October 21, 2025: Since Vladimir Putin took control of Russia over twenty years ago, he has set about trying to recreate the Soviet Union—not just its socialist government with him in charge, but also all the territory the Soviets once controlled. He began with Ukraine, which proved far more difficult than he expected. The invasion of Ukraine brought crippling economic sanctions and a collapsing Russian economy.

To deal with this mess, Putin realized strong measures were required. He had many friends and associates from his KGB days and put them to work in his new government.

Russia continues to turn into a full police state. New laws reinstate many of the arbitrary powers that Soviet Union police and intelligence officials had. While post-Soviet Russia remains a democracy, elected officials are reinstating the surveillance and control capabilities their Soviet counterparts long relied on. The main vehicle for implementing this new police state is the FSB, the successor to the Cold War-era KGB. This organization is regaining many of its Soviet-era powers and personnel.

Before the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, the KGB was the most powerful organization in the country. It was a law unto itself, as long as it stuck to its main task: keeping the Communist Party in charge. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the KGB lost much of its power but did not disappear. It was split into several separate organizations, with the main one being the FSB, a counterintelligence organization with police powers. The SVR conducts overseas espionage. Since the late 1990s, the FSB has been regaining much of its Cold War-era authority and personnel. It again controls the border police and several specialized technical organizations. While this pleases the law-and-order community, it disturbs Russians who remember when the KGB was the principal organization keeping the communist dictatorship in control.

The new powers give the FSB more authority to do whatever it wants, just as it did when the communists were in charge. The FSB now directly controls over 100,000 personnel and has authority over many more in other government departments, including the national police force. The Communist Party has been replaced by an oligarchy of wealthy men who got rich through business acumen, corruption, outright theft, and personal relationships with Putin. In effect, it is a more efficient version of the far greater number of Communist Party bureaucrats who ruled and murdered Russians for 70 years. The new regime is less lethal than the communists but no less intolerant of criticism.

The KGB acquired most of its power just before World War II, after dictator Joseph Stalin had killed much of the army leadership to prevent what he believed was the possibility of a military takeover. The KGB was a powerful state secret police, a sort of FBI, CIA, and more rolled into one organization. The KGB was everywhere, as it sought to keep its communist masters in power. For example, it had a network of informants in the military.

When Stalin died of natural causes in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev and some close Communist Party associates took over. One of their first actions was to execute the head of the KGB, an old Stalin crony named Beria, who had been responsible for large-scale massacres within the Communist Party and KGB during Stalin’s reign. Less bloodthirsty KGB officers were promoted to head the organization. Until the very end of the Soviet Union in 1991, the KGB remained at the top of the social, political, economic, and legal pecking order. In the late 1980s, reformers like Gorbachev rose to power with the assistance of senior KGB officials who saw a need for reform. The KGB was aware that their tsarist predecessors had survived the 1917 Revolution. The KGB, a relatively small group compared to the military and the Communist Party, was ready to survive the next revolution. This it did, and now its successors are being rewarded for their loyalty and effectiveness in dealing with terrorism, corruption, and crime.

While the FSB has regained control of the border police, this force is but a shadow of its former Soviet self. Back then, the Soviet Union maintained 200,000 KGB border troops, which included armored units, naval ships, and combat aircraft. These forces served the same function as the United States Coast Guard and Border Patrol but with far greater power. In America, these forces amount to fewer than half as many personnel. The 25,000 sailors in the Maritime Border Guards (MBG) answered to no one but the head of the KGB. To put it bluntly, a lieutenant commanding an MBG patrol boat could order any Russian warship to halt and arrest its captain. In fact, this was one of the principal functions of the MBG: to prevent mutiny or defection by ships and sailors of the Soviet Navy and merchant fleet.

Smuggling was a minor problem, as Russian currency was useless outside the country, and there were few items Russia produced that were small and valuable enough to be profitably smuggled. Moreover, much of Russia’s coastline is in Arctic waters, and most of the remainder was adjacent to other communist nations. What kept the MBG busy was ensuring that Russian citizens didn’t flee the country. Such flight was a criminal offense, and several prisons were full of Russians who attempted to leave and were caught by the MBG.

MBG personnel were carefully selected. Although two-thirds were conscripts, these were chosen from among the most reliable Slavic candidates and were given special benefits and privileges to compensate for serving three years instead of two. These benefits extended into life after military service, as they had demonstrated their loyalty to the government and were thus worthy of job assignments and other privileges. Because of the three-year term for KGB conscripts, only a quarter of the personnel were replaced each year, allowing for a higher degree of training and effectiveness. Less than a third of the 25,000 MBG sailors served on ships’ crews; the majority worked in support jobs on land, supplying security detachments for guarding MBG bases and monitoring suspicious foreign merchant ships or Russian personnel suspected of disloyalty. The Russian Coast Guard still oversees much more than the coast, though Russia no longer makes it so difficult to leave.

The FSB still relies on conscripts for many low-level security jobs. However, as in the Soviet period, getting drafted into the FSB is an attractive proposition for many young Russian men. Doing well in this job, including guarding nuclear weapons or other important national assets, marks you as someone worthy of other roles within the security services.

What bothers many Russians is the ultimate purpose of the FSB. The KGB was known as the main protector of the Communist Party. The FSB is seen as the supporter of wealthy criminals who used their KGB connections and powers after the Soviet Union collapsed to seize ownership of many state-owned assets. The current Russian government is acting more and more like the autocratic rulers Russia has suffered under for centuries. The FSB acts like a palace guard, not public servants.