Russian FAPSI Signals Intelligence "For Distinction in Labor" Medal – Rare Original Issue

Description

Original Item – Only One Available. A rare departmental award of FAPSI, the Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information, the agency history remembers as Russia's answer to the NSA. Carved out of the KGB's legendary 8th and 16th Chief Directorates when the Soviet Union dissolved, FAPSI concentrated the country's signals intelligence, cryptography, government communications, and information security under one roof from 1991 until 2003, when its functions were divided among the FSB, FSO, and SVR. The medal For Distinction in Labor rewarded the agency's civilian and military specialists, the cryptographers, analysts, and communications engineers whose work never left the building.

FAPSI material occupies the same shelf as the KGB 8th and 16th Directorate badges, the communications-intelligence corner of Chekist collecting where demand is steady, supply stopped in 2003, and the labor-distinction awards to the technical staff are the pieces that never seem to come up. For collectors of SIGINT and cryptographic services, government communications, or the post-Soviet security agencies in general, this is a clean, correct example of an award from an agency that no longer exists.