GRU is the English transliteration of the Russian acronym ГРУ, which stands for "Гла́вное Разве́дывательное Управле́ние" (Glavnoe Razvedyvatel'noe Upravlenie), meaning Chief Intelligence Directorate. The GRU was created in 1918 by Lenin, and given the task of handling all military intelligence. It operated residencies all over the world, along with the SIGINT (signal intelligence) station, in Lourdes, Cuba, and throughout the former Soviet bloc countries, especially in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... There exist many possible systems for transliterating the Cyrillic alphabet of the Russian language to English or the Latin alphabet. ... Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations formed from the initial letter or letters of words, such as NATO and XHTML, and are pronounced in a way that is distinct from the full pronunciation of what the letters stand for. ... 1918 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... Vladimir Ilyich Lenin ( Russian: Влади́мир Ильи́ч Ле́нин  listen?), original surname Ulyanov (Улья́нов) ( April 22 (April 10 ( O.S.)), 1870 – January 21, 1924), was a Russian revolutionary, the leader of the Bolshevik party, the first Premier of the Soviet Union, and the founder of the ideology of Leninism. ... Military espionage, or military intelligence (MI), is a military discipline that focuses on information gathering, control, and dissemination about enemy units, terrain, and the weather in an area of operations. ... SIGINT stands for SIGnals INTelligence, which is intelligence-gathering by interception of signals, whether by radio interception or other means. ... The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (Russian: (СССР)  listen; tr. ...

The GRU was totally independent of most other power centers in the Soviet Union, most famously the CPSU and KGB. At the time of the GRU's creation, Lenin ordered the Cheka (predecessor of the KGB) not to interfere with the GRU's operations. The rivalry between the GRU and KGB was even more intense than the rivalry between the FBI and CIA. For other usage of the initials CPSU see CPSU (disambiguation). ... The Committee for State Security, or KGB, (Russian: Комите́т Госуда́рственной Безопа́сности; Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti  listen), was the name of the main Soviet Security Agency and intelligence agency, as well as the main secret police agency from March 13, 1954 to November 6, 1991. ... The Cheka (ЧК in Russian) was the first of many Soviet secret police organizations. ... The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is a Federal police force which is the principal investigative arm of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). ... CIA, see CIA (disambiguation). ...

The existence of the GRU was not publicized during the Soviet era. It became widely known in Russia, and the West outside the narrow confines of the intelligence community, during perestroika, in part thanks to the writings of "Viktor Suvorov" (Vladimir Rezun), a GRU agent who defected to Britain in 1978, and wrote about his experiences in the Soviet military and intelligence services. According to Suvorov, even the Communist Party general secretary couldn't enter GRU headquarters without going through a security screening. A compass rose with West highlighted West is most commonly a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. ... The Intelligence Community of the United States is an organization of several executive branch agencies within the federal government that are responsible for foreign and domestic intelligence, military planning, and espionage. ... Perestroika  listen (Перестро́йка) is the Russian word (which passed into English) for the economic reforms introduced in June 1987 by the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. ... Categories: People stubs | 1947 births | Defectors | Russian writers | Ukrainian people ... Categories: People stubs | 1947 births | Defectors | Russian writers | Ukrainian people ...

The GRU still remains to this day a very important part of the Russian Federation's intelligence services, especially since it was never split up like the KGB was.

In 2002, Bill Powell wrote Treason, an account of the experiences of former GRU colonel Vyacheslav Baranov. Baranov had been recruited by the CIA, but was betrayed by a mole in either the FBI or CIA and spent five years in prison before being released. The identity of the mole remains unknown to this day, though some speculation mounted that it could have been Robert Hanssen. 2002 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Robert Hanssen Robert Philip Hanssen (born April 18, 1944) was an FBI agent who was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, later Russia. ...

See also

• Farewell Dossier

The Farewell Dossier was a collection of documents containing intelligence gathered by a Soviet defector named Colonel Vetrov, code-named Farewell, in the Cold War. ...

External links

• GRU Info (http://www.fas.org/irp/world/russia/gru/index.html) from FAS.org
• GRU High Command and Leading GRU Officers (http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov8/25.htmlThe)