When Moscow launched the ambitious Operation Anadyr, the deployment of missiles and an army division to Fidel Castro’s revolutionary Cuba in the spring of 1962, the KGB played no minor role in its execution. KGB military counterintelligence (Third Directorate) was responsible for ensuring the secrecy of the movement of Soviet forces, from Odessa and the icy port of Murmansk to the Caribbean tropics. The operation would become a textbook example of Soviet maskirovka (denial and deception). Historian Aleksandr Sever recounts:

Military counterintelligence officers not only had to catch spies, but also secure the integrity of military secrets in “special conditions.” As an example we can name the operation to shift Soviet forces to Cuba.

Aleksandr Tikhonov, the deputy chief of military counterintelligence for the Pacific Fleet and the Pacific Border District, was appointed director of counterintelligence of the group of forces sent to Cuba. KGB Chairman Vladimir Semichastny explained his choice thus:

The situation is complex, and since you participated in the landing operations during the defense of Odessa, Sevastopol, and the Caucasus, the cards, as they say, are in your hands.

From the first days of Soviet military counterintelligence’s presence on Freedom Island, close relations with the Cuban organs of state security had been established.

Joint work bore its first fruits: the radio-counterintelligence service pinpointed the entry on air of an intelligence transmitter working in special regime, when the seance lasted just seconds, and the message was somehow shot out. We managed to triangulate the agent’s radio transmitter and catch CIA station chief Clement Inclan red-handed.

From the CIA officer were seized a hyper quick-acting radio transmitter, an automatic encoder of the newest modification, secret writing formulas, two Browning pistols, a Minox camera, false documents, a pen pistol, and 14,000 gold pesos. Going by their checklist for espionage information, we could conceive that the sphere of interests for US intelligence included everything. In particular, they requested clarification on “what the large and small camouflage patterns on the tunics of Soviet military instructors meant, and can personnel of tank units wear uniform shirts of the same color and cut as military instructors? Is it true that the officer corps wears patterned sport shirts rather than the soldiers?

An illegal subversive organization called the “Narciso Lopez Division” was discovered. All of Cuba had been divided into seven zones, and there was a station chief for each zone.

In the course of the operation to liquidate the Narciso Lopez Division, 237 members of the organization were seized, among them: four majors, 17 captains, and seven first lieutenants. There were uncovered nine weapons caches and larges sums of dollars and gold pesos. This operation dealt a serious blow to espionage across the entire territory of Cuba.

Simultaneously, necessary measures for keeping the deployment of Soviet forces in Cuba secret were taken. On the territory of the USSR, the transfer of forces to port cities (Sevastopol, Baltiisk, Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Odessa, and Nikolaev) was painstakingly prepared and carried out in accordance with the requirements of concealed command of forces. It’s understandable that Chekists [KGB personnel] actively participated in these operations. If Sevastopol and Murmansk were military cities closed to foreign visitors, foreign ships regularly docked in the port of Odessa.

The commands of military units also received the order to prepare and visa the travel documents of all military personnel intended to be sent to Cuba. Descriptive characteristics and other documents of the travel file had to be signed by the commander of the unit, the chief of the political department, and the “special department” [KGB military counterintelligence] officer. According to official data already published in our time, 40-60% of candidates didn’t pass selection. The reasons were various, beginning with medical ones (suitability for work in tropical climate conditions) and finishing with family circumstances. Although there were also diversions on KGB lines. For example, in the 51st missile division (commander Maj. Gen. Igor Demyanovich Statsenko), there were replaced up to 500 officers and over 1,000 soldiers and sergeants. And from five regimental commanders, three were switched out. It’s understandable the all the replacements laid a heavy burden on the shoulders of military counterintelligence officers who were servicing these units – they needed to acquaint themselves with the new men, restore their agent networks, etc.

All measures of denial and deception were used [maskirovka]. Military personnel wore civilian clothes. Loading the vehicles and equipment into echelons on the ships was done under the cover of exercises for loading and offloading in coordination with railway and sea transport. Military echelons at railway junctions were not stopped – stops were done at sections of double track and at halt points. The entire system of command of forces was executed by verbal orders, and in extreme cases, through code.

Designating the operation “Anadyr” brought to mind the North. For confirmation of this legend, crews on several ships were given skis, stoves, and overcoats. No one knew where the ships were going. The captains and chiefs of the echelons where given three packets numbered 1, 2, and 3. On the first packet was printed, “Open after leaving USSR territorial waters.” On the other two there were no inscriptions. In Packet No. 1, it said that Packet No. 2 should be opened after passing through the Bosporus and Dardanelles. Packet No. 2 instructed to open Packet No. 3 after passing through Gibraltar. In Packet No. 3 was contained the order: set course for Cuba. During crossings of the seas and oceans, when airplanes approached, the men would hide in the holds of the ships. All military hardware was also repainted gray instead of standard green.

Secrecy of movement of forces was also secured in Cuba. All ships arriving to the island were met by staff groups already at roadstead and sometimes as they approached Cuba. Because of the complex operational environment, the ships had to change their appointed ports.

Weaponry arrived under the cover of industrial shipments, inasmuch as our specialists at the time were conducting searches for oil, iron, nickel, and phosphates. Agricultural hardware was imported, as well as mechanization specialists and much else. And the military was somehow wedged into these shipments.

In those cases when it was impossible to hide armaments because of their size and configuration, for example medium-range R-12 missiles, airplanes, and helicopters, by agreement with the Cuban side, Soviet soldiers dressed in Cuban uniforms. In the newspapers it was announced that in a given region exercises were underway.

In order not to expose their identity, any type of conversation was forbidden at crossings. Troops were allowed to give only two commands in Spanish: “Adelante,” “forward,” and “Pare el coche,” “stop the vehicle.”

The men moved only at night. Places for stopping in daytime were chosen accounting for the possibility of concealment from visual reconnaissance. After the departure of a column, any objects that would reveal its presence were destroyed.

All these measures secured the concealment of movement of Soviet missiles around the island. Only on October 14th, 1962, was one of the missile installations uncovered by US aerial reconnaissance in the area of San Cristobal (Pinar del Rio province). By that time 42 missile complexes with a striking range of up to 2,000 km. were already in position. And from Cuba to the state of Florida, the distance was just 180 km. There is still one important fact about which few know. The adversary didn’t succeed in detecting the storage locations for R-12 nuclear warheads, and therefore the Americans couldn’t have destroyed them in case of combat action.

