I was cleaning out and rearranging things downstairs a few weeks ago and I ran across some memorabilia that I hadn’t forgotten about, but haven’t thought about for a long time. There’s a story behind them that I can’t tell and even if I could, I wouldn’t be comfortable talking about it.
Anyhow, the objects were various things like coffee and beer mugs, belt buckles, etc. with the KGB logo or symbol on them. I realize that not everyone is as old as I am, so for the younger readers — KGB stands for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, or Committee for State Security, an organization of the old Soviet Union. The KGB was a military service and it operated under army laws and regulations. It had several main functions: foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, the exposure and investigation of political and economic crimes committed by Soviet citizens, guarding the leaders of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and Soviet Government, organization and security of government communications, protecting Soviet borders, and thwarting nationalist, dissident, religious, and anti-Soviet activities. The organization existed form March 13, 1954 to December 3, 1991. When the Soviet Union ceased to exist, so did the KGB.
The Soviet Union’s KGB and the United States’ CIA are intelligence agencies synonymous with the Cold War. They were often viewed as being pitted against one another — each agency sought to protect its status and maintain its dominance in its own sphere of influence. The question of who was better, the KGB or CIA, is difficult, probably impossible, to answer objectively.
There’s an old expression that you should “keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” In some instances, that’s exactly what the two organizations did — and a major reason that I wound up with the memorabilia I mentioned above.
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