Major General Vyacheslav Shironin worked for thirty-three years in the state security agencies of the USSR, and in recent years - in Russia. He headed one of the analytical centers of the KGB (Department "A"), was the deputy head of Soviet counterintelligence, and later the chief consultant to such heads of the department as Fedorchuk, Chebrikov, Bakatin, Barannikov, Stepashin. He visited all the "hot spots," including Afghanistan, Transcaucasia, Central Asia, as well as during the period of perestroika in such a "warm" point as the Baltic states of 1990-1991.