|
Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU)
Main Intelligence Directorate ( rus, Главное разведывательное управление, Glavnoye razvedyvatel'noye upravleniye, ˈglavnəjə rɐzˈvʲɛdɨvətʲɪlʲnəjə ʊprɐˈvlʲenʲɪjə), abbreviated GRU ( rus, ГРУ, p=ɡɨ̞‿rɨ̞‿ˈu, ), was the foreign military intelligence agency of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces until 1991. For a few months it was also the foreign military intelligence agency of the newly established Russian Federation until 7 May 1992 when it was dissolved and the GRU (Russian Federation), Russian GRU took over its activities. History The GRU's first predecessor in Russia formed on October 21, 1918 by secret order under the sponsorship of Leon Trotsky (then the civilian leader of the Red Army), signed by Jukums Vācietis, the first commander-in-chief of the Red Army (RKKA), and by Ephraim Sklyansky, deputy to Trotsky; it was originally known as the Registration Directorate (''Registrupravlenie'', or RU). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
GRU (Russian Federation)
The Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, formerly the Main Intelligence Directorate,; and still commonly known by its previous abbreviation GRU,; is the foreign military intelligence agency of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Armed Forces of the Russia, Russian Federation. The GRU controls the military intelligence service and maintains Spetsnaz GRU, its own special forces units. Unlike Russia's other Intelligence agencies of Russia, security and intelligence agenciessuch as the Foreign Intelligence Service (Russia), Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the Federal Security Service (FSB), and the Federal Protective Service (Russia), Federal Protective Service (FSO)whose heads report directly to the president of Russia (see Intelligence agencies of Russia), the director of the GRU is subordinate to the Russian military command, reporting to the Minister of De ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
State Defense Committee
The State Defense Committee () was an extraordinary organ of state power in the Soviet Union during the German-Soviet War, also called the Great Patriotic War, with complete state power in the country. General scope The Soviets set up the GKO on 30 June 1941, a week after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, by a joint decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, the Council of People's Commissars (''Sovnarkom''), and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The war situation at the front lines required a more centralized form of government. The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, however, continued unsuspended. On 18 June 1942, over a thousand members attended the 9th session of the Supreme Soviet in Moscow. Geoffrey Roberts described the GKO as "a sort of war cabinet". Composition The initial composition of the committee was such: * Chairman – Joseph Stalin * Deputy Chairman – Vyacheslav Molotov * M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eastern Bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc (Combloc), the Socialist Bloc, the Workers Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was an unofficial coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were aligned with the Soviet Union and existed during the Cold War (1947–1991). These states followed the ideology of Marxism–Leninism, in opposition to the Capitalism, capitalist Western Bloc. The Eastern Bloc was often called the "Second World", whereas the term "First World" referred to the Western Bloc and "Third World" referred to the Non-Aligned Movement, non-aligned countries that were mainly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America but notably also included former Tito–Stalin split, pre-1948 Soviet ally Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia, which was located in Europe. In Western Europe, the term Eastern Bloc generally referred to the USSR and Central and Eastern European countries in the Comecon (East Germany, Polish Peo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lourdes SIGINT Station
The Lourdes SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) facility, located near Havana, Cuba, was the largest facility of its kind operated by Soviet and later Russian foreign intelligence services outside of Russia. Located less than from Key West, the facility covered . Construction began in July 1962. The station purportedly closed in August 2002. All station facilities were shut down, the buildings were abandoned and later reconstructed to become the University of Information Science. At its peak during the Cold War over 1,500 KGB, GRU, Cuban DGI, and Eastern Bloc technicians, engineers and intelligence operatives staffed the facility. The base closed in 2002. Russia had paid Cuba a $200 million annual subsidy from 1962 to 2002. In July 2014 reports surfaced that Russia and Cuba had agreed to reopen the facility for usage by Russian intelligence. In popular culture * The station was a key plot device in the August 28, 2012 episode of the USA television network series ''Covert Affairs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Signals Intelligence
Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is the act and field of intelligence-gathering by interception of ''signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication (electronic intelligence—abbreviated to ELINT). As classified and sensitive information is usually encrypted, signals intelligence may necessarily involve cryptanalysis (to decipher the messages). Traffic analysis—the study of who is signaling to whom and in what quantity—is also used to integrate information, and it may complement cryptanalysis. History Origins Electronic interceptions appeared as early as 1900, during the Boer War of 1899–1902. The British Royal Navy had installed wireless sets produced by Marconi on board their ships in the late 1890s, and the British Army used some limited wireless signalling. The Boers captured some wireless sets and used them to make vital transmissions. Since the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Resident Spy
