languages.

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This is luck that doesn't strike twice. In your courtyard, boys go to the factory in trade school jackets, but you walk with a briefcase and read in German. These are times when you have to hold your tongue, even in the

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kitchen. At a meeting, they tear apart a student for retelling a joke. And the whole class raises their hands because not raising them is scarier. In November, a man in a gray suit, about forty, approaches you in the hallway,

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calls you by your first name and patronymic, and asks you to come in to talk. An empty classroom, two chairs, no papers on the table. He asks about your studies, about your mother, about the father who didn't return. And you

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realize he knows the answers in advance. Then he says a simple thing. The institute trains people who will go abroad. And someone needs to understand what these people are thinking now. You don’t have to do much. Just report

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occasionally on course conversations, who listens to what on the radio, and who is writing to whom. You can refuse, and he says so honestly. But you’ve already calculated in your head what happens next. No postgraduate studies, no references, no foreign assignments

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—that until retirement. You sign a non-disclosure agreement and choose a pseudonym. Twenty minutes ago you were 18, and now you have a second name. You write your first report by hand on a sheet of graph paper about a classmate

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who plays Western radio and retells what he heard in the dormitory. You write softly, without conclusions, trying not to drown anyone. A month later, your classmate is expelled, and you don’t know if it’s because of your note or not. In March of '53, the

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man who frightened the whole country dies. The city stands in queues, people are crushed in alleys, and your mother cries in the kitchen, even though her brother was taken away in '38. Then the tone changes. Yesterday's masters become enemies themselves. Some are put

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on trial, others are returned from the camps. And one day, your handler simply doesn't show up for a meeting. Instead, another one appears, younger, and asks: "Would you like to work for them for real after you graduate?" You say "Yes"

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before he even finishes speaking. Level Three: The Tail, 1955. You are 22, you have your diploma, and you join an agency that is only a year old. It was rebuilt after those events and named the Committee for State Security, or

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KGB for short. The leadership wants to show that things will be different now. By the law, without night-time cars, without the former scale. They give you a uniform, but you’ll almost never wear it. Your department wears whatever the street wears. They put you in

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external surveillance. On paper, it sounds boring. In reality, it’s 8 hours on your feet in any weather. You learn to walk, not to catch up, not to fall behind, to keep the person in sight through a shop window, a

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reflection in the glass, over someone else's shoulder. There are always several of you. One leads, two walk on parallel streets, and you rotate every few blocks so the subject doesn't get used to one face. You have two caps, a

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reversible coat, and a string bag, because a person with a string bag in this city is invisible. The main rule is simple: you cannot make eye contact.

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As soon as you look a person in the eye, they remember you, and you’re washed up on this job. You remember everything else: what time they left, where they stood, who they nodded to, which side they boarded the tram, what

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they left in the trash can. In the evening, you sit down to write your report, minute by minute. Two hours of walking turn into a page and a half, where every detail matters, because its true meaning won't be understood here.

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In winter, you stand in someone else's entryway, warming your hands on the radiator. In summer, you sit in a movie theater watching the same film for the fourth time in a row. One foreigner from the embassy eventually figures you

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out. He walks into a courtyard, exits on the other side, stops and waits for you to run past, then politely tips his hat. They tear you apart at the briefing for a whole hour. Your boss says, "He's a professional, and you'll

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become a professional when you stop rushing." In two years, you walk across half the city and learn the main trade of this job. You learned how to be a nobody before moving on. If you've watched up to this point, write in the

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comments whose path to show next. Like and subscribe so you don't miss new videos. Level four. Operative commissioner. Fifty-nine. You are 26.

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You have lieutenant's shoulder boards, a shared office, and a safe filled with folders of other people's lives. Now you don't follow people yourself. Now people are followed under your orders.

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You are assigned a district, a large hotel, an institute, and several nearby enterprises. Everything that happens there is your concern. The times are different. After the festival, there were many foreigners in the city.

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Students come to study from Africa and Asia. Young people listen to foreign music and tailor tight trousers for themselves. Your job is to know. For that, you need people, and you learn how to cultivate them. A maid on the

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floor, a doorman, a taxi driver at the stand, a waitress in a restaurant, a night watchman at a dorm. To each their own. Some need a bonus, some need their son to get into college, and some are just satisfied that a man in a nice

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suit is finally listening to them. You realize quite quickly that the country isn't held up by those who catch, but by those who tell. The reports flow in, and half of them are garbage. A neighbor reports her neighbor over a

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room, a husband reports his wife over a divorce, a coworker reports a colleague over a promotion. Your art is to distinguish. Out of ten papers, you file nine away in your desk, and that is just as much

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the rest. The policy is different now. Not to arrest, but to prevent. A person is summoned, and they are spoken to for an hour. And he leaves pale, but free, and never says anything out of turn again. You see that this works better

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than an arrest. One quiet, frightened person will scare 20 others around him, and there's no noise. Your first real case turns out to be with currency speculators. For six months, you track the chain from a hotel bar to an

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apartment where money is exchanged, and you take them all in one night. You are promoted to senior lieutenant and get a room, small, but your own, with your own door and your own kitchen. You arrive there in the evening, and for

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the first time in your life, there is no one behind the wall. Level five.

