A Trip to KGB Espionage Museum, New York
In Aug 2019, we got a chance to visit the recently opened KGB Espionage Museum located at Chelsea, New York City. KGB stands for “Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security). It was the main security agency for the Soviet Union, and during the Cold War the KGB was in direct competition with the CIA and other state security agencies around the world for cultural, economic, and military dominance.
As per the New York Times, the Spy Museum is the culmination of three decades worth of collecting. The KGB Espionage Museum is the only public museum in the world that features the largest collection of Soviet KGB espionage artifacts. The museum showcases a never-before-seen collection of one-of-a-kind items, many of which are only now being made public, such as spy cameras, concealment devices, secret recorders, code machines, spy radios, killer umbrella, ring camera, and secure telephones. Visitors can explore the life of a KGB espionage agent through interacting with the artifacts on display and uncover the strategies beneath many of history’s top secret espionage operations.
Sadly, the museum closed permanently in 2020. The museum cited the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason for its closure.