That the adversary nonetheless was able to discover the position of a missile installation was not the fault of military counterintelligence – those errors were committed by the General Staff. Namely they didn’t preliminarily and comprehensively study the geography and the natural and climate particularities of the Caribbean. The “Moscow view” of using palm fronds as natural camouflage for the missiles turned out to be mistaken. Among the commanders of the missile regiments on the island, there arose the serious problem of selecting locations for placement pf the missile installations. Another problem was the deficit of engineering hardware and sapper units.

Work Translated: Север А. История КГБ. Москва: Алгоритм, 2008. – Щит и меч. К 90-летию ВЧК.

Translated by Mark Hackard

Directorate S, also known as the Illegals Directorate, was the elite of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate (Foreign Intelligence). Journalist Konstantin Kapitonov was able to interview one of its chiefs, Lt. Gen. Vadim Alekseevich Kirpichenko (1922-2005) about his time at the head of the Illegals Directorate during the 1970s.

In March of 1974 Kirpichenko was called to Moscow to report to KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov. With discretion Andropov asked about what was happening in Egypt and how Soviet-Egyptian relations would unfold.

The briefing took place in the Kuntsevo Hospital, in the very same room where Andropov spent no minor part of his life, and to where Kirpichenko subsequently often had to go for the resolution of ongoing service matters.

Two days later Andropov again requested Kirpichenko, this time to his office at Lubyanka. The call was unexpected, since he had just met with the chairman and given a full briefing on the work of the residency in Egypt, to where he was about to return.

“At 12:00 I was invited into Andropov’s office,” Vadim Alekseevich related. “Yuri Vladimirovich shook my hand and proposed that I sit. His handshake was soft, his hand large and warm. The traditional tea with lemon in glass holders was brought in. Andropov became used to economizing on time and that of his interlocutor; he therefore immediately began with the main topic. “We deliberated,” he said, “and made the decision to appoint you the deputy chief of intelligence and the chief of Directorate S.”

In Kirpichenko’s words, for him this was a completely unexpected turn of events. The proposal, it seemed to him, wasn’t connected by any logic to his previous work. Therefore, having thought about it, he began to politely but rather decisively refuse. He thanked the chairman for his trust. he said that this was a major state post. And he emphasized that he had undergone his formation as an intelligence officer and specialist on Arab countries and Africa. He especially emphasized that his conception of illegal intelligence was weak.

Andropov didn’t like Kirpichenko’s answer. After a short pause, he firmly pronounced:

You have no choice. This is our final decision. Therefore, return to Cairo and pass on your cases. In a month begin work.

He made another pause, and then, laughing, he said:

We tested you in conditions of war and crisis situations. You didn’t flinch. You went against the current when in the Politburo we believed in Sadat. And you alone were firing off telegrams that he had sold out to the United States. You’ll endure – you have the ability, and you’ll calmly stand up to the stress.

After the conversation with Andropov, Kirpichenko went to Cairo to transfer his cases and bid farewell to friends.

From Kirpichenko’s diary:

Upon returning from Cairo, I waited a long time for a meeting with Leonid Brezhnev. The visit to the General Secretary took place on April 25th, 1974. The General Secretary was affectionate, languid, not in a hurry, and he unaffectedly told jokes. He clearly spoke at Andropov’s prompting and in his words – about how illegal intelligence is special work, that the most stoic, brave, strong people, without any weaknesses or defects, served there. The Party valued this collective, and I had been entrusted with a great task. Remembering the strict instructions given by Andropov on the way to Brezhnev – “Don’t even think about refusing the position during your meeting with the General Secretary” – I thanked him for the advice and appointment. But I myself was thinking with great apprehension about what I’d have to do, where to start, whether I’d manage, and why such a fate befell me.

Kirpichenko worked over five years in his new position, five years that flew by, in his words, momentarily. These were years of illegal intelligence’s drawing closer to the essential tasks of Soviet intelligence. They were years of tenacious searching for new forms and methods of work, the infusion of youth into the collective, of genuine creativity, humble victories, and also the grief and disappointments inescapable to any intelligence service. But fate in those years was kindly inclined: when Kirpichenko was head of the Illegals, there were no betrayals or major misfires.

***

During one of our meetings I asked Vadim Alekseevich to tell something interesting from the life and work of illegals, or suggest a theme for publications. He was silent for a long time, and then said, as if of something decided long ago:

To speak on concrete matters of illegal intelligence, including in the past, is extremely difficult. This is a specially guarded subject. Preparation of a genuine illegal intelligence officer, supplying him with reliable documents, and sending him abroad for practical work is extremely arduous business and demands unheard-of efforts by specialists of various profiles. And although much about this activity is known to foreign intelligence services, I will nonetheless not risk mentioning concrete names and facts and give them my evaluation. Information that left us and leaked through various channels to the West and the East is one matter, but statements by the former director of the Illegals are another.

And nonetheless, what kind of people were they, the illegals, and where did they come from?

Who is an illegal? What is illegal intelligence? Much is spoken and written about this, and there’s many fantasies and fables here… Illegal intelligence is likely intelligence in its pure form – classic intelligence. If our “legal” intelligence officer goes abroad on his own documents, the documents of our state, an illegal officer goes under foreign documents. Already he is not a citizen of our country; he’s a foreigner. And he has a different citizenship and a different nationality. Overall, over many years of training, he transformed into a person artificially created by us, a different person. He even begins to become unaccustomed to his native Russian language. And returning to Russia years later, he begins to speak with an accent.

This profession is romantic and complex. A heroic profession, I’ll risk saying. We trained illegals and train them, as Andropov liked to say, in a unique way.

If you can, in more detail…

We search for candidates and find them ourselves, selecting through hundreds and hundreds of people. The work is indeed one-of-a-kind. In order to become an illegal, a person should possess many qualities. Bravery, focus, a strong will, the ability to quickly forecast various situations, hardiness to stress, excellent abilities for mastering foreign languages, good adaptation to completely new conditions of life, and knowledge of one or several professions that provide and opportunity to make a living. Enumeration of personal qualities necessary for an illegal intelligence officer could be continued into perpetuity.

And so, finally, you have found a suitable person. What next?

Even if a person who has the attendant training and the enumerated characteristics to one or another degree, this in know way means that he’ll make an illegal officer. Some certain traits of nature are also needed, ones that are elusive and hard to transmit into words, a special artistry, an ease of transformation, and even a certain well-controlled inclination to adventure, some kind of reasoned adventurism.

The transformation of an illegal into another person is often compared to the role of an actor. How is it in reality?

