Skip to main content
KGB

KGB

373 6.0
A Soviet government security service that collected secret information and acted as secret police until 1991
  • proper noun
  • /keɪ dʒi bi/
translation icon : KGB
  • The KGB was notorious for its role in maintaining state security and suppressing dissent in the Soviet Union.
  • KGB officer
  • KGB agents
  • KGB intelligence service

And I mean, they the KGB is state security.

Autoplay Next

Examples

  • Right behind them stands the Head KGB Officer from Moscow and his aide.

    Fiction book (1997)
  • We were all afraid of what the KGB people might be doing to us.

  • I no longer consider myself a KGB agent.

  • Do you believe that the KGB and Putin are working with President Trump?

  • After the war, it became the KGB, which was split in 1993 into two security services.

    Academic text (1996)
  • You probably recognise my opposite number in the KGB.

  • Carlos knows every link between the KGB and every terrorist organization in the world.

    Fiction book (1997)
  • We're not the KGB.

  • Any of them could have been low-level KGB agents assigned to follow American exchangees.

    Fiction book (1997)
  • You wrote a book on the KGB spy Bogdan Stashinsky.

Synonyms

Soviet KGB
vsKGB
7.5

The main secret police and spy group in the former Soviet Union

is the identical name without extra wording

The Soviet Union's main secret police and intelligence agency

is the shorter widely used abbreviated form of that formal title

Compounds

The main secret police and spy group in the former Soviet Union

Surface Forms

KGB main

Etymology

KGB is an abbreviation of three Russian words: Komitet ('committee'), Gosudarstvennoy ('state') and Bezopasnosti ('security'), so it literally means 'Committee for State Security'. That's why KGB was the Soviet agency in charge of state security, intelligence and secret police work.