KGB (transliteration of "КГБ") is the Russian abbreviation of Committee for State Security (Russian: Комитет государственной безопасности; Komityet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosty), which was the official name of the umbrella organization serving as the Soviet Union's premier security agency, secret police, and intelligence agency, from 1954 to 1991.
The name of the largest of the Russian successors to the KGB is the FSB (ФСБ, Федеральная служба безопасности; Federalnaya Slujba Bezopasnosty; English: Federal Security Service).
The KGB's function was illustrated by its official emblem: bearing both shield and sword, the KGB was an organization with a military hierarchy aimed at providing national defense, specifically the defence of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). It was similar in function to the United States' CIA, with additional tasks of counter-espionage and national defense of the FBI, or by the twin organizations MI5 and MI6 in the United Kingdom.