It’s one thing to become someone else for an evening or a theatrical season. And it’s something totally different to turn into someone who once lived or a specially “constructed” person, to think and dream in another language and not think of oneself in the real dimension. Therefore we often joke that an illegal going out into the operational arena could already be given the rank of people’s artist.

The labor of an illegal intelligence officer is incomparable with the work of an officer in a regular residency. However tense the day of an intelligence officer working, say, under the cover of an embassy might be, in the evening he nonetheless returns to his family and forgets the day’s worries. An illegal has no native “cover,” no place where he can relax and forget himself, and often there’s no family nearby. He is, as the expression has become fashionable, socially unprotected, and unprotected in general. All of his salvation is in his head and in the precise work of the Center.

How is an illegal intelligence officer trained?

Over the time of his training, an illegal acquires much: wide-ranging knowledge, in particular on political and economic matters, a few professions, foreign languages. But he also sacrifices much. In these conditions it’s difficult to arrange family affairs. A wife, children, and parents are the crown of endless complications. And one rarely manages to resolve everything more or less satisfactorily.

There’s still another moment. An illegal is trained for work cellularly by a narrow circle of instructors and trainers. Limited communications are a negative moment. We always tired to compensate the loss of contact of young illegals from remaining officers with the creation of a friendly microclimate where people would be psychologically compatible, as in a space crew on a long flight. And we succeeded in creating a friendly, family atmosphere around our illegals.

Could you name an illegal officer who made a significant contribution, so to say, to the general cause?

I could give the names of many brilliant intelligence officers. Although to calculate the significance of each is extraordinarily difficult.

Rudolf Abel (William Fisher) became well-known. He worked, of course, very hard, both in the acquisition of nuclear weapons secrets as well as collecting political information. Though perhaps some other intelligence officer acquired no less information that Abel. But Abel not only was capable of collecting information; he demonstrated tremendous bravery in prison. He gave nothing away and posed as another person. His stoic behavior in prison multiplied his glory.

There was another illegal, Iskhak Abdulovich Akhmerov. He worked before and during the war and did much. If we were to weigh what he acquired, it may be that it would turn out more than what Abel had.

Foreseeing your question, I composed a small directory on famous intelligence officers. I put Nikolai Kuznetsov in first place. A legendary, heroic person. A full-blooded Russian who mastered German to perfection and posed as a German. That already means something…

Other names: Konon Trofimovich Molody, also known as Gordon Lonsdale. He was a resident of our intelligence in England and acquired materials on NATO activity. With Lonsdale-Molody there worked the Kroger spousal pair, the Cohens, that is, Peter and Elena. He was an American Jew with roots somewhere in Belorussia. She was an immigrant from Poland. They also, by the way, worked with Rudolf Abel in the United States.

Maria de las Eras Africa, or as we called her, Maria Pavlovna. She was a Spaniard. She tied her fate to Soviet intelligence back in 1937. After the war, from 1945 to 1967, she was doing illegal work in Latin America. I was familiar with her, and participated in awarding her the Order of Lenin. Until the end of her days she trained our illegals. Colonel Africa passed away in 1988.

And if we go deeper into history, then we can list such names as Dimitry Aleksandrovich Bystroletov, Vasily Mikhailovich Zarubin, Ivan Ivanovich Agayants, Aleksandr Mikhailovich Korotkov.

They always were working “in the field.” Some of them became intelligence chiefs.

Of course, this in no way means that the people I’ve named were the most productive. To say that would mean to unintentionally offend others.

And another very important circumstance. The foreigners who worked in our intelligence service were usually adherents of socialist ideas. In the eyes of these people, even if they saw its shortcomings, the Soviet Union was at that time the one focus of these ideas. After Hitler’s coming to power, there appeared in the West even more people who helped Soviet intelligence.

At the beginning of the discussion you said that in materials on intelligence there are many fantasies and fables…

Yes, there’s a lot of that. Especially in recent years. Including various types of defectors and traitors. These people asserted that illegal intelligence was the structure of the KGB that carried out acts of retribution, killed traitors, poisoned, shot, and stabbed with umbrellas. Indeed, in the far-off 1930s, Soviet intelligence, including the illegals, was charged with actions to destroy opponents of the regime and enemies of the state. These cases are well-known. Take just the assassination of Leon Trotsky, which was prepared and executed by Soviet intelligence. But now there’s nothing like that.

***

Heading up illegal intelligence, Kirpichenko often had to see off young spousal pairs to their missions and regularly meet with mature officers and veterans who became educators to their young colleagues. Most of all the worries came with the rookies. Problems of their training, their family affairs, their documentation as foreigners, and employment abroad. Sometimes he had to act in the unusual role of either a priest or director of registry to sanction a marriage.

Young illegals being sent on their missions reminded him of people who, having just learned how to swim, are immediately sent far out to sea. Additionally, it was never known whether they’d have the strength to overcome the long distance. And all those who worked with the young illegal or married pair at the Center could not escape their anxiety and alarm until the illegals sent the signal that they reached their destination and that everything was fine.

“For me the years working in illegal intelligence were a time of the highest moral-psychological tension, when it seemed that your nervous system was on the brink of the impossible,” admitted Vadim Alekseevich to me one time. “Neither before nor after have I experienced such stresses.”

Kirpichenko didn’t have to work in this field for too long. But for his whole life, there remained a great satisfaction from work in an extraordinary unit of Soviet intelligence as well as enormous respect for all of his comrades and colleagues in this difficult trade. And especially, of course, for the illegal apparatus – the golden resource of the KGB.

Work Translated: Капитонов, Константин. Египтолог из внешней разведки. М.: Алгоритм, 2008.

Translated by Mark Hackard

The following account of romance espionage comes from the archives of the SVR, Russia’s successor service to the Soviet KGB First Chief Directorate (Foreign Intelligence). In 1957 the KGB needed an agent with inside knowledge of NATO defense planning, and it found its source in a pretty, unassuming secretary known to us as Margaret. A “Romeo,” a male agent specializing in seduction, was sent to enlist Margaret in secret work for Soviet intelligence.

The Christmas holidays in Germany, as in all of Europe, are happy, festive ones. Children and adults are occupied by pleasant chores – buying gifts and various games. For the dinner table, traditional Christmas goose is prepared.

But in December of 1957, the KGB resident in Bonn had no time for the holidays. Already a third day he kept by his side a telegram from the Center, which said:

Take measures for the acquisition of necessary information on the latest conference of NATO countries’ chiefs of staff in Brussels on the issue of increasing the number of nuclear weapons in Europe.

