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, when over 100,000 people faced firing squads or other, less subtle, ends such as being rounded up and marched in chains onto boats which were then sunk. That was just the beginning. Millions more would die as internal dissent, real or imaginary, was crushed. Outside the Soviet Union, however, the secret services were busy infiltrating German High Command, British Intelligence and America's Manhattan Project, constructing the world's first atomic bomb.

Series, Documentary

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