From the Cheka to the FSB and GRU: Russian Intelligence

The history of Russian intelligence runs almost unbroken for more than a century. The Cheka, founded in 1917, passed through a string of acronyms before becoming the KGB, which split apart in 1991. Today the three main agencies are the FSB (domestic security), the SVR (foreign intelligence) and the GRU (military intelligence), and all three still carry much of the culture they inherited.

Timeline: from the Cheka to the FSB

• 1917 — Lenin sets up the Cheka under Felix Dzerzhinsky to fight 'counter-revolution'. Russian officers still proudly call themselves 'chekists'.
• 1918 — The Red Army creates the forerunner of the GRU. Military intelligence would always remain separate from the political police.
• 1922-1934 — The Cheka becomes the GPU, then the OGPU, before being absorbed into the NKVD.
• 1934-1938 — The NKVD carries out the Great Terror; hundreds of thousands are shot.
• 1954 — After Stalin's death and Beria's fall, the KGB is created under Communist Party control.
• 1991 — KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov joins the failed August coup. By December the USSR is gone and the KGB is dismantled.
• 1991-1995 — Foreign intelligence goes to the SVR; after several reorganisations, domestic security settles into the FSB (1995).
• 1998-1999 — Former KGB officer Vladimir Putin runs the FSB before becoming prime minister and then president.

What each agency does today

Unlike Western systems, the lines are blurred. Soldatov and Borogan have shown how the FSB expanded abroad, especially across the former Soviet space, and how its senior officers became a new political elite.

FSB vs GRU: the key difference

The FSB is essentially a domestic security service with police powers; the GRU answers to the General Staff and works for military commanders. Over the past two decades Western governments have publicly blamed the GRU for several high-profile operations abroad, giving it a visibility it never used to have.

Officially attributed cases

• Litvinenko (2006): a British public inquiry concluded in 2016 that his polonium poisoning was an FSB operation 'probably approved' by the FSB director and by Putin. Moscow denies it.
• Salisbury (2018): the UK government blamed the GRU for the Novichok attack on Sergei Skripal. Russia denies it.
• US election (2016): in 2018 the Justice Department indicted twelve GRU officers over computer intrusions. None has stood trial.

These attributions come from governments and courts and are rejected by Russia; they should be read as such.

Why the continuity matters

Archive-based scholarship, from Andrew and Mitrokhin to Haslam, stresses continuity: recruitment methods, kompromat, disinformation and a culture that puts state security above the law. Understanding the Cheka helps explain today's FSB.

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