"Although no official accounting of the total atrocities committed by the K.G.B. exists, estimates place multiple millions of Russians in forced labor camps known as gulags, or to their deaths, both at home and abroad." #ButSocialism #ButCommunism

The Incomplete History Told by New York’s K.G.B. Museum

Designed to be apolitical, the attraction offers whiz-bang tech without the agency’s brutal past

"The USSR used the K.G.B. to quell dissent, by whatever violent means necessary, and run general surveillance on its citizenry as part of its efforts to maintain Communist order. During the Cold War, the K.G.B. rivaled the C.I.A. around the globe, but primarily carried out its most brutal acts behind the Iron Curtain. A 1980 U.S. intelligence report asserted that at its peak, the K.G.B. employed some 480,000 people (along with millions of informers) and infiltrated every aspect of life in the Soviet Union—one dissident Orthodox priest said in the 1970s that 'one hundred percent of the clergy were forced to cooperate with the K.G.B.'

Although no official accounting of the total atrocities committed by the K.G.B. exists, estimates place multiple millions of Russians in forced labor camps known as gulags, or to their deaths, both at home and abroad. The K.G.B. was instrumental in crushing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Prague Spring of 1968.When a collection of documents related to the K.G.B.’s work in Prague was released and examined by reporters and historians, it became abundantly clear that of all the weapons used by the agency, fear was the most pervasive. 'They considered the worst enemies those who could influence public opinion through media,' said Milan Barta, a senior researcher at Prague's Institute for Study of Totalitarian Regimes in a 2014 interview with the Washington Examiner. Unsuccessful plots by the K.G.B. included the kidnapping of novelist Milan Kundera and the silencing of other key public figures."

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/incomplete-history-told-new-yorks-kgb-museum-180971458/#s3jtyXmJHpkJPWzZ.99
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