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Recruiter. Sixty-fourth. You are 31, and you are transferred to where real intelligence begins. Your job now is foreigners. Journalists, trade representatives, engineers at negotiations, military attachés, scientists at conferences. The task is defined in mundane terms. Find a person

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who will work for us, and make them want to do it themselves. First, the paperwork. A file is compiled on everyone. Habits, debts, family, illnesses, grievances. Who surpassed them at work, and who they hate back home. Then the approach. Never directly

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. A chance meeting at a chess club, a mutual friend, an invitation to go hunting, a conversation about children in a hotel hallway. There are only four levers, and they haven't changed for centuries: money, conviction, vanity, and fear. Money is fast, but weak.

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Conviction is reliable, but rare. Fear works instantly and breaks a person so thoroughly that they are of little use afterward. Your favorite lever is the fifth one, the one not in the textbook.

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People have a painful desire to be listened to attentively by someone. Your first recruitment: an engineer from a trade delegation who has debts at home and a boss who hasn't noticed him in 20 years. You don't ask him to

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betray anyone. You talk to him about his work for six months, show admiration, ask precise questions, and one day he brings you something you didn't even ask for. Money comes later and doesn't change anything anymore.

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The person had already agreed a long time ago, they just didn't know it yet.

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You process the sign-up, give him a pseudonym, and feel not joy, but fatigue, because you saw how quietly and simply it is done. In the fall, the power in the country changes again. One is removed, another is put in place. In

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the corridors, they whisper for a week or two. It doesn't affect your work in the slightest. Whatever name is at the top, the files are compiled just the same. And the approach is made just the same. You have finally become that very

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polite person who walks up in the hallway and calls you by your first name and patronymic. Level six.

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Undercover intelligence officer. Sixty-ninth. You are 36, and you receive your first long-term assignment . Western Europe. According to your documents, you are the second secretary of the embassy. You have a diplomatic passport, business cards, and the duty to appear at receptions. Your wife goes

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with you and understands everything. The children understand nothing. They were told that Dad works at the embassy . And that isn't even a lie. The first shock happens not at work, but in a store. It's winter, yet on the counter

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there are oranges, 10 types of sausage, and a line of three people. A factory worker has a car parked under his windows. You look at it longer than you should, and forbid yourself from thinking any further. By day, you are a

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diplomat. Diplomatic notes, visas, wine in glasses, conversations about cultural exchange. Your real work begins in the evening. Before every meeting, you spend three hours scrubbing your tracks. Bus, transfer, a store with two exits, a cafe by the window, walking through the park. And

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all that for seven minutes of conversation. You set up dead drops. A hollow brick in a garage wall, a gap under a park bench, a magnet under a ledge in a stranger's entryway. The drop signal is simple: a chalk mark on

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a lamppost or a curtain left partially drawn. Communication with headquarters is encrypted. You sit over code tables at night, and one wrong letter turns your message into nonsense. Your biggest fear is not the local counter-intelligence, but your own

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people. Any meeting could be a setup. Any well-wisher might be a foreign officer, and any one of your own staff might be someone who will stay here forever tomorrow. You live two lives at once. At a reception, you smile at the

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ambassador's wife while memorizing who is talking to whom for too long. After four years, you return home with an order, an excellent performance review, and a thought for which you yourself would have once reported someone else.

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Level seven. Resident. Seventy-five. You are 42 and they are sending you back, but this time as the master. A resident is the person responsible for all operations in a foreign country.

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Under you are officers, agents, a code clerk, the cash box, and a direct line to headquarters. On the outside, you are an embassy advisor. On the inside, you know more about your diplomats than their own wives do. It is the era of

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détente; at the top, they are signing papers on trust and cooperation, but your workload doubles, because open doors are the best time for espionage.

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A plan comes from headquarters. Yes, intelligence has a quota, just like a factory. So many recruitments, so many reports, so many technical and scientific documents per year. The hardest part of your job is not foreign counter-intelligence, but your own

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headquarters. They want confirmation of what they already believe. You write that no one is planning to attack you.

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They reply that you are underperforming and not looking hard enough. You learn to write in a way that preserves the truth without provoking anger in your report. It is a unique art, and it corrupts a person more than any

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surveillance. One of your officers fails to show up for work one day. A day later, he is on foreign television, saying all the right words about freedom into the microphone. You sit in your office all night counting your

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losses. He knew fifteen of your people, and you have to save them all right now . You dismantle the network in three days. You exfiltrate some, and tell others to go to ground for years. Some agents are lost forever. A commission

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flies in from Moscow. You are being vetted by your own people, politely and thoroughly. And for the first time in your life, you are sitting on the other side of the table. You aren't punished because you saved the network, but the

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bitter taste remains for life. You've realized the true price of this profession. You aren't judged by what you've done, but by who you failed to keep by your side. Eighth level. Head of department. Nineteen eighty. You are 47. You're a colonel, and they're

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bringing you back to Moscow for a big office. It’s a difficult year. In winter, Afghanistan began. In summer, the city hosts the Olympics. And before that, the capital is quietly cleared of everyone deemed unnecessary. Your department doesn't deal with foreign

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spies; it deals with its own citizens. You have thousands of agents across the country watching writers, scientists, priests, and students. Workers who signed a letter they were told to sign.

