Big Brother wrote:
So what do the KGB stand for these days?
Комитет государственной безопасности (Committee for State Security)
Who the KBG answerable too?
As I was passing through, noticed this question. They are actually called the FSB nowadays: the KGB was formally disbanded when the USSR dissolved. Nominally, under the control of the Justice Ministry, however the real power in Russia is shared by a Troika of the political classes, the oligarchs (industrialists) & the FSB/military. Power-shifts within and among these groups explains a lot of what goes on in Russia, the overlap is great--most billionaires (Abramovitch Berezovsky etc) became rich because of links with the old political class (nomenklatura) who saw the USSRs demise coming & feathered their own nests. Many dissidents so-called (like Berezovsky & Litivinenko RIP) are merely those who have lost out in such power struggles--Berezovsky financed Putin's early rise for example, Litvinenko was a hit-man for the oligarchs while still on KGB/FSB pay-roll. There is just not the distinction in Russia between law and politics formally accepted in the West, even if that is sometimes illusory here. Therefore, seeing the FSB as formally under the Justice Ministry's control is misleading--they are willing attack-dogs of a vicious tripartite ruling class.
The nomenklatura was a system of name lists kept by CPSU committees at various levels, not a class.
I think you focus too much on inside the borders. Especially misleading when we're talking about since 1985, say. Abramovich was talent-spotted by a Rothschild. Khodorkovsky signed control of his oil interests over to another Rothschild. Putin asked to go visit the Rothschilds' HQ in the City of London when he came to England. Whichever way you look at it, that's power.
Berezovsky is pals with the British royal family.
Berezovsky was close to the Kremlin before Putin came onto the scene. Yeltsin used his car-distribution network to sell his autobiography. It 'sold' well abroad too, and his London agent used to send him the 'royalties' in cash...
True, Berezovsky's security company had close KGB links.
Agreed about the importance of the KGB and what came after, in the whole last 20 years and of course before, but the 'world' that was the KGB was - and has stayed - wider than what is now the FSB. It is wider even than the FSB plus the SVR. I don't know why you omit to mention the SVR. That's what the KGB's first chief directorate turned into. Don't the get the idea that the KGB were ever without talent when it came to banking money abroad.
You would probably enjoy Paul Klebnikov's book. It got him killed. Some say on the orders of...well, it isn't difficult to work out...
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I'm not sure if this is the right subsection but here it goes, it dawn on me a few months ago that the KGB put ex-KGB Putin in power (Why that took so long for me to work out I had no idea) but who are the KGB answerable to? Putin? What's the KGB long game plan if they are ruling and running Russia? In the old Soviet Union it was always the case of forwarding the Soviet revolution to other countries. So what do the KGB stand for these days? Do they continue the lost clause of the revolution or is it purely defensive and economics interest of Russia and it allies?
I figured you are brainy lot what are your thoughts on the KGB? I read the election in Russia had been rigged yet again.