All language subtitles for KGB.The.Sword.and.the.Shield.1of3.Dzerzhinsky.and.Co.1080p.HDTV.x264.AC3.MVGroup.org_track3_[eng]

For the past century, Russian history

has also been the history
of its security services.

They were used by the Soviet state
to crush dissent.

Millions suffered at their hands.

But while many things may have
changed in today's Russia,

its security network
is arguably stronger than ever,

and the reason behind that

is the rise of
a lowly, lieutenant-colonel

to president of this vast country.

I know the KGB
better than anyone else

because I was part of
the inside circle.

This is
the story
of the KGB,

told by its
veterans

and its
victims.

(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)

In a Moscow comedy club, young people
laugh at life as it was,

living in the shadow of the KGB.

The jokes,
compiled from the archives,

show how humour was often
the last refuge

under an authoritarian regime.

Misha Melnichenko has unearthed
almost 6,000 Soviet political jokes.

In reality, life for most Soviet
citizens was no laughing matter.

This recently opened
KGB archive in Kiev

contains millions of documents.

It records the fate of hundreds
of thousands sent to the Gulags,

and tens of thousands more
sentenced to death.

Those who suffered
at the hands of the KGB,

and KGB officers themselves,

are well placed to tell us

about the biggest state security
network the world has ever known.

Also inside these boxes,

there are untold stories of heroism,

where KGB agents
put their lives on the line

to protect their country,
and Soviet rule.

Usually, it is associated with

some kind of, uh, enforcement
or violence,

but I'm very proud to be a member
of the intelligence service.

(DRAMATIC ORCHESTRAL MUSIC)

(CHOIR SINGS
RUSSIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM)

Russia -
the largest country on earth.

Misunderstood by many
and feared by even more.

(NATIONAL ANTHEM CONTINUES)

Invaded repeatedly
over the centuries,

its leaders have adopted
a siege mentality

to counter real or perceived threats
from abroad.

Russia's people have been encouraged

to view foreigners as the enemy.

Enemies have been a preoccupation
throughout Russian history.

In modern times,
those enemies, inside and out,

have been the target
of surveillance, assassinations,

honey traps and hacking scandals.

The story of the KGB
began over a century ago,

with a revolution.

After the Bolsheviks
took power in 1917,

Lenin founded a secret police force
as a temporary measure.

It was called the All-Russian
Extraordinary Commission

for Combating Counter-revolution
and Sabotage,

or Cheka for short.

The name changed several times
in the last century,

including OGPU, NKVD,

MGB, KGB and, finally, FSB.

But even today, agents
refer to themselves as Chekists.

KGB colonel Anatoliy Sakhno

recalls the ethics that were
drummed into him as a young recruit.

There is a myth
of this high morality,

of this, uh, moral purity,
of the Chekists

and other 'knights of the
revolution', as they were called.

In January 2018,

only 12% of Russians said

that they associate the Cheka,
as the Soviet secret police,

with terror and persecution
of dissidents.

Their Moscow headquarters,
the Lubyanka,

quickly became notorious.

Chekists were expected to crack down
hard on all who opposed the state.

The first head of the secret police

was the son of
a Polish, Catholic aristocrat,

Felix Dzerzhinsky.

He soon earned the name 'Iron Felix'.

MAN: Dzerzhinsky came from
a strict Catholic background

and he had ambitions
to become a priest.

His mother and an uncle
had to talk him out of this

because they recognised
that he was too fond of women

to take up a job
as a Catholic priest.

But Dzerzhinsky didn't entirely
abandon his Catholic beliefs.

He carried over the ideals of
a kind of Jesuit priest

into the idea of what
the perfect secret policeman was -

somebody who was part of society

but withdrawn from society
at the same time,

somebody with very strict
moral values.

(EERIE BIRD CALL)

MAN: Back then, all these people
were really committed communists.

They had a very clear vision
of, uh, the future,

for their country and for the world,

and they wanted to start
a world revolution.