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You read reports from morning until night. Who said what in the kitchen, who typed up a book, who handed a manuscript to a foreign acquaintance.

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The tool now is not arrest, but " prevention." A person is called in and told they'll be fired, their wife will be let go, and their son's future will be blocked. And usually, that’s enough. If it isn't, there are other

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methods. Dismissal, exile abroad with no right to return, doctors who provide the necessary diagnosis. You sign papers without ever seeing these people . That is a new degree of power. Your signature changes someone's life while you sit there drinking tea. Sometimes

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you read what they write and admit to yourself that it’s powerful and, in many ways, fair. In your report, you write the exact opposite, because the report goes up, and the top expects words about hostile influence. At home,

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your grown son asks over dinner, "What do you actually do?" You answer that you protect the state, and he silently leaves for his room. Coffins are arriving from Afghanistan. In the documents, they are called "cargo." And you know the real toll, which the

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country does not know. You have a dacha , a car with a driver, a private clinic , and a line of people waiting for your signature. And for the first time, you catch yourself counting the evenings left until retirement. Ninth level.

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Deputy Chairman, nineteen eighty-six. You are 53. You are a general and one of the deputy chairmen of the KGB.

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There is a new leader at the top, young by local standards, and he says words never spoken here before. Perestroika, acceleration, glasnost. You sit in meetings where it is decided exactly what should be considered a threat. Now , that is your job. In April, at night,

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the reactor explodes. Your people report the scale of it among the very first. The country is informed several days later, after the holiday processions have already passed. You participate in how the news is presented, and for a long time after,

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you remember the children with flags at that demonstration. Glasnost is unfolding faster than anyone expected.

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Newspapers start writing about the year thirty-seven, about the camps, about the execution lists. Archives are opened in pieces, and a grim joke goes around your corridors that they'll reach our files soon. People whom your former department broke for years are

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being released and shown on TV. One of them gives an interview, and you recognize the case file you signed yourself. You report to the top what your analysts are seeing. Republics are leaving, the economy has stalled, allies in Europe will hold on for a

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year or two. They tell you that you are painting things too darkly. Six months later, everything comes true exactly, and no one mentions it. You aren't catching spies anymore. You sit in an office where they decide who is an

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enemy, and more and more often, you find no answer. Old colleagues in the service say among themselves that the country is being sold out and that eventually they'll have to intervene.

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You listen and do not object. For 40 years you learned to understand which way the system was turning, and for the first time, you don't. In the autumn, they offer you the very top position.

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The tenth floor, Chairman of the KGB, ninety-one. You are 58, and you get an office above which there is nothing else in this building. Under you are intelligence, counterintelligence, border troops, government communications, state leadership protection, and an archive of millions

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of files. From your window, you can see the square and the monument to the man with whom it all began. You look at it every morning. Meanwhile, the country is falling apart before your eyes.

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Empty shelves, strikes. Republics one after another announce that they are living on their own. In August, 3 days arrive when you have to choose a side.

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Some of your comrades decide to save the union by force. Tanks enter the city, and you are asked: "Whose side are you on?" You order your men to stay in the barracks. Not out of bravery, but because you've been calculating

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outcomes for 40 years and you see that this one is lost in advance. On the third day, it all ends. By evening, a crowd comes to the square, a crane drives up, and the monument is removed right before your eyes. You stand at

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the window and watch the pedestal become empty. No one from the building goes outside. What follows happens quickly. The agency is cut into pieces.

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Intelligence separately, security separately, communications separately. People are fired by the thousands. Your subordinates carry out documents in bags, and some are already negotiating future jobs with those whom you were still leading down the street just yesterday. In December, one flag is

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lowered and another is raised. The country you served for 40 years is no longer on the map. You sign the final order, hand over your seal, weapon, and keys, and walk out through the checkpoint, where you are checked by

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your pass for the last time. There is no car waiting at the entrance anymore.

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You walk on foot and for the first time in many years do not look back, because there is no one left to follow you.

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Your feet carry you on their own to your old courtyard. The house is still there, and there is a light on in those very windows. You look up and remember the boy who watched from the dark at the night car and wanted to be on the

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other side of fear. He reached the very top of the stairs. Exactly on the day they took the stairs down. y

Topics:KGBSoviet UnionespionagesurveillanceCold WarSoviet historyintelligence agencystate securityspycraftpost-WWII USSR

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