Editing First Chief Directorate (section)

==Early operations==
{{See also|KGB#Organization}}
In the first years of existence, Soviet Russia did not have many foreign missions that could provide official camouflage for legal outpost of intelligence called residentura, so, foreign department (INO) relied mainly on illegals, officers assigned to foreign countries under false identities. Later when official Soviet embassies, diplomatic offices and foreign missions had been created in major cities around the world, they were used to build legal intelligence post called residentura. It was led by a resident whose real identity was known only to the [[ambassador]].

The first operations of the Soviet intelligence concentrated mainly on Russian military and political emigration organizations. According to [[Vladimir Lenin]]'s directions, the foreign intelligence department had chosen as his main target the ''White Guard people'' ([[White movement]]), of which the largest groups were in Berlin, [[Paris]] and [[Warsaw]]. The intelligence and counter-intelligence department led long so called intelligence games against Russian emigration. As a result of those games, the main representatives of Russian emigration like [[Boris Savinkov]] were arrested and sent for many years to prison. Another well known action against a Russian emigration conducted in the 1920s was [[Operation Trust]] (Trust Operation). "Trust" was an operation to set up a fake anti-[[Bolshevik]] [[Resistance movement|underground organization]], "Monarchist Union of Central Russia", MUCR (Монархическое объединение Центральной России, МОЦР). The "head" of the MUCR was Alexander Yakushev (Александр Александрович Якушев), a former [[bureaucrat]] of the Ministry of Communications of [[Imperial Russia]], who after the [[Russian Revolution of 1917|Russian Revolution]] joined the [[Narkomat]] of External Trade (Наркомат внешней торговли), when the Soviets had to allow the former specialists (called "specs", "спецы") to take positions of their expertise. This position allowed him to travel abroad and contact Russian emigrants. MUCR kept the monarchist general [[Alexander Kutepov]] (Александр Кутепов), head of a major emigrant force, [[Russian All-Military Union]] (Русский общевоинский союз), from active actions and who was convinced to wait for the development of the internal anti-Bolshevik forces.

Among the successes of "Trust" was the luring of [[Boris Savinkov]] and [[Sidney Reilly]] into the Soviet Union to be arrested. In Soviet intelligence history, the 1930s proceeded as a so-called Era of the Great Illegals. Among others [[Arnold Deutsch]], [[Theodore Maly]] and [[Yuri Modin]] were officers leading the [[Cambridge Five]] case.

One of the biggest successes of Soviet foreign intelligence was the penetration of the American [[Manhattan Project]], which was the code name for the effort during World War II to develop the first nuclear weapons of the United States with assistance from the United Kingdom and Canada. Information gathered in the United States, Great Britain and Canada, especially in USA, by NKVD and NKGB agents then supplied to Soviet physicists, allowed them to carry out the first Soviet nuclear explosion in 1949.

In March 1954, Soviet state security underwent its last major postwar reorganization. The MGB was once again removed from the MVD, but downgraded from a ministry to the Committee for State Security (KGB), and formally attached to the Council of Ministers in an attempt to keep it under political control. The body responsible for foreign operations and intelligence collection activities was First Chief Directorate (FCD).

The first head of FCD was [[Aleksandr Panyushkin]], the former ambassador to the [[United States]] and [[China]] and former head of Second Chief Directorate in MVD responsible for foreign intelligence. Panyushkin's diplomatic background, however, did not imply any softening in MVD/KGB operational methods abroad. Indeed, one of the first foreign operations personally supervised by Panyushkin was Operation Rhine, the attempted assassination of a Ukrainian émigré leader in [[West Germany]].

In 1956, Panyushkin was succeeded by his former deputy [[Aleksandr Sakharovsky]], who was to remain head of FCD for record period of 15 years. He was remembered in the FCD chiefly as an efficient, energetic administrator. In 1971, Sakharovsky was succeeded by his 53-year-old former deputy Fyodor Mortin, a career KGB officer who had risen steadily through the ranks as a loyal protégé of Sakharovsky. Mortin was on top the FCD only for two years, when, in 1974, he was succeeded by the 50-year-old [[Vladimir Kryuchkov]], who was almost to equal Sakharovsky's record term as head of the FCD. After 14 years in FCD Hq, he was to become chairman of the KGB in 1988. Kryuchkov joined the Soviet diplomatic service, stationed in [[Hungary]] until 1959. He then worked for the Communist Party headquarters in [[Ukraine]] for eight years before joining the KGB in 1967. In 1988 he was promoted to General of the Army rank and became KGB Chairman. In 1989–1990, he was a member of Politburo. The next and last head of FCD was born on March 24, 1935, in Moscow [[Leonid Shebarshin]].