The KGB Roughly Compared to Modern Day

January’s issue of the History Today has a great article on the creation and changing attitudes of the KGB after Stalin’s death. One fact which leapt out was the large number of persons being followed by the KGB in 1967; almost 6,750, according to a leaked report.

That sounds an awful lot, but is it?

By 1967 the population of the USSR was almost 241,720,000 (the rough figure for 1970), 6,750 people is just 0.000028% of the population, or 7 in 25,000,000 people being followed.

Comparatively, the UK in 2020 had 43,000 persons “posing a potential terror threat”, this includes 40,000 “closed” subjects of interest “where MI5 judges there to be some risk of re-engaging in terrorist activity” and 3,000 subjects of interest who were under active investigation in 2017. These figures according to the The Times. These are also public figures, the Soviet ones were leaked.

If we are generous to the UK and only use the 3,000 subset, put to the UK population in 2020 of 67,100,000, that’s 0.000045% of the population, or 9 in 20,000,000 people under investigation by the domestic security service.

This makes the ’67 figure seem a bit tame.