The process that you are referring to within the KGB is what historians have tended to describe as the KGB’s transition from being an instrument of terror or mass repression to a form of preventative policing: mass surveillance. The KGB had its own jargon for this approach, and called it ‘Profilaktika’. Under Yuri Andropov, who chaired the KGB from 1967 until 1982, profilaktika and the monitoring of ideologically suspect groups reached its peak thanks to the creation in 1969 of the notorious 5th Directorate within the KGB, entirely dedicated to the ‘struggle against ideological sabotage’.

In my answer, I am going to focus on the changes within the Soviet security organs. The reality was of course more complicated. A lot of factors played into this development, including the personalities of Khrushchev and his successors, ideological ideas about the role and place of Terror and class struggle in the stages of the Soviet Union's development, a yearning for international recognition and respect, and so on.

So how and why did this transition towards preventative policing occur? Most historians of this period tend to view this development as a rationalization or modernization of the Soviet repressive methods. Stalinist terror was chaotic and deeply damaging to the entire country, it was the method of a group of scared leaders who wanted to anticipate rebellion or resistance by categorically eliminating any suspect population – such as Kulaks, Volga Germans or Poles, and further setting out witch hunts by the police through quota’s and extracting forced denunciations. Surely, if there were counterrevolutionaries, they would be found sooner or later.

Already by the end of Stalin’s reign, we can observe that Terror never attained the mass scale of 1937 anymore, and became more focused on specific regional Party organizations, state institutions or specific groups. When Stalin finally died, all his powerful lieutenants had long since recognized that they inherited a mess and major reforms were needed in all spheres: foreign policy, industry, defence, agriculture, housing and so on. Policing too needed reform. In the first place, it needed to be purged from the influences of Lavrentiy Beria – Stalin’s aspiring successor who was quickly seized, escorted in the trunk of a car from the Kremlin, and tried and shot in a small cellar under the supervision of the remaining Politburo figures.

The massive police apparatus that belonged to Beria was purged and split, with the MVD carrying on as Internal Ministry overseeing regular policing, while the counterintelligence, foreign intelligence and secret police functions went to the newly established KGB in 1954. The K, from Komitet, already signified its demoted status from that of a ministry to something resorting below the council of ministers. This was especially emphasized by the addition of ‘pri Sovete Ministrov’, Under the Council of Ministers, to the official name of the KGB. Ivan Serov became its new chief, a man with experience in the Ukrainian NKVD where he had become acquainted with Nikita Khrushchev, who was already largely calling the shots in the Kremlin by that time. Loyal to Khrushchev maybe, Serov was still a man of the old Stalinist ways, having been tainted by his NKVD career.

Khrushchev initiated two moves that contributed to the KGB devising new methods of control. First was his denunciation of Stalin, and Stalinist terror. This is a very broad topic on its own, but it sparked quite some dissent both within and outside the Communist Party, and within the wider Warsaw Pact bloc and Communist world. Of course, the KGB was responsible for dealing with such dissent – but the boss had just denounced their use of terror and mass repression. Historians have generally treated the years 1956 – 1958 as a period of confusion for the KGB, partly because they were seeking for new methods to control dissent, especially as things nearly went out of control in Poland and Hungary.

Former Komsomol boss (a major Party figure) Aleksandr Shelepin took over the KGB, meaning the Communist Party was further placing the KGB on a tight leash, and began to expel Stalin-era officials. A higher educated breed of young Soviet officers, who spoke foreign languages and properly studied Marxist-Leninist theory began to fill the ranks. The KGB of the 1970’s was not the same organization anymore as the repressive organs in the 1950’s. Profilaktika became central KGB policy by 1960, defined in the KGB Lexicon as ‘‘Activities carried out by Soviet State bodies aimed at the prevention of crimes against the state, politically harmful misdemeanors, and other acts which affect the interests of the state security of the USSR.’’

In an internal KGB History Course Book, compiled in 1977 under Deputy Chairman Viktor Chebrikov (another Party figure from the Brezhnev clan) wrote about this period after 1959 that the ‘‘KGB Collegium’s role increased significantly in the development of active measures to combat hostile elements (vrazhdebnimy elementami).’’ What it means is that the KGB was becoming a more professional organization, and the ruling circles of the Communist Party allowed it to develop its own specialized security techniques. The KGB distanced itself from Stalinist terror and adopted a strategy of preventative policing in the 1960’s. Surveillance of ordinary civilians was greatly expanded, monitoring people’s opinions and private expressions about politics became a key ingredient to keeping the regime informed of any potential for unrest.

On top of that, the KGB ensured that people would know they were being watched if they threatened to cross the line of acceptable political expression. They would invite those people, often young students, to the local KGB office for a chat. Usually this was enough to deter people from actually crossing the line. Those who seemed cooperative might even be recruited to report to the KGB on others in their environment. Those who refused to back down would face an increasingly wide repertoire of coercive methods to silence them – from losing certain rights such as travel, to being confined to a mental asylum to facing a criminal trial, prison sentence or even expulsion from the Soviet Union. This was the so-called phenomenon of ‘telephone justice’, with the KGB being in such a position of authority it could telephone one’s employer or even a court judge and tell them what punishment was expected.

The 1968 Prague Spring was interpreted by KGB Chairman Andropov as evidence of how Western ideological influences were creeping into the Soviet bloc, infecting the minds of the citizens of the Socialist countries, and driving them towards dissent and ‘counterrevolution’. The KGB became ever more aware of its role in combatting this development, and created the 5th Directorate (Struggle against Ideological Sabotage) to this end. In 1972 an additional decree was introduced, ‘‘On the use of warnings by the organs of State Security in preventative measures’’, to further standardize the application of the technique throughout the entire KGB and its local bodies.

In the end, this approach served a number of benefits. It was not as damaging to the economy, it did not risk alienating and provoking large groups into violent resistance, and it was simply more effective at detecting the real ideological dissidents, separated from ordinary expressions of frustration, and deal with them in an isolated manner.

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Some works I can highly recommend if you want to know more:

Robert Hornsby, Protest, Reform, and Repression in Khrushchev’s Soviet Union (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

Julie Elkner, ‘‘The Changing Face of Repression’’ in: M. Ilic and J. Smith eds., Soviet State and Society under Nikita Khrushchev.

Louise Shelley, Policing Soviet Society: The Evolution of State Control (New York: Routledge, 1996).