Soviet Union Inside The KGB

No branch of the Soviet government has been so secretive -- and so dreaded -- as the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security), better known as the KGB. The world's largest spy and state-security machine, the KGB employs more than 500,000 people, including thousands of agents abroad. The agency has long been the stuff of shadowy legend, its name synonymous with terror and its doors shut tightly to the public.

Now they have been opened a crack, as attested by the photos on these pages, obtained by TIME. In a remarkable display of glasnost, the Moscow newspaper Nedelya last week...