By this time a list of individuals who could have possessed needed information on the latest conference of NATO countries’ chiefs of staff. At the meeting were high-level officials of the West German foreign ministry, the Chancellor’s office, several Bundeswehr generals, and two secretaries working on processing the material.

The residency had no direct approaches to these individuals, but the clock was running – the Center’s assignment was rather urgent. The resident thoughtfully examined the women’s photographs a few times each. Especially one of them – a blonde woman with large dark eyes whom he christened “Margaret.”

Residency officers managed to obtain a brief profile of Margaret: German, 30 years old, divorced, no children, very attractive appearance, not indifferent to men, but discrete in her relationships, since she would like to have a constant partner. An enthusiastic dancer who visits dance clubs. They also found the address in Bonn where Margaret lived alone.

***

From the doors of dance hall lively pairs ran in and out, cars drove up and pulled away, and the sound of laughter and music was heard.

On the opposite side of the street by a cigarette kiosk stood a tall young man in a dark overcoat and gray velour cap. He looked attentively into the faces of the people near the dance hall, especially those who entered and exited.

Unexpectedly there appeared at the door a man with an overcoat thrown over his shoulder. He disappeared among the cars in the parking lot and sometime later drove up to the exit in a large Ford, staying behind the wheel. The man by the cigarette kiosk was put on guard. Soon out through the doors came two girls and a guy in a leather jacket. All three, laughing lightheartedly, got into the car, and the Ford took off. In one of the women the observer recognized the woman for whom he was waiting. Unhurriedly he lit a cigarette from his expensive, fashionable lighter and inconspicuously looked at the photograph he had attached to his carton of cigarettes. He had no doubts – it was Margaret.

On another day “Marcello,” a handsome 33-year-old Italian, bought an enormous bouquet of roses and went to Margaret’s address. Marcello’s face was tan, his eyes dark just like Margaret’s, and on his forehead was a small scar that remained from a wound years ago, which lent him special attractiveness in the eyes of women.

Going up to the third floor of the building where Margaret lived, Marcello mentally repeated his legend one more time. He was an international journalist interested in armaments problems, lived with his mother in Koeln, and had come to Bonn for a few days to one of the editorial offices. He had seen Margaret yesterday while dancing and decided to introduce himself.

Marcello was actually an international journalist who not only worked with a multitude of newspapers and magazines, but also Soviet intelligence, with which he had already maintained close ties for several years. The profession of freelance journalist, i.e. a person not tied to work for a concrete publication, allowed him to travel freely to various cities.

Marcello stopped in front of the door, thought a moment, and then abruptly rang the doorbell. No one answered. Marcello rang a second time. Finally he heard steps, and the door opened. At the threshold, dressed in a robe, stood Margaret. Today she seemed even more attractive to Marcello, although she was just in her homewear.

“Whom are you seeking?” said the young woman with surprise and curiosity as she looked at the tall, handsome man, at his tanned face and the small, hardly noticeable scar on his forehead. But most of all her glance stayed on the large bouquet of roses.

“Whom are you seeking?” she repeated her question, not letting her eyes off the tender white and pink petals.

“You,” said Marcello. He removed his cap and smiled, which made his face more welcoming.

“Me?” Margaret asked with even more surprise and embarrassment.

“Yes, you.”

“But I don’t know you, I’m seeing you for the first time…”

“That you don’t know me is true, but that you’re seeing me for the first time is not. Yesterday I danced with you.”

“I danced with many people yesterday, but I don’t remember you,” Margaret said quietly. Then, already completely embarrassed, she asked, “And the flowers are for me?” And suddenly, stumbling, she pronounced speedily: “Why are we standing at the door? Come into the apartment.”

Margaret invited Marcello into a small dining room furnished with taste, offered him a seat in a chair, poured some water and put the flowers into a vase. She set the teapot in the kitchen, and apologizing, went to change clothes. A few minutes later they were already sitting at the table drinking coffee. With unconcealed curiosity Margaret would look first at Marcello, then back at the flowers standing between them.

“So you say,” Margaret continued the interrupted conversation, “that you danced with me yesterday. Perhaps. But how did you find out my address?”

“I liked you so much that I decided to wait until you left the hall, took a taxi and followed behind your car.”

And Marcello described Margaret’s companions and the car in which they were traveling in detail.

“But I don’t even know what your name is…” Margaret blushed.

“But I know yours,” Marcello laughed and kissed her hand.

And thus the acquaintance took place.

***

The very evening when they met, Marcello could have stayed for the night, but he consciously didn’t, returning to a hotel for the night. That Sunday they went together for a walk beyond the city, and again Marcello returned to his hotel for the night. His trips to Bonn became ever more frequent – first to the editorial office of the newspaper Anzeiger, then to another, as the relationship with Margaret became ever closer and stronger. And then when Marcello was sure that Margaret was attached to him with all her soul, he permitted himself closeness with her.

Margaret was interested in his work, and Marcello told her about his trips not only to Germany’s cities, but also to other European countries.

On one of those nights Margaret, on her part, told him where she had to be abroad, and in particular about her last trip to Brussels. Speaking about this, she noted that the general with whom she went to Brussels, and for whom she worked as a secretary, proposed that she marry him.

“But he’s much older than me.” Margaret paused and tenderly snuggled up to Marcello. “And now I don’t know what to do…”

Marcello already not for the first time repeated that he was a committed bachelor, was never married, and never planned to do so.

Discussing her upcoming marriage with Margaret, Marcello was most of all interested in the content of the session of NATO chiefs of staff, and finally asked her, if possible, to show him concrete documents on the basis of which he could prepare his articles with more plausibility, and buy him a gift with the fee.

On another day on lunch break, Margaret brought the promised documents. Unknown to Margaret, Marcello photographed them, and then she put the papers back in their previous place. The assignment had been completed.

Margaret passed Marcello a copy of the protocol of a secret conference of NATO chiefs of staff in Brussels. The balance of forces between member states of the North Atlantic bloc and their positions in relation to members of the Warsaw Pact became clear.

Having returned to East Berlin, Marcello reported to the resident about the resolution of the assignment he received and the establishment of close relations with Margaret, which allowed him to complete the mission. Unexpectedly, the resident recommended that Marcello continue and expand good relations with Margaret, taking into account her connections in NATO structures. The resident calculated that in such a way Marcello would also be able to get documents from NATO headquarters in the future.

