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.

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. But by March 1953, Stalin is dead and KGB chief, Lavrentiy Beria, wants to run the Soviet Union. But Nikita Kruschev has Beria is arrested, tried in secret for working with the enemy, and executed.

Coup d'etats, assassinations, sex scandals, radioactive poisoning - it's the stuff of a James Bond movie. But in today's Russia, this is all very real.