A Brief History of the KGB and Its Origins

If you grafted the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), added a few hefty tablespoons of paranoia and repression, and translated the whole megillah into Russian, you might wind up with something like the KGB. The Soviet Unions main internal and external security agency from 1954 until the breakup of the U.S.S.R. in 1991, the KGB wasnt created from scratch, but rather inherited much of its techniques, personnel, and political orientation from the greatly feared agencies that preceded it. Before the KGB: The Cheka, the OGPU  and the NKVD In the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917, Vladimir Lenin, the head of the newly formed U.S.S.R., needed a way to keep the population (and his fellow revolutionaries) in check. His answer was to create the Cheka, an abbreviation of The All-Russian Emergency Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage. During the Russian Civil War of 1918-1920, the Cheka — led by the one-time Polish aristocrat Felix — arrested, tortured, and executed thousands of citizens. In the course of this Red Terror, the Cheka perfected the system of summary execution used by subsequent Russian intelligence agencies: a single shot to the back of the victims neck, preferably in a dark dungeon. In 1923, the Cheka, still under Dzerzhinsky, mutated into the OGPU (the Joint State Political Directorate Under the  Council of Peoples Commissars  of the U.S.S.R. — Russians have never been good at catchy names). The OGPU operated during a relatively uneventful period in Soviet history (no massive purges, no internal deportations of millions of ethnic minorities), but this agency did preside over the creation of the first Soviet gulags. The OGPU also viciously persecuted religious organizations (including the Russian Orthodox Church) in addition to its usual duties of rooting out dissenters and saboteurs. Unusually for a director of a Soviet intelligence agency, Felix Dzerzhinsky died of natural causes, dropping dead of a heart attack after denouncing leftists to the Central Committee. Unlike these earlier agencies, the NKVD (The Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs) was purely the brainchild of Joseph Stalin. The NKVD was chartered around the same time Stalin orchestrated the murder of Sergei Kirov, an event he used as an excuse to purge the upper ranks of the Communist Party and strike terror into the populace. In the 12  years of its existence, from 1934 to 1946, the NKVD arrested and executed literally millions of people, stocked the gulags with millions more miserable souls, and relocated entire ethnic populations within the vast expanse of the U.S.S.R. Being an NKVD head was a dangerous occupation: Genrikh Yagoda was arrested and executed in 1938, Nikolai Yezhov in 1940, and Lavrenty Beria in 1953 (during the power struggle that followed the death of Stalin). The Ascension  of the KGB After the end of World War II  and before his execution, Lavrenty Beria presided over the Soviet security apparatus, which remained in a somewhat fluid state of multiple acronyms and organizational structures. Most of the time, this body was known as the MGB (The Ministry for State Security), sometimes as the NKGB (The Peoples Commissariat for State Security), and once, during the war, as the vaguely comical-sounding SMERSH (short for the Russian phrase smert shpionom, or death to spies). Only after the death of Stalin did the KGB, or Commissariat for State Security, formally come into being. Despite its fearsome reputation in the west, the KGB was actually more effective in policing the U.S.S.R. and its eastern European satellite states than in fomenting revolution in western Europe or stealing military secrets from the U.S. (The golden age of Russian espionage was in the years immediately following World War II, before the formation of the KGB, when the U.S.S.R. subverted western scientists in order to advance its own development of nuclear weapons.) The major foreign accomplishments of the KGB included suppressing the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia in 1968, as well as installing a Communist government in Afghanistan in the late 1970s; however, the agencys luck ran out in early 1980s Poland, where the anti-Communist Solidarity movement emerged victoriously. All during this time, of course, the CIA and the KGB engaged in an elaborate international dance (often in third-world countries like Angola and Nicaragua),  involving agents, double agents, propaganda, disinformation, under-the-table arms sales, interference with elections, and nighttime exchanges of suitcases filled with rubles or hundred-dollar bills. The exact details of what transpired, and where, may never come to light; many of the agents and controllers from both sides are dead, and the current Russian government has not been forthcoming in declassifying the KGB archives. Inside the U.S.S.R., the attitude of the KGB toward suppressing dissent was largely dictated by government policy. During the reign of Nikita Khrushchev, from 1954 to 1964, a certain amount of openness was tolerated, as witnessed in the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyns Gulag-era memoir One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (an event that would have been unthinkable under the Stalin regime). The pendulum swung the other way with the ascension of Leonid Brezhnev in 1964, and, especially, the appointment of Yuri Andropov as the head of the KGB in 1967. Andropovs KGB hounded Solzhenitsyn out of the U.S.S.R. in 1974, turned the screws on the dissident scientist Andrei Sakharov, and generally made life miserable for any prominent figure even slightly dissatisfied with Soviet power. The Death (And Resurrection?) of the KGB In the late 1980s, the U.S.S.R. began to fall apart at the seams, with rampant inflation, shortages of factory goods, and agitation by ethnic minorities. Premier Mikhail Gorbachev had already implemented perestroika (a restructuring of the economy and political structure of the Soviet Union) and glasnost (a policy of openness toward dissidents), but while this placated some of the population, it enraged hard-line Soviet bureaucrats who had grown accustomed to their privileges. As might have been predicted, the KGB was at the forefront of the counter-revolution. In late 1990,  then-KGB head Vladimir Kryuchkov recruited high-ranking members of the Soviet elite into a  tight-knit conspiratorial cell, which sprang into action the following  August after failing to convince Gorbachev to either resign in favor of its preferred candidate or declare a state of emergency. Armed combatants, some of them in tanks, stormed the Russian parliament building in Moscow, but Soviet President Boris Yeltsin held firm and the coup quickly fizzled out. Four months later, the U.S.S.R. officially disbanded, granting autonomy to the Soviet Socialist Republics along its western and southern borders and dissolving the KGB. However, institutions like the KGB never really go away; they just assume different guises. Today, Russia is dominated by two security agencies, the FSB (The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) and the SVR (The Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation), which broadly correspond to the FBI and the CIA, respectively. More worrisome, though, is the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin spent 15 years in the KGB, from 1975 to 1990, and his increasingly autocratic rule shows that he has taken to heart the lessons he learned there. Its unlikely that Russia will ever again see a security agency as vicious as the NKVD, but a return to the darkest days of the KGB is clearly not out of the question.