And so that’s what Marcello did, although when returning from Bonn and considering his mission completed, he hadn’t planned on maintaining a relationship with Margaret.

The resident’s unexpected proposal simultaneously worried and delighted Marcello. He indeed liked this beautiful and intelligent woman whose even, non-capricious character was to his taste.

But Margaret, seeking to get married, wanted to have a constant companion in life, while Marcello in no way was planning on leaving bachelorhood.

“Alright,” thought Marcello as he held another bouquet of roses, “What will be will be, and time will tell…”

He knew she loved tea roses, preferring them to other colors. And in giving Margaret the flowers, he enjoyed seeing the joy in her eyes.

They often spent time together. They walked on the banks of the Rhine in Bonn. They went to Kassel, and they visited Wilhelm’s castle and the state museum of German wallpaper. The couple also went to the island Neuwerk by Hamburg, which could be reached by cart across the sea during low tide.

The years passed. Margaret and Marcello’s relationship became ever stronger, and the two spent ever more time together. Marcello practically brought Margaret into full-time work for Soviet intelligence, not revealing all his cards and partially still keeping her “in the dark.” The resident turned out to be right. Margaret regularly passed Marcello secret documents on the position of NATO and other blocs created on US initiative. He requested them under the guise of writing articles for his publications. Blinded by love, she didn’t think too much over their true purpose. And sometimes Marcello would show her “his” articles on the subject in major West German newspapers and magazines, and if they were under different names, he explained that those were his journalistic pseudonyms. For honorariums he’d bring Margaret presents.

Consequently, for many years Soviet intelligence possessed the ability to receive documentary information not only on NATO structures, but also secret documentary information on the activity and intentions of the governments of West Germany and West Berlin.

One day Marcello, leaving for his next trip, gave Margaret a small turtle as a reminder of their time together. He named it after her.

But everything in life comes to its end. Because of numerous circumstances Marcello was not in Bonn for a long time, and when he again arrived in to the city, he found out that Margaret finally married the old general and moved to a different apartment. Departing, she didn’t forget to bring the little turtle with her.

Work Translated: Очерки истории российской внешней разведки: В 6 т.
Т. 5 : 1945 — 1965 годы. М.: Международные отношения, 2003, 768 с., ил.

Translated by Mark Hackard.

Pavel Anatolyevich Sudoplatov, chief of NKVD special operations in World War II, gives a strategic overview of Soviet intelligence in the years leading up to the second military cataclysm that would devastate Europe in the twentieth century.

The role of the organs of state security in Soviet history can only be evaluated after the Soviet Union ceased to exist. After Lenin’s death the country’s primary special service was reformed into the Unified State Political Directorate (OGPU). However, as before, it remained the apparatus for enacting political repression both inside the country and abroad. Alongside this, it is very important to understand the repression was viewed by the Party and Soviet leadership as a necessary, forced action, the goal of which was the suppression of political opposition and the strengthening of the Soviet state.

Simultaneously the OGPU became what was uncharacteristic of the Cheka. It carried out the critical mission of providing information-analytical services to the country’s leadership. From the 1930s to the 1950s, without a corresponding conclusion by the OGPU-NKVD-MGB on the “factual,” as Lenin said, “state of affairs,” the Soviet leadership, as a rule, would not make any decisions on the cardinal questions of internal and foreign policy.

The creation of foreign intelligence in the state security organs was dictated primarily by the necessity of carrying out counterintelligence work among the emigration abroad. Therefore, all operations against the emigration were initially executed by the OGPU’s counterintelligence section under the leadership of Artur Artuzov. And it is no accident that Artuzov, the chief of counterintelligence in 1930, replaced Mikhail Trilisser at the post of chief of foreign intelligence. Up to 1939 foreign intelligence was carrying out counterintelligence missions abroad as the main direction of its activity.

Only in 1941, after the creation of the People’s Commissariat of State Security (NKGB) and the organization of the First Directorate (Intelligence) within its structure, was Soviet intelligence assigned the main missions of obtaining information about the intentions of the governments of leading capitalist nations, finding out the political plans of bourgeois states, and the acquisition of new technologies for Soviet industry by way of agent networks.

Soviet intelligence also was to “actively back” the measures of USSR foreign policy as a major world power. But along with this there also continued the work begun in the GPU’s counterintelligence departments, that of detecting conspiracies and subversion directed against the USSR by foreign states, their intelligence services and general staffs, as well as anti-Soviet political organizations, and uncovering espionage and terrorist activity of foreign intelligence services on the territory of our country.

The shift in missions was tied to the fact that by the beginning of 1941, i.e. on the eve of the war, the defeat of terrorist, rebel, and other anti-Soviet emigre organizations was basically completed. One can judge and ordain regarding the methods of this struggle, however, it is obvious that the active opposition, wishing war against the USSR and calling for cooperation with the leading capitalist powers, was decapitated. In particular, the leadership of the Russian Military Union (ROVS) was liquidated. It was wholly disorganized and already could play no noticeable political role in a Soviet-German war. Such an effect was also obtained after the liquidation of the top echelon of the Ukrainian nationalist movement (OUN).

Dealing preventive blows to the leaders of the OUN and ROVS in the 1930s, Soviet intelligence subsequently deprived the emigration of the trust of leading capitalist states, i.e. the help that the intelligence services and military circles of Western nations were counting on as they planned a future military clash with the Soviet Union. For the leadership of Western intelligence services, it was completely obvious that staking hopes on an emigration weakened by us in its fight against the USSR, although important and capable of bringing damage to our country, nevertheless had no prospects. In a military struggle with the Soviet Union, they could depend only upon their own forces.

The Achilles’ Heel of Foreign Intelligence on the Eve of the War

The creation of agent networks and the use of agents of influence abroad that were based on the Comintern allowed us to resolve the important mission of obtaining needed information on the intentions of the opponent. Along with that it is worth keeping in mind that since diplomatic relations were limited and the rights of Soviet ambassadors abroad before 1939, especially before Molotov, were enormous and incomparable with the rights of ambassadors in the 1940s and 1950s, the importance of intelligence channels assumed special significance for the preliminary study of a number of major foreign policy actions executed by the Soviet government to strengthen the role of the USSR as a great power.

