The last head of the Soviet KGB, Vadim Bakatin, died at 84.
Russian state media announced the demise of the last KGB leader on Monday. Vadin Bakatin, who headed the Soviet KGB for a brief period leading up to the USSR’s collapse, died at the age of 84.
Former KGB head Vladimir Kryuchkov organized a coup to remove the USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev from power in 1991, the coup was not successful, and hence Mikhail appointed Vadim Bakatin as the new head of KGB after removing Vladimir Kryuchkov in the August of 1991.
Get to know more about Vadim Bakatin:
Vadim was in favour of the idea of opening up KGB archives to ordinary people that would shed some light on mysteries of the past, like the assassination of US president John F Kennedy.
Although he never got a chance to imply this because the USSR disintegrated just a few months later. Vadim also revealed in an interview with a former dissident, which was broadcasted a few weeks later, that he already knew about the execution of his grandfather under Josef Stalin after being outed by an informer in 1937; he got to know this by a security police dossier that he found on his grandfather.
He was always in the headlines for more good than bad; one such reason was when he handed the US a bag full of bugging devices and set plans of how the KGB had been eavesdropping on the US embassy in Moscow.
Vadim’s interaction with US envoy Robert Strauss:
Vadim was a liberal leader; we get to know them from various incidents.
A report printed in the Washington Post in 1991 gives us the account of one interaction between Vadim and US envoy Robert Strauss, where Vadim said to Robert.
I quote,” I want to give them to you and I want them turned over to your government, no strings attached, no quid pro quo, in the hope that maybe we can repay you, save you some money, maybe you can use that building again someday.”
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