B y 1940, joseph stalin (1879–1953) sat atop a totalitarian system that gave him unchallenged control of the Soviet Union. The ideological fervor and effort to spread the communist faith around the world during the first years after the revolution of 1917 had given way to consolidation of power at home and a foreign policy in which protection of national interests was the main priority. Brutal purges of the late 1930s had demonstrated the price of disloyalty, or even suspicion of disloyalty, to Stalin. As recently as July 1940, the head of military intelligence had been removed (and was later shot) after disagreeing with Stalin. All of this had implications for the bureaucratic structure of intelligence that supported Stalin's decision making. There were two main intelligence organizations. The civilian service was reorganized multiple times and had several different names, but from the mid-1930s through the mid-1940s, it was usually referred to as the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs ( Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del ; NKVD). The military service was the Chief Intelligence Directorate ( Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye ; GRU) of the General Staff. Both used sympathy for Communism and effective tradecraft to forge a system that was one of the best collectors of information in the world at that time. There were Soviet spies in crucial positions in the United States, Britain, and even Nazi Germany (although at least one of the Germans would turn out to be a double agent).