We must say that coordination of the activities of the organs of foreign intelligence and special services was always the Achilles’ Heel of the Soviet state. Initially the role of coordinator of the work of military intelligence, the OGPU, the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, the Comintern and intelligence abroad was carried out by M. Rozenberg, official of the Party’s Central Committee and known as the first representative of the Soviet Union at the League of Nations as the deputy to its secretary, as well as the first ambassador of the USSR to republican Spain. But the issue of coordination of intelligence activity came not to assigning someone certain missions supplementary to the functions of military intelligence, the OGPU, and diplomacy, or to maintain competition between the special services. The reality at the time was that in the main capitalist countries in the 1920s and 1930s, unified residencies of the OGPU and Red Army intelligence were active, with both closely cooperating with the Department of International Liaison – the illegal apparatus of the Comintern. During the first phase this helped create a powerful foreign agent network. However, the unified Red Army-NKVD residencies on the eve of the war, and when it began, proved very vulnerable. Cut-outs and couriers sometimes knew agents that belonged to various Soviet special services. And the failures of Soviet intelligence at the end of the 1920s and beginning of the 1930s in Poland and China made us completely reject work structured within unified military-political intelligence residencies in 1939.

A crucial moment for understanding events of that time was the correlation of military intelligence’s activity with that of foreign intelligence. Let us take the fate of the famed chief of Soviet intelligence who came from counterintelligence, Artur Artuzov. It is somehow written in passing that Artuzov, in operational correspondence “Alekseev,” headed both the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army and INO (Foreign Department) of the OGPU. How did this happen? After the failures in Europe and China, the national leadership looked for the most suitable form of coordination of intelligence activity.

In 1930 the Bureau for Coordinating Intelligence Activity with Rozenberg at its head was dismantled. At that time at a session of the Central Committee’s Politburo, the activity of Soviet foreign intelligence was subjected to a multifaceted critical analysis; moreover, the OGPU’s work “outside the cordon” received an unsatisfactory evaluation. After the disclosure of Blyumkin’s treachery, Trilisser was replaced with Artuzov. In light of the change in foreign policy environment, the decision was made to review priorities in intelligence work. The White emigre movement, opposition to which was the main mission of the OGPU in the 1920s, ceased to present a first-degree threat to the USSR.

The creation of dependable agent networks, their penetration of the vital objects of bourgeois states, and their capability to attain reliable information of a political, economic, and scientific-technical nature were recognized as the most critical directions in the work of the OGPU Foreign Department (INO). In 1933 the structure of the the OGPU’s INO central apparatus was delineated.

In 1934 at the Politburo, the issue of the work abroad of the Soviet special services – the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army and the OGPU Foreign Department – was again raised. To develop a plan for special operations abroad, there was formed a permanent commission of the chiefs of these services. The chief of the OGPU INO Artuzov was appointed to simultaneously be the deputy chief of Red Army intelligence.

In 1934 in the USSR, there existed four independent intelligence services. These were the NKVD INO, the Red Army Intelligence Directorate, the Comintern Department of International Liaison, and the Special-Purpose Special Group (SGON) of Yakov Serebryansky (“Yasha’s Group”). In these conditions Artuzov was also appointed to serve as the deputy chief of military intelligence. Why? Because the matter concerned the necessity of a cardinal strengthening of counterintelligence coverage for our intelligence work abroad. Artuzov’s experience and his knowledge of the Russian emigration, which was one of the main sources of formation of our agent networks, were most of all needed during this period. Soon Artuzov was replaced by Avram Slutsky as the chief of the INO. Artuzov would return to the NKVD again in 1937 as a consultant, a rank-and-file officer.

Let’s take the period of repressions. After all, it is not accidental that in 1937 the Red Army Intelligence Directorate was led by Senior Major of State Security Gendin. The fact of the matter is that because he headed military counterintelligence at one time, Gendin had a rather good conception of the work of the military intelligence apparatus and knew of compromising materials on its main officers. During the war years we also searched for forms of organizational cooperation in intelligence work, both along the lines of state security and military intelligence.

I had the occasion to head not only the Fourth Directorate of the NKVD-NKGB, known as the sabotage-intelligence directorate, but also simultaneously throughout the course of the whole war, with the exception, it seems, of six months in 1942, be the deputy chief of all foreign intelligence for state security right up to June of 1946. This was required by the necessity to coordinate the activity of the special services, since work against the opponent behind enemy lines was based on the use of the entire potential of human intelligence, operational, and technical possibilities of the NKVD-NKGB both inside the country and abroad.

Work Translated: Судоплатов П. А. Разные дни тайной войны и дипломатии. 1941 год. — М.: ОЛМА-ПРЕСС, 2001.

Translated by Mark Hackard.

Soviet intelligence experts Aleksandr Kolpakidi and Dmitry Prokhorov tell of the Soviet-Yugoslav split in 1948 and its fallout – Stalin’s plans to assassinate Yugoslavia’s Communist leader, Josip Broz Tito.

The establishment of Soviet control over the countries of Eastern Europe in the postwar years took place in a very tense environment. But if Communists of the Stalinist interpretation in Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Albania attained total victory, in Yugoslavia the triumphal march of Stalinism didn’t happen. As a result, at the end of the 1940s relations between the USSR and Yugoslavia were so poisoned that Soviet intelligence received the order from Stalin to liquidate Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito by any means.

The conflict between Stalin and Tito began in 1948, when the latter refused to support the idea of creating a Bulgarian-Yugoslav federation. Not used to meeting resistance, Stalin became enraged. Soviet military advisors were recalled from Yugoslavia, and at a session of the Cominform (successor to the Comintern that was dissolved in 1943) in June of 1948 in Bucharest, Andrei Zhdanov read out the report “On the position of the Yugoslav Communist Party,” in which it was personally written by Stalin:

Tito, Kardel, Djilas, and Rankovic bear full responsibility for the created situation. Their methods are from the arsenal of Trotskyism. Policy in the city and in the countryside is wrong. Within the Communist Party such a shameful, purely Turkish terrorist regime is shameful and intolerable. Such a regime should be brought to an end.

Later, already at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchev said that Stalin, having lost his sense of reality, announced the following:

It’s enough for me to move my little finger, and Tito will be no more.

But time went by, and Tito continued to live and conduct his policies. By that fact many had the opportunity to be convinced that Stalin was far from all-powerful, which he could not in any way allow. Consequently, in the MGB the secret files “Vulture” and “Nero” were initiated, where materials compromising Tito were gathered.