And it was a very big idea for many

and they...they were ready
to sacrifice themselves,

uh, sacrifice the population
of Russia.

From their imposing
Lubyanka headquarters,

the Cheka exercised
seemingly limitless authority.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

State-sponsored movies and novels

also glamorised
the security services,

through the exploits of men
like Nikolai Kuznetsov,

a Russian equivalent of James Bond.

But while Bond was fictional,
Kuznetsov was very real.

(FIRES GUN)

Films depicted his daring
behind German lines

during the Second World War.

Many aspiring agents
fell under the Kuznetsov spell.

One lad who dreamt that he'd join
this prestigious organisation

was young Vladimir Putin.

When he was still at school,
he went to the local KGB office

and said, "How do I join?"

And even the KGB there
were fairly disconcerted

and basically said,
"Well, run along, sonny.

"Go to university and do a degree
and then maybe we'll talk."

(FIRES GUN)

Once they had caught the bug,

these idealistic
and ambitious recruits

underwent specialised training,

including the dark arts
of counter-intelligence.

In their fortress-like training
centre on the outskirts of Moscow,

today's recruits are constantly
reminded of Lenin's words,

ironically borrowed from the Bible -

"Whoever is not with me
is against me."

Yet Lenin's secret police chief,
Iron Felix Dzerzhinsky,

constantly feared for his life.

And he wasn't wrong.

But while Dzerzhinsky
was always on his guard,

his boss, Lenin, believed
the revolution could defend itself.

Lenin had a rather naive attitude
towards security, it seems.

He said it would be enough
for the new Soviet state

to arrest 50 to 100 leading bankers,
expose their frauds,

and the Russian people would then
realise the horrors of capitalism.

Dzerzhinsky said, "No, you have to
be more brutal than that.

"There are forces at large who wish
to destroy the Soviet state.

"You need to not just arrest
large numbers of people,

"but you need to
terrify the opposition.

"So, you need to kill
large numbers of people.

Dzerzhinsky himself said,

"We stand for organised terror.

"This should be frankly admitted.

"Terror is an absolute necessity
during times of revolution."

Convinced by Dzerzhinsky
that saboteurs were everywhere,

Lenin ordered a purge.

A civil war had broken out,

and between 1918 and 1920,

over 100,000 people
were executed by the Cheka.

It became known as the 'Red Terror'.

IAIN LAUCHLAN: The Red Terror
was indiscriminate violence.

It could be shooting prisoners
in the basements of the Lubyanka,

it could be burning down villages,

it could be putting prisoners
on a boat

and just sinking the boat
and watching them all drown.

It could be putting them
in prison camps

and letting them starve to death.

Dzerzhinsky, the man
who might have become a priest,

was now orchestrating mass murder.

Religion was denounced
as a competing ideology,

but it had been ingrained
in Russian culture for centuries

and couldn't be replaced
with atheism overnight.

(CHOIR AND CHURCHGOERS SING)

So, while hundreds of churches
were destroyed across the country

and bishops and priests executed,

those few allowed to continue

were forced to work with
Dzerzhinsky's security services.

Only a fraction of the churches

that existed in Moscow
before the revolution

remained in the 1950s,

according to the research of
a British exchange student

in Moscow at the time,

Michael Bordeaux.

In January 1918,

Lenin himself passed
the first anti-religious laws.

He also took away church property.

The religion and the tsarist regime

were put together
as being fair game.

To neutralise what remained
of the religious community,

Dzerzhinsky's Cheka
infiltrated it at every level.

MICHAEL BORDEAUX: I would go
as far as to say

that the ruling group of bishops

was more or less a KGB agency.

The Communist Party found new uses
for some church property.

The dark elements
of early Soviet history

have become a special interest
to historian Masha Shilova.

(BELL TOLLS)

When Lenin died in 1924,

Dzerzhinsky was instrumental
in the ensuing power struggle.

