An old Muscovite joke has it that when a parrot flew from its owner's apartment, the owner immediately reported the escape to the KGB. When a bemused officer asked him why, the owner replied, "Because in case the little devil shows up, I want you to know I don't share his political opinions." George Feifer, a longtime student of Soviet and Russian society, relates this joke as an example of dissident humor--but also as an indicator of how deeply entrenched the KGB was in daily life in the former Soviet Union. In this companion volume to the PBS television series, Feifer recounts the secret police agency's early days as an instrument of counterrevolutionary terror and its evolution into an organ of political action around the world.