Yet the execution of an operation to liquidate Tito was hampered by the circumstance that the counterintelligence department of the Yugoslav Directorate for State Security (UDB), headed by General E. Sasic, had practically eliminated Soviet intelligence’s agent networks across the entire territory of the country. And so were arrested the Yugoslav military attache in Moscow, B. Polyanets, and his men, UDB officers M. Perovic, S. Pavic, and S. Stojlkovic, all recruited by the MGB. Later, the overseer of the military department of the Croatian Communist Party’s Central Committee, General R. Zigic, as well as Deputy Minister of Heavy Industry M. Kalafatic; Yugoslav Army General Staff officers J. Korda and A. Zoric; Cominform employees N. Kovacevic, D. Ozren, and A. Stumpf; and an entire number of Yugoslav Communists who supported Moscow. In all from 1948 to 1953, there were 29 Soviet agents arrested in Yugoslavia.

But despite the complex operational environment in Yugoslavia, Stalin was unsatisfied that preparations for the operation to liquidate Tito weren’t moving forward. Sensing his annoyance, Beria and Sergei Ignatiev, who replaced Viktor Abakumov as Minister of State Security, began to feverishly search for a way to the quickly carry out the directive the leader of peoples had given.

As a result, by late autumn of 1952, several options for removing Tito had been developed, and all of them were connected with using agent “Max,” an MGB illegal who had in his time participated in the liquidations of Andres Nin in Spain and Leon Trotsky in Mexico. Soon Stalin was sent the following document, handwritten on a single copy:

The USSR MGB asks permission to prepare and organize a terrorist act against Tito with the use of illegal agent “Max” – Comrade Grigulevich I.R., citizen of the USSR, member of the CPSU from 1950 (form attached).

Max was sent by us to Italy on a Costa Rican passport, where he was able to win the trust and enter a circle of diplomats from South American countries and notable Costa Rican figures and businessmen who were visiting Italy.

Using these connections, on our assignment Max attained nomination to the post of Extraordinary and Authorized Emissary of Costa Rica in Italy and simultaneously in Yugoslavia. Carrying out his diplomatic duties, in the second half of 1952, he visited Yugoslavia twice, where he was well-received, had access to circles close to Tito’s clique, and received a promise of a personal audience with Tito. The position occupied by Max at the present time allows us to use his possibilities for the execution of active measures against Tito.

At the beginning of February of this year, we called Max to Vienna, where we organized a meeting with him in clandestine conditions. In the course of discussing his possibilities, we asked Max how he could be most useful, accounting for his position. Max proposed undertaking any kind of effective measure personally against Tito.

In connection with this proposal, there was a discussion with him on how he conceives this, as a result of which were uncovered the following possible options of executing a terrorist act against Tito:

1) Instruct Max to gain a personal audience with Tito, during which he should release a dose of pulmonary plague from a silently acting mechanism disguised in his clothing, which would guarantee Tito’s infection and death as well as those at the premises. Max himself will not know of the organism in the applied formula. To preserve Max’s life, he will be preliminarily inoculated with an anti-plague serum.

2) In connection with Tito’s expected trip to London, deploy Max there on the mission, using his official position and good personal relations with the Velebit, the Yugoslav ambassador in England. Max could get to the reception at the Yugoslav embassy, which, as should be expected, Velebit will hold in honor of Tito.

Carry out the terrorist attack by means of a silent shot from a mechanism masked by an everyday item, simultaneously releasing tear gas to cause panic among the guests in order to allow a favorable environment for Max’s retreat and the concealment of a trail.

3) Use one of the official receptions in Belgrade, to which are invited members of the diplomatic corpus. Carry out the terrorist attack in the same way as in the second option, assigning it to Max himself, who as a diplomat accredited by the Yugoslav government, will be invited to such a reception.

Aside from that, assign Max to develop an option and prepare the conditions of his assignment by using one of the Costa Rican representatives to present Tito a gift in the form of some valuables in a box, the opening of which would set into motion a mechanism that momentarily would emit an active toxic substance.

Max was offered again to think over and contribute suggestions as to how he could carry out the most effective measures against Tito. Conditions of communication were set with him, and it was agreed that he will be given additional orders.

We would consider it expedient to use Max’s possibilities for committing a terrorist act against Tito. By his personal qualities and work experience in intelligence, Max is suitable for carrying out such a mission.

Your agreement is requested. (15)

There is no resolution of Stalin’s on this document. But as Sudoplatov, at that time the chief of MGB Bureau No. 1 responsible for commando operations abroad, recalls, in February 1953 Stalin called him to the Kremlin to comment on this assassination plan against Tito. Here is what he writes about it:

Stalin handed me a handwritten document and requested me to comment on it. This was the plan for the assassination on Marshal Tito. I had never seen this document earlier, but Ignatiev clarified that the initiative came from Ryasnoi and Savchenko, deputy ministers of state security…

I told Stalin that naive methods of liquidation were proposed in the document, methods which reflect incompetence in preparation of the plan… I said that Max is not suitable for such an assignment, since he was never a fighter or terrorist. He had participated in the operation against Trotsky, against an agent of the Okhrana in Lithuania, and in the liquidation of Trotskyite leader Andres Nin in Spain, but only with the mission of securing combatants’ access to the object of attack. Aside from that, it didn’t follow from the document that direct access to Tito would be guaranteed. Whatever we thought of Tito, we should have approached him as a serious opponent who took part in combat operations during the war years, and who will undoubtedly keep presence of spirit and repulse the attack. I cited our agent “Val,” Momo Jurovic, a major-general in Tito’s guard. According to his reports, Tito was always on guard over the tense internal situation in Yugoslavia…

However, Stalin interrupted me, and turning to Ignatiev, said that the matter must be thought over again, taking into account internal “squabbles” in the Yugoslav leadership. Then he looked at me intently and said that since this mission is important for strengthening our positions in Eastern Europe and our influence in the Balkans, we must approach it with exceptional responsibility in order to avoid the failure that occurred in Turkey in 1942, when the assassination on German ambassador Von Papen was aborted. (16)

After the session at Stalin’s, there began preliminary study of the operation. Grigulevich, who received the order from Moscow to prepare for the terrorist act, was obliged to write a letter to his wife in case of failure, which would fall into the hands of Tito’s security service. In this letter, as in a similar one written by Mercader before the assassination of Trotsky, the version was expounded that this was the act of a loner who had committed the attack for political reasons. It is difficult to imagine what Grigulevich felt at that time, as he understood perfectly well that he had no chance of escaping unscathed. But here there intervened His Majesty chance. In March of 1953 Stalin died, and the operation to liquidate Tito was cancelled by Beria, who sought to establish friendly relations with Yugoslavia.

Work Translated: Колпакиди, А. И. и Прохоров, Д.П. КГБ: Спецоперации советской разведки. М: Издательство АСТ, 2001.