He helped sidetrack Trotsky,
the heir apparent,

and actively supported Joseph Stalin.

His reward came when Stalin
chose to expand the secret service.

The new leader was determined
to drag the Soviet Union

into the 20th century,

at any cost.

But his modernisation
would need vast manpower.

Hundreds of thousands of agitators,
criminals and innocent people

were deported to a system
of camps called the Gulag.

The Gulag started out
as a set of prison camps

for the enemies of the Party,
the enemies of the revolution.

Very quickly, though,
it turned into something else,

it had an economic function.

The Bolsheviks saw that they had

all these extra people,
these useless people,

who really couldn't be used
in any way by society.

Why not put them to work for
the state and help grow the state?

The Gulag system
Dzerzhinksy pioneered

was run mainly by
the security services.

It lasted for 60 years,

though he died in 1926.

Russian soap star
Evgenia Turkova's family

were sent to Siberia in the 1940s,

suspected of collaboration
with the Nazis.

The youngest were thrown
into orphanages,

the oldest to the Gulag.

(LAUGHTER)

When schoolteacher Vera Golubeva
told a joke,

she paid a terrible price.

(KNOCK AT DOOR)

Vera gave birth in custody.

There were complications
and, for a time, she was unconscious.

But eventually, she came round.

At 99 years old, Vera still mourns.

She lost her only child and was sent
to the Gulag for eight years,

and it all started
when she told a joke.

The reality is that much of
Soviet modernisation was achieved

on the back of Gulag slavery.

Some Gulag survivors
take comfort from the notion

that they helped build
a modern nation.

Through more than six decades,

the Gulag system
extracted forced labour.

MAN: The main feature of that work
was that it was hard.

If you refuse to work,

you're immediately punished.

Many people didn't receive
medical treatment.

There was a lovely joke
of our doctors

to bring some dentists to the camp

to make a hole,

put arsenic in

and say, "It will take a few days,

"then we will come back and finish."

And they never came back. (LAUGHS)

So, you cannot repair by yourself.

So, it's permanent suffering and...

Human rights activist Sergei Kovalev

was one of the most prominent
Soviet dissidents.

He served seven years in prisons,

including the infamous Perm-36 Gulag,

over 1,000 kilometres east
of his Moscow home.

Even with
the slave labour of millions,

Stalin felt that modernisation
was progressing too slowly.

IAIN LAUCHLAN: Stalin,
taking his usual summer holiday

in the Caucasus,

meets one of the local
secret police chiefs, Yevdokimov.

Yevdokimov persuades Stalin

that some of the problems they're
experiencing in the Soviet state,

notably the failure
to rapidly industrialise,

are the result of spies
inside the mines and the factories.

To disguise the shortcomings
of industrialisation,

a search for scapegoats began.

Fears were spread - fear of the state
and of each other -

as Stalin mounted a show trial
in the industrial town of Shakhty.

IAIN LAUCHLAN:
The Shakhty show trial

was a way of mobilising
popular support

in a pitchfork-style display
of mob justice,

even though, when they carry in all
the documents into the courthouse,

the only real evidence they've got
are the confessions of the accused.

There's no other material evidence
whatsoever.

Stalin declared the accused
class enemies.

44 went to the Gulag.

Five were executed.

Stalin loved the idea of blaming
other people for his mistakes.

It had an economy to it
which amused and pleased him.

He loved the idea of forcing
other people to stand in court

and confess to crimes
which he himself had committed.

Controlling a diverse population
across vast territory

was his constant concern.

He seized on uprisings,
real or imagined,

to wield power against his enemies.

Stalin was determined
that he alone must rule.

In 1936, he ordered
a murderous crackdown

that became known
as the 'Great Terror'.

The security services were ordered
to destroy all opposition,

no matter how many innocents
were caught up in the process.

(LAUGHTER)

(LAUGHTER)

His new henchman as chief of
the secret police was Nikolai Yezhov,

who was a ruthless and sadistic man,

and Stalin kept him very busy.

