Moscow Guide
The Beliy Gorod
The Lubyanka
The Lubyanka rises in sandstone tiers from a granite-faced lower storey emblazoned with Soviet crests. Built as the head office of the Rossiya Insurance Company in 1897, it was taken over by the Bolshevik Cheka in March 1918, only months before the repression of the Anarchists and Left SRs. In Stalin's time, generations entered its maw via the infamous Lubyanka "kennel", a whitewashed cellar used for body searches. Such was the volume of arrests that the versatile Shchusev was commissioned to design an extension that doubled its size by 1947. Even so, its bureaucracy engulfed neighbouring buildings as the security service burgeoned through successive name changes, into the KGB of Cold War notoriety. Under Yeltsin, the KGB was divided into two agencies: the Federal Security Service (FSB) that monitors the home front, and the External Intelligence Service (SVR), which is now based in a modern block at Yasenevo, beyond the Moscow Ring Road.
Both the FSB and SVR have greatly improved their image in recent years, thanks to Russians' fear of terrorism and organized crime, and their suspicion of Western meddling. While catching CIA and MI6 agents makes for good publicity, the FSB's strongest card has been the threat of Chechen terrorism. Even before becoming president, Putin vowed to strengthen the FSB, whose boss he had been from 1998 to 1999, having spent sixteen years in its Soviet predecessor. Since then, it has regained control of the Border Guards and the bugging agency, FAPSI (which Yeltsin made separate entities), and ex-KGB officials have been installed at the highest levels of government throughout the Russian Federation.