KGB: The Sword and the Shield - Season 1

Set up as a ‘temporary' measure by Lenin, millions of Soviet citizens would die at the hands of the secret services as internal dissent, real or imaginary, was crushed. Outside the Soviet Union, however, they were busy infiltrating German High Command, British Intelligence and America's Manhattan Project, constructing the world's first atomic bomb. Soon, Moscow had the means to build one of their own. The Cold War and the philosophy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) had begun in earnest.

By August 1949, at least five years earlier than expected, the USSR became the world's second superpower, thanks to its spies who had stolen America's atomic secrets. But by March 1953, Stalin is dead and KGB chief, Beria, is executed later the same year. Nikita Kruschev tries to reduce the power of the security service, splitting it into several sections...but it doesn't last and, soon, the KGB is back. Abroad, it has pulled off its greatest-ever recruitment coup – a mole at the very top of the CIA.

Coup d'etats, assassinations, sex scandals, radioactive poisoning....it's the stuff of a Bond movie. But in today's Russia, it's all very real. Under Vladimir Putin, the KGB or FSB as it's now called, rules Russia with an iron rod directly from the Kremlin. To challenge its authority, even from apparent safety abroad, means risking your life. The KGB has even managed to outlive communism itself. Today, Russia is no longer a State with a Security Service: instead, the Security Service has a State.