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.

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.

Set up as a 'temporary' measure by Lenin shortly after the revolution, the early years of the KGB soon became synonymous with mass executions during the Red Terror of the early 1920s.