I'm actually reading The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin right now. For the most part, he did not seem to do many operations. No sexy spy work. He was stationed in Dresden, East Germany and mainly involved in monitoring communications.

The book points out possibly the biggest event of his KGB career was when the Berlin Wall fell. He was at his Dresden headquarters when mobs began to surround the building. Putin, the others at the office, and his guards could not get information from Moscow on how to handle the situation, and the guards refused to do anything about the protestors until they received orders from Moscow. Nervous that the mob would overtake his building and the KGB files fall into the wrong hands, Putin calmly walked out to the fence and spoke to the protestors, saying (and bluffing) that if anyone came toward the building the guards had orders to shoot. He then turned around and walked inside, and the crowd dissipated.

I have a somewhat related question, considering that Putin worked in a pretty high position on the Soviet Union, how was/is Putins relationship to the Soviet ideology/communism ?

An excellent source on this topic is "Putin's Kleptocracy," by Karen Dawisha.

Her conclusion regarding Putin's time in the KGB is that, ultimately, there is very little of which we can be sure. While the official Russian position is that Putin was a relatively low-level staff member who spent his Cold War years behind a desk, there is sufficient evidence to believe that this is a falsification. However, exactly what he was doing from his post in East Germany remains a mystery.

Putin was well connected with individuals in the KGB who in the 1980's oversaw the foreign investment of Soviet state funds, with the goal of learning and employing capitalist principles to maximize the revenue streams of Soviet oil and gas exports. When the Soviet Union collapsed, these men were in prime position to seize the reins of power through control of Russia's foreign accounts.

Is there any truth to the notion he had a role in the KGB attempted seizure of Gorbachev's authority, which Yeltsin blocked with his famous speech atop the tank?