A resident spy in the world of espionage is an agent operating within a foreign country for extended periods of time. A base of operations within a foreign country with which a resident spy may liaise is known as a "station" in English and a (, 'residency') in Russian. What the U.S. would call a " station chief", the head spy, is known as a () in Russian. Types of resident spies In the Soviet Union nomenclature, there are two types of resident spies: ' (, legal resident spy) and ' (, illegal resident spy). In U.S. parlance, the same distinction is between " official cover" and " non-official cover". A legal resident spy operates in a foreign country under official cover (such as from their country's embassy). They are an official member of the consular staff, such as a commercial, cultural, or military attaché. They have diplomatic immunity from prosecution and cannot be arrested by the host country if suspected of espionage. The host country can expel such a person, requiring ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RIA Novosti
RIA Novosti (), sometimes referred to as RIAN () or RIA (), is a Russian state-owned domestic news agency. On 9 December 2013, by a decree of Vladimir Putin, it was liquidated and its assets and workforce were transferred to the newly created Rossiya Segodnya agency. On 8 April 2014, RIA Novosti was registered as part of the new agency. RIA Novosti is headquartered in Moscow. The chief editor is Anna Gavrilova. Content RIA Novosti was scheduled to be closed down in 2014; starting in March 2014, staff were informed that they had the option of transferring their contracts to Rossiya Segodnya or sign a redundancy contract. On 10 November 2014, Rossiya Segodnya launched the Sputnik multimedia platform as the international replacement of RIA Novosti and Voice of Russia. Within Russia itself, however, Rossiya Segodnya continues to operate its Russian language news service under the name RIA Novosti with itria.ruwebsite. The agency published news and analyses of social-politic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along a front, with the main goal of capturing territory up to a line between Arkhangelsk and Astrakhan, known as the A-A line. The attack became the largest and costliest military offensive in history, with around 10 million combatants taking part in the opening phase and over 8 million casualties by the end of the operation on 5 December 1941. It marked a major escalation of World War II, opened the Eastern Front—the largest and deadliest land war in history—and brought the Soviet Union into the Allied powers. The operation, code-named after the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa ("red beard"), put into action Nazi Germany's ideological goals of eradicating communism and conquering the western Soviet Union to repopulate it w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Purge
The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of Sergei Kirov by Leonid Nikolaev in 1934, Joseph Stalin launched a series of show trials known as the Moscow trials to remove suspected party dissenters from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, especially those aligned with the Bolsheviks, Bolshevik party. The term "great purge" was popularized by the historian Robert Conquest in his 1968 book ''The Great Terror (book), The Great Terror'', whose title was an allusion to the French Revolution's Reign of Terror. The purges were largely conducted by the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), which functioned as the Ministry of home affairs, interior ministry and secret police of the USSR. Starting in 1936, the NKVD under chief Genrikh Yagoda began the removal of the central pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1922 to 1952 and as the fourth Premier of the Soviet Union, premier from 1941 until his death. He initially governed as part of a Collective leadership in the Soviet Union, collective leadership, but Joseph Stalin's rise to power, consolidated power to become an absolute dictator by the 1930s. Stalin codified the party's official interpretation of Marxism as Marxism–Leninism, while the totalitarian political system he created is known as Stalinism. Born into a poor Georgian family in Gori, Georgia, Gori, Russian Empire, Stalin attended the Tiflis Theological Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He raised f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latvian Operation Of The NKVD
The ''Latvian Operation'' (, ) was a national operation of the NKVD against ethnic Latvians, Latvian nationals and persons otherwise affiliated with Latvia and/or Latvians in the Soviet Union from 1937 to 1938 during the period of the Great Purge. Latvians in the Soviet Union until 1936 More than 372 Latvian peasant colonies originating from the 19th century following the abolition of serfdom existed near St. Petersburg, Novgorod and in Siberia. As the Eastern Front was approaching Courland in the First World War, extensive forced evacuations were carried out, so that the number of Latvians living in Russia doubled to nearly 500,000. Many of the Latvian Riflemen were early supporters of the Bolsheviks in 1917. With the end of the First World War and the Russian Civil War, many of the refugees were able to return to independent Latvia. The Latvian–Soviet Peace Treaty provided explicitly for the repatriation of former Latvian riflemen and refugees. According to the 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cheka
The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə, links=yes), abbreviated as VChK ( rus, ВЧК, p=vɛ tɕe ˈka), and commonly known as the Cheka ( rus, ЧК, p=tɕɪˈka), was the first Soviet secret police organization. It was established on by the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian SFSR, and was led by Felix Dzerzhinsky. By the end of the Russian Civil War in 1921, the Cheka had at least 200,000 personnel. Ostensibly created to protect the October Revolution from "class enemies" such as the bourgeoisie and members of the clergy, the Cheka soon became a tool of repression wielded against all political opponents of the Bolshevik regime. The organization had responsibility for counterintelligence, oversight of the loyalty of the Red Army, and protection of the country's borders, as well ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
