| The KGB'S headquarters on Moscow's Dzherzhinsky Square is one of the most forbidding places in the Soviet imagination. Inside and underneath the area are the interrogation rooms and cells where in past decades thousands of citizens came face to face with state power -- and often terror. So it was with some trepidation that a massive crowd advanced into the square in the aftermath of the failed coup -- but its nerve soon strengthened. Within hours, thousands cheered as the statue of "Iron Felix" Dzherzhinsky, who founded the secret police immediately after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, was toppled from its...
The Shakeout: Blunt Sword, Dented Shield
Initially a supporter of perestroika, the KGB was traumatized by the coup. Soon it may be dismembered.
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