Using Alternatives Sources Of Energy - 1401 Words

Up until a few years ago, we used to exploit fossil fuels for almost all of our needs (heating, transportation, etc.) without thinking if there are enough supplies or even about their negative effects their emissions cause to the environment. According to many scientific investigations our fossil fuel resources (oil, coal and gas) are running out, furthermore their emissions pollute the environment and contribute to the greenhouse effect. Undoubtedly, these situations as well as the fact that the demand for electricity is increasing more and more globally made us thinking about using alternatives sources of energy. Many possible fuels are being tested at the moment in order to find which one is the most suitable in terms of efficiency,†¦show more content†¦Despite the fact that things seemed to run smoothly, in 1973 when the oil crisis began, nuclear industry had to face environmental issues which made the construction of power stations such an expensive deal. Nowadays, nucl ear power seem to be more promising than ever due to the increased demand of electricity. After many investigations experts have determined that there are two ways that nuclear power can be utilized. The first way is called â€Å"Nuclear Fission†, this way is mainly used in power stations, uranium and other heavy elements are used as fuels. By its reaction heavy cores separate into medium-sized cores, where energy is released. The following figure shows how much electricity was generated in 6 countries by nuclear power in 2007. The second way that nuclear power can utilizes is called â€Å"Nuclear Fusion†, this way needs more investigation in order to be applied in power stations. Hydrogen and other light elements would be used as fuels and from its reaction fuse light cores are converted into medium-sized cores, where energy is released. Nuclear Fusion’s 2 most promising reactions are the DT reaction, which fuses deuterium (heavy isotope of hydrogen) with tritium (heavier isotope of hydrogen), making Helium (light monoatomic gas) and the DD reaction, which fuses deuterium with deuterium. Despite their different operations both fission and

The Importance of Processing Duplicates in an Mpi Free Essays

Importance of keeping a clean and standardized MPI A clean Master Patient Index is a huge part of a successful healthcare organization. Therefor, it is very important to identify duplicate records. Duplicate records could cause major issues such as patient safety, risk management, legal, customer service, and other issues. We will write a custom essay sample on The Importance of Processing Duplicates in an Mpi or any similar topic only for you Order Now For example duplicate lab tests could be ordered by doctors and preformed , one of the most common being radiology exams because the previous films were not available for comparison. There have been delays in surgery due to lack of available medical history due to duplicate records. Another common issue with duplicate records is the fact that initial treatment is sometimes delayed. Duplicate record management reports should be reviewed to make sure all of the duplicates have been taken care of and merged properly. One thing that we all need to remember is that the MPI is not an automated process and no particular way of repairing records takes away the human component. Therefore it is important to review all possible duplicates, identify those that need more research and those that can be confirmed as true duplicates. Then verify all possible duplicates that require additional research and reconcile those records. The HIM supervisor’s role in managing the duplicate processes and workflow is to assign specific tasks to specific staff members, review duplicate management reports, oversee the process of identifying duplicate records, make sure corrections are made and done correctly. They should also try to minimize the causes of duplicates, by looking for patterns. The problem may be created in a specific situation or a specific department. The HIM supervisor might also evaluate current processes for reconciliation of duplicate records and overlaid medical records. The bigger the database, the bigger the duplication problem can be. The productivity of the duplicate merging process is important to monitor to be sure there is no information being deleted or added in the process. It is also important to monitor it so there is no need to re-run and re-run the same reports to double and triple check that duplicates no longer exist. The organization should set MPI standards and processing standards, as there are no set industry standards. There are EMPI recommendations as seen in appendix A AHIMA recommended data elements. It is very important to set standards based on the recommended data elements in appendix A so that nationally and even internationally, your MPI will be asily read and understood, if needed. It is important that it be similar if not the same as other organizations’ MPIs so if anyone from another facility or organization needs to access patient records from your database, it will be straight-forward. It is also a good idea to follow the same or similar procedures as other organizations so whe n new staff is hired or transferred, there will not be very much training needed. In closing, it is very important to keep a clean and standardized MPI for many many reasons: ease of use, patient safety, timely treatment, and transferability, not to mention billing and legal reasons. How to cite The Importance of Processing Duplicates in an Mpi, Essay examples