Federal security service, the FSB

Official site

Director - Alexander Bortnikov

• Structure

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin’s first challenge was to place the KGB behemoth under his thumb. His liberals decided to weaken its superstructure by splitting it into smaller independent agencies, American-style. Yeltsin liked checks and balances, and he retained control by instigating intrigues within the splintered intelligence community.

The largest fragment of the KGB was turned into that was later to be known as the Federal Security Service. But firstly the new secret service was pruned to resemble something similar to Britain’s MI5. It was not a coincidence that firstly the FSB was named the FSK where K meant Kontrrazvedka – counter-intelligence. Only in 1995 was the FSK renamed the FSB, replacing Kontrrazvedka with much wider term Bezopasnost - security.

In December 2000, then FSB director Nikolai Patrushev gave his traditional interview to mark the holiday celebrating the founding of the CheKa, the Bolshevik secret police. Patrushev described the FSB’s personnel as follows:

I don’t want to give a fancy speech, but our best colleagues, the honor and pride of the FSB, don’t do their work for the money. When I give government awards to our people, I scrutinize their faces. There are the highbrow intellectual analysts, the broad-shouldered, weatherbeaten special forces men, the taciturn explosives specialists, exacting investigators, and the discreet counter-espionage operational officers. . . . They all look different, but there is one very special characteristic that unites all these people, and it is a very important quality: It is their sense of service. They are, if you like, our new “nobility.”

History of FSB

Regional bureaus

Personnel

Documents approved by FSB

Mass media