About the book: 2009 / Throughout its history, Soviet intelligence changed its name more than ten times (from the Foreign Department of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD to the First Main Directorate KGB and the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation), however, it has always, at all times, remained the best in the world. Neither the CIA with its colossal budget, nor the vaunted MOSSAD can boast of so many brilliant victories on the “invisible front” (here are the “Cambridge Five”, and the “Red Chapel”, and the theft of US atomic technologies, and the famous post-war “moles” and illegal immigrants - PGU - it’s impossible to list them all), nor such a bright constellation of names - from Artuzov, Abel and Kuznetsov to Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames. How did the Soviet Union manage to create the most effective intelligence service in the world? How was it organized? What is the secret of her phenomenal achievements and victories? This unique encyclopedia is the first complete systematized history of foreign intelligence of the USSR and Russia, based on only recently declassified documents and equipped with a colossal reference apparatus - a biographical database on more than 500 Soviet intelligence officers.