KGB Quotes

In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.

…historically, the official personnel of the Soviet bloc countries assigned to this nation, including those at the United Nations, have been used extensively for espionage purposes…

In Soviet Russia, party always finds you!

The thing about the Russian secret police and the Soviet secret police is that one never leaves the secret police. Once a KGB man, always a KGB man.

[CIA] Case officers most fear the US ambassador and his staff, then restrictive headquarters cables, then curious gossipy neighbors in the local community, as potential threats to the operation. Next would come the local police, then the press. Last of all is the KGB.

Perhaps my information hurt the Soviet Union more than it helped. I have no idea. It was not something I ever discussed with the KGB officers that I was dealing with.

Only enemies of the Soviet Union can think of the KGB as some kind of secret police.

Putin has demonstrated his fondness for the Cold War…. Once a KBG agent, always a KGB agent.

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

I was not extremely patriotic about Mother Russia. I played their game, pretending. You have to deal with, you know, party people, KGB. Horrifying.

The KGB is by far the world's largest, the Israeli probably the best, and the Iranian and the South Korean the deadliest.

One question that people always ask at home is never asked here: "What happened to Communism in Russia?" Everybody yawns when a visitor brings it up, because the answer is so obvious to every Russian. The answer is that there never was Communism in Russia; there were only communists.

I've met enough KGB colonels in my life.

The only thing I ever withheld from the KGB were the names of two agents whom I personally had known and handled and had a particular feeling for.

When I look at Ukraine, Putin, an ex KGB officer is using the playbook of the Cold War. He isn't going to try and grab the western part; he's going to maximize his influence, the way we would have done in Chile. That is buying political power, getting agents, influencing the propaganda piece, and increasing intimidation for the east. It's a classic playbook.

[Referring to the CIA:] We coexist. They work, and we work.

Contessa, a.k.a. Baboushka, was a leader in the Russian mafia. Hardnosed, ruthless... very much her own woman. She's a martial artist, marksman, and good with guns and gadgets as any good pulp spy should be. She's supported by her constant companion Gyorgy Gyorgyov, an old friend of her family who was, in fact, her KGB handler and inventor.

There is no such thing as a former KGB man.

I love the good Russian world, the humanitarian Russian world, but I do not love the Russian world of Beria, Stalin, and Shoigu.

As the CIA and KGB, like God and Satan, fight Miltonic battles across five continents.

Anti-Western resentment and Russian patriotism appear particularly pronounced in Putin’s personality and life experiences, but a different Russian government not run by former KGB types would still be confronted with the challenge of weakness vis-à-vis the West and the desire for a special role in the world. Russia’s foreign policy orientation, in other words, is as much a condition as a choice. But if Russian elites could somehow redefine their sense of exceptionalism and put aside their unwinnable competition with the West, they could set their country on a less costly, more promising course.

I have sent you 18,000 enemies of the people.

I grew up reading the classic novels of Cold War espionage, and I studied Russian history and Soviet foreign policy.

Vladimir Putin is a person from a different generation.

Let's say a Soviet exchange student back in the '70s would go back and tell the KGB about people and places and things that he'd seen and done and been involved with. This is not really espionage; there's no betrayal of trust.