... the Berezovskys, Putin's parents were of humble origin, with scant education. In 1975, following his graduation from law school, Putin was formally admitted to the KGB, reportedly because of his good grades. After completing six months' training at a KGB counterintelligence school, he became a full-fledged...

...This chapter begins by looking at the Soviet collapse and the demise of the KGB, which came as an unpleasant shock for Vladimir Putin, who was appointed as chairman of the newly formed City Committee for Foreign Economic Relations. When it became clear that Boris Yeltsin, a former party apparatchik...

.... They also warned that they should be careful about what they said indoors because the KGB tapped their phones and bugged their apartments. The author then compares the experience of entering the Soviet Union to his Communist Yugoslavia childhood. The big story that summer of 1968 was that the Soviet Union...

... to send Richter to the West—a clear proof of the notorious KGB security control over international tours. Exploring the relationship between touring and making collaborative recordings also suggests that the transimperial tours further facilitated the global standardization of orchestral sound. Oistrakh...

... and material incentives for better performance. The author's stories detailed how Andropov set about replacing Leonid Brezhnev's bloated secretariat with aides from the KGB, moved KGB personnel into political jobs, and sent many of the old guard into retirement. The main obstacle was that although Andropov...

..., Grigorenko wanted to talk. Dissent for him, as for others, was directly linked to the suppression of the liberal Czech regime. The Soviet intervention had been followed by massive repression within the Soviet Union. As the two journalists left Grigorenko's apartment, several plainclothes KGB men pushed them...