Very quickly, the Great Terror
moved into an attack

on people who had...people who were
inside the Party -

in many cases, people who had
been leaders of the Party -

and who were now feared to be
possible traitors to the Party.

In almost every Party cell,

there was a kind of hysterical
self-examination process

as people began looking for
enemies within the ranks.

It was execution
on an industrial scale.

Suspects were rounded up
and delivered by the truckload

to killing fields,

including this one,
just south of Moscow.

(MUFFLED SCREAMING AND SHOUTING)

During 1937 and 1938,

nearly 700,000 people were executed

and over a million more
sent to the Gulag.

Their images were expunged
from official photographs.

(GUNS FIRE)

KGB Chief Yezhov said,
"There will be some victims.

"Better that 10 innocents suffer
than one spy gets away."

After two years
of relentless killing,

Stalin wanted someone
to blame for the excesses.

The head of the security services,
Nikolai Yezhov,

was arrested and executed.

Relatives have laid plaques
for the some of the 8,000 victims

whose ashes lie here
in a Moscow cemetery.

There is no plaque for Yezhov.

Stalin replaced him with

fellow Central Committee member
Lavrentiy Beria,

a name that would become infamous
in Soviet history.

And, yet, his first act
was the release

of 100,000 political prisoners.

Like Stalin, Beria was from Georgia,

and he arrived with a cadre
of trusted lieutenants.

They soon established

a more comfortable environment
for their intrigues -

the Aragvi.

It became one of the most celebrated
and infamous restaurants in Russia.

Beria himself
helped set up the Aragvi.

It would become a den for senior
members of the security services.

A quiet chat perhaps,

but it was said that every table
had a hidden microphone.

(LAUGHTER)

(BRASS BAND PLAYS)

Beria's intelligence network
was also raising the alarm

about activities
beyond the Soviet borders.

Hitler's German war machine
had been growing since 1933.

Countless officers of the Red Army

had been executed
in the Great Terror.

Now Stalin needed time to rebuild it.

In August 1939, he signed
a peace treaty with Germany,

agreeing to carve up Poland
between them.

Hitler,
with his eastern flank secure,

was ready for war.

Just one week later,
he invaded western Poland.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)
(ARTILLERY FIRE)

As German forces advanced,

the Red Army moved
to annex eastern Poland.

Almost half a million Polish
prisoners fell into Russian hands.

Beria's security service took charge,

sifting out military officers,
priests and the intelligentsia.

"They woke us up
a few minutes before 5am

"and divided us up into groups.

"The day hasn't started out well.

"We are piled into a prison truck
with guards

"and driven into some forest.

"We're undergoing
a thorough cavity search.

"They took my watch.

"The time was either 6:30 or 8:30
in the morning.

"They're asking for
our wedding rings.

"But they took from me roubles,
belt, pocket knife.

"What happens next?"

On Beria's personal recommendation,

over 20,000 Polish prisoners of war
were executed -

thousands right here,
in Katyn Forest.

Nearly three years later,

after German forces
had captured the territory,

they exposed the mass graves
in their anti-Soviet propaganda.

Stalin denied responsibility
for years,

but subsequent administrations
have acknowledged his guilt.

Even as Hitler waged war
across half of Europe,

Stalin still refused to believe

that the Germans would open
another front to the east.

But his security chief,
Lavrentiy Beria, was better informed.

He had a mole in Nazi high command.

Willi Lehmann ran the division
combating Soviet espionage,

while himself spying for Moscow.

On the 19th of June 1941,

Lehmann warned that Germany
would invade the Soviet Union

in just three days' time.

When Stalin read the report,
he flew into a rage, saying,

"You can send your source
to his (BLEEP) mother.

"This is not a source,
but disinformation."

Willi Lehmann was later shot
by the Gestapo for spying.

The information he passed
to the Soviets had been accurate,

down to the exact date

when the Germans would attack
the Soviet Union.

It was June 22nd, 1941,
when Hitler turned east.

The Soviets were totally unprepared.

Soon after, the first strikes

hit the cities of western Ukraine.

Lviv Prison held
over 1,600 political prisoners.

The prison was run by
Beria's secret police,

who had their
regional headquarters here.

With the German army
bearing down on them,

they had a problem -

what to do with the
political prisoners.

Their solution was a war crime

later exploited for
propaganda purposes by the Germans,

and which still
provokes outrage today.

As the prisoners waited,
30 or more in each cell,

they could hear rushing footsteps
coming towards them in the basement.

Then, the first explosion.

(HAUNTING MUSIC)

As the German army advanced
deep into Soviet territory,

the Soviet state demanded complete
sacrifice from every quarter.

Women worked in factories,
on the land and in civil defence.

Some took on another dangerous role -

consorting with the enemy
to gather intelligence.

KGB officers coordinated
these efforts.

The role of Beria's security service
was greatly expanded during the war,

with the formation of
53 NKVD divisions

made up of over half a million
men and women,

both fighting on the frontline

and against suspected enemies
at home.

Under Stalin's direct orders,

the NKVD also deported
entire ethnic groups -

suspected of collaboration
with the Germans -

to Siberia and Central Asia.

And NKVD troops were stationed
behind the front lines

to prevent regular army units
from retreating or deserting.

In the battle for Stalingrad alone,

they killed over 13,000 deserters

to terrify any
who might consider running.

The Soviet Union suffered

an estimated 27 million casualties
in World War II.

Around 18 million of them
were civilians.

The siege of Leningrad alone

cost a million civilian lives

and lasted well over two years.

It had caused the greatest
destruction and largest loss of life

ever known in a modern city.

Yet the suffering and heroism in
the fight against the German invaders

would become a unifying
and defining experience

for the Soviet Union.

To protect the homeland at any cost

would have the utmost priority
from now on.

By April 1945, Hitler's armies
were almost defeated.

The Soviet assault on Berlin marked
the end of World War II in Europe.

In the glow of victory,

the security services
were officially hailed as heroes,

and Stalin's ruthless leadership
was applauded.

IAIN LAUCHLAN: Stalin was the most
brutal of all the Soviet leaders.

But at the same time, he was the one
that achieved the most, it seems.

He industrialised Russia

and, of course, he was the man

who carried them through
the Second World War.

But the enforcers
at the security services

had also played a crucial role.

Lavrentiy Beria was awarded
the title Hero of the Soviet Union

and promoted to Marshal.

He was, at the same time,
a highly intelligent leader

and a brutal executioner.

A paradoxical character.

A complete enigma.

(LAUGHTER)

Look, it's hard to present Beria

as anything other than an
extraordinarily awful human being.

But he was incredibly efficient.

There are some people who try and
say Beria and the people like him

were not bastards after all,
when, clearly, they were.

But then there are others who have a
different or more nuanced approach,

which is, "Unfortunately this was
a time when we needed bastards."

And this is a different form
of revisionism,

which is, in some ways,
even more pernicious.

Lavrentiy Beria's crowning glory
was a secret espionage operation

which would change
the world's power structure

for the rest of the 20th century
and beyond.

When, at the Potsdam Conference
in July 1945,

American President Truman
proudly informed Stalin

that the US had developed
a new super weapon,

Stalin seemed unimpressed.

But what Truman, Churchill,
nor anyone else in the West knew

was that Beria's spies
were already amongst the scientists

who would achieve this feat,

and were supplying Moscow
with the secret

of how to build one of their own.

Five, four, three, two, one...

Now.

The Americans had spent a vast
fortune developing the atomic bomb,

but Lavrentiy Beria and his network
of agents and spies

matched the threat
for a fraction of the cost.

And, so, they triggered an arms race

which would risk the destruction
of the planet.

The spy game of the Cold War
had just begun.

Captions by Red Bee Media
(c) SBS Australia 2021