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The Soviet's main security agency, the KGB, may have broken up in 1991, but experts say its successor - the Federal Security Service or FSB - is as active now as it ever was.

From the more recent spy poisoning in the Salisbury to the 2010 arrest of alleged Russian spies in New York.

Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned to death in 2006 and the former KGB man accused Russian authorities of ordering the assassination.

This year, the KGB's secret spy Melita Norwood is back in the news with the release of Red Joan, a film inspired by her story.

But that's not all, here we look at more shocking revelations that show how the Russian security service has placed spies at the heart of British and US life since the Soviet Union was created.

Melita Norwood

(Image: PA)

In 1999 a frail elderly woman was exposed as having been a spy for 40 years. Melita Norwood lived a quiet life at her suburban home in Bexleyheath, South London, and enjoyed making chutney and tending to her garden.

But the unassuming white-haired old lady was really Agent Hola who had been recruited in 1937.

She passed secrets from her work with the Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association - a cover for Britain's top secret nuclear programme - including the plans for our atomic bomb.

Melita said: "I did what I did not to make money but to help prevent the defeat of a new system which had, at great cost, given ordinary people food and fares which they could afford, a good education and a health service."

Her story has now been made into a book and a film called Red Joan - it takes a bit of artistic licence with her tale. The true story was far less romantic and more shocking.

The Cambridge Five

(Image: Hulton Archive)

The most extensive and dangerous network ever uncovered was the Cambridge Five.

Recruited at the city's university, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and Kim Philby worked their way into the heart of the establishment - while passing secrets to their Russian bosses.

The identity of the fifth Cambridge spy has never been revealed.

Thousands of confidential documents made their way to Moscow. But in 1951 - as the net closed in on Burgess and Maclean - they were tipped off by Philby, who had been the head of British intelligence's counter espionage unit.

The pair disappeared, surfacing five years later in Moscow.

It took years before the roles of all five were revealed and decades more for the British security services to fully recover.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

(Image: Rex)

In America Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in 1953 for passing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union.

They were communists but insisted they were innocent. The couple were convicted on the evidence of Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, who admitted spying but was spared execution in return for testifying against them.

He had worked on the American nuclear programme and said his sister typed up secrets which were passed to the KGB.

But he later admitted he lied to save his own life. In 2001, Greenglass, who spent 10 years in jail, said: "I would not sacrifice my wife and my children for my sister. Every time I am haunted by it, my wife says 'Look, we are still alive'."

George Blake

(Image: Getty)

After fighting the Nazis with the Dutch Underground during the Second World War, George Blake then joined the Special Operations Executive - the precursor of MI6.

He was captured and imprisoned by communist forces during the Korean War and returned home a hero when released in 1953.

Blake was then sent to work in West Berlin where he was ordered to recruit Soviet officers as double agents - but he became a double agent himself.

During his nine-year posting, he betrayed 400 MI6 agents to the KGB. But a defector then betrayed him and he was sentenced to 42 years in prison.

In 1966 he managed to escape from Wormwood Scrubs in London and fled to the USSR.

By 1971, there were estimated to be 120 Russian intelligence officers in Britain who were working from the Soviet Embassy.

And a host of seemingly respectable establishment figures were revealed to be spies.

The Act up our Sleeves

Suave Sidney Reilly, aka the Ace of Spies, was our first spy in Russia - and a possible inspiration for James Bond.

Born in 1873 in Russia, he was named as a revolutionary and fled to London after faking his own death. After adopting a new identity and passport, he wangled his way into British high society and frequented the best casinos. Then he returned to Russia, to spy for Britain and Japan.

His exploits included strangling a foreman who caught him stealing weapons plans. He posed as a pilot at the Frankfurt Airshow and took a sophisticated generator from a German plane. And he seduced the wife of a Russian minister to get info about German weapons shipments.

In 1918 he plotted to assassinate Lenin, but was betrayed. In 1925, he was shot and killed. His legend was complete when Reilly, Ace of Spies became an 80s TV hit.

Georgi Markov



(Image: Reuters)

Bulgarian Georgi Markov defected to the West in 1969 and quickly became a critic of his country's Communist regime.

As he crossed Waterloo Bridge in London in 1978, he was jabbed with an umbrella by a passer-by.

The poison ricin had been injected into his leg and he died four days later aged 49.

Dead Drop is very much alive

The dead letter drop was the favourite way for spies to pass microfilm or letters to handlers.

A crack in a wall or a hole in a tree would be used and a secret signal would indicate that an item was ready for collection.

Aldrich Ames left chalk marks on a mail box in Washington DC to let Russian handlers know he had left a package inside.

Today, technology provides a modern equivalent. Spies can open an email account, pass on the log-in details and save an email as a draft for anyone in the cell to see. By not sending it they evade the sophisticated computers that search millions of emails in the blink of an eye.

There are even electronic dead letter boxes. Years ago the FSB accused British spies of concealing hi-tech devices inside hollowed out rocks.

The Brits would pause by one of the rocks and transmit data wirelessly or by bluetooth from a phone or PDA to the rock.

In New York, court papers show the alleged spies and their handlers passed information electronically through innocent looking "brush by" encounters. Messages were also sent via secret online networks as they surfed the web in bookstores.

Aldrich Ames

CIA counter intelligence officer Aldrich Ames was heavily in debt after a costly divorce when he decided to sell secrets to the Soviet Union.

He got $2.7million for information which led to 100 intelligence operations being compromised and the execution of at least 10 US sources.

Eventually, he gave them the name of every American agent in Russia.