Works Cited (15, 16): Судоплатов, П.А. Разведка и Кремль. М., 1997.

KGB Maj. Gen. Yuri Drozdov, the legendary chief of Directorate S (Illegals), reflects on his time as KGB resident under diplomatic cover in Beijing from 1964 to 1968. Drozdov navigates the directed chaos of Mao’s Cultural Revolution and warns Moscow that China is planning for military action against the Soviet Union.

After my return from Germany, despite positive results at work, I was unable to find a place in Illegal Intelligence’s central apparatus. I was a newcomer for them – experienced, but still a newcomer, and such men weren’t selected with enthusiasm. Along with that, the leadership at that time knew of my views on organizing work and using illegals, which was taken by certain ranking officers in 1963 warily and with caution.

I didn’t argue and was sent by the Cadres Directorate to Operational Staff Qualification Courses (USO). Training in classes and an abundance of free time gave me the possibility to verify the correctness of my views and familiarize myself with the views on organization and intelligence collection of other intelligence officers.

Time went by, and the escapades of our mail office gradually became more diverse. Someone, probably without ill intention, jokingly started tossing the Chinese newspaper Zhenmin Zhibao in Chinese into our post office box. No one in my family paid attention to it. But in the service they remembered this immediately when in 1963 at Cadres I was offered to interrupt my training and begin preparation for duty in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Why the choice fell on me, who hadn’t mastered Chinese, I don’t know, but the acute aggravation of Sino-Soviet relations required the organization of intelligence work on China, which we had ceased in 1949, among other things, having transferred our agent networks over to the Chinese security organs. We committed an impermissible error for any intelligence service to please the wishes and requests of temporary allies. The faultiness of this step has effects to this day.

The task assigned me was a difficult one. After all, from 1949 Chinese intelligence and counterintelligence officers underwent training in Soviet Russia and were frequent guests at Lubyanka. We bore our souls to them and revealed intimate secrets, but didn’t pay attention to certain peculiarities in the actions of the Chinese leadership.

Diplomats and intelligence officers specializing in China still remembered that after his coming to power, during the first parade at Tiananmen Square, Mao Zedong said to Zhou En-Lai, “So? The impossible has been enacted with Soviet help.” To which Zhou replied, “And now to hold out with their help.” “We’ll hold out, but will you be considering them permanent allies?” Mao retorted.

This seemingly harmless exchange of opinions wasn’t accidental; it reflected Mao’s true outlook. As became known in the course of following observations and data collection, just barely recovering after the last civil war and having taken power into their hands, already in 1952 the Chinese leadership launched deeply clandestine intelligence work on the USSR and prepared a packet of territorial demands on the Soviet Union. To all this were added sharp disagreements on issues of leadership and the tasks of the international communist movement, issues also burdened by relations between the heads of both countries.

Bidding me farewell to my work in Beijing, General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, chief of the First Chief Directorate, asked me to be cautious and patient, to re-check everything, to not forget the history of China and its relations with Russia, and also to remember the particulars of the Chinese psychological makeup, which largely determined their attitude to other countries and their behavior with foreigners. At the end of August 1964, I departed for Beijing.

And so I spent the years from 1964 to 1968 in China. This was perhaps the most critical time in Sino-Soviet relations. Our China specialists and the Chinese themselves called it a “good-bad” period until May of 1966, and then a “bad-bad” time.

Gradually, under the cover the USSR embassy in Beijing, there gathered a small collective of intelligence officers, who step-by-step engaged in the work of securing our leadership with necessary information. It was here that we also didn’t get by without amusing incidents. We were asked ever more often for serious political and operational information, and that demanded the introduction of significant changes in our forms and methods of activity. Not all the officers, recalling that “Russians and Chinese are brothers forever,” were ready for that. By force of circumstance, I had to prepare and carry out an operation on my own. Its results gave a positive effect. The intelligence leadership thanked me for the information, but also reprimanded me for personal participation: “Direct,” they said, “and make corrections, but don’t go yourself.” I wasn’t offended by the severity of the reaction. I should have acted that way in order have the right to guide others.

Generalizing all my experience and knowledge on relations between the China-USSR-USA triangle, I can only agree with the conclusion that Pietro Cuaronni came to in the book Russians and Chinese: The Crisis of the Communist World: the tense environment in the Far East and in Southeast Asia was a reflection of the then-conflict between the United States and Russia. This is a very serious subject for examination, but if we analyze in this light the actions of political leaders from 1945 to the present day, the underlying cause will become clearly visible. This is a warning for the future: in the course of the US psychological war against the USSR, which resulted in cranking up expenditures on military objectives, our country was dragged into an arms race, and not bringing the matter to open conflict, it went onto a path of self-destruction. The question of “who-whom” in economic war, beginning in 1946, began to actively play out in the international political arena in the largest psychological war operation in history, which had as its goal depriving the USSR of its greatest ally – the People’s Republic of China. In his article “Who Won the Cold War” (New York Times, November 1992), George Kennan confirms this.

Serving as another confirmation of this are materials from a round-table conference of American China specialists, scholars, and politicians that was held at the end of 1949 and beginning of 1950, where two questions were discussed: “Under what conditions will China move against Russia, and How to turn traditional Sino-Russian enmity to the North.”

At that time in China, none of this was visible to us, but the Center sensed this and directed our attention toward Western representatives, the quantity of whom in Beijing was constantly increasing.

In the China of 1964-65, the so-called “Socialist Education Program” was well underway, which envisioned the exposure of regime opponents among supporters of “Soviet revisionism” and the preparation of the populace for participation in building socialism, taking into account the specifics of the revolution’s development in China. At that point it was hardly clear to all Chinese that this was the warm-up after the Great Leap Forward. Panic in society was growing. In the autumn of 1965, being summoned to Moscow, I flew with one of the representatives of the Swiss Labor Party who worked in a party school in Shanghai. A conversation was struck, and he let it slip that the students of this school were studying the management of great masses of the population with books published in Hitler’s Germany. And he emphasized that the Chinese were readying a new great purge of their party ranks and the entire population. The intelligence leadership directed us to closely monitor the development of the situation in the PRC.

On May 26th, 1966, Beijing University graduate student Wai Guan-Mei hung over the wall of a building her wrathful Da Zi Bao impugning a clique of Mao’s opponents, who were seeking to turn China onto a path of Soviet revisionism and American imperialism. The direction of the struggle and the enemies had been indicated. Thus began the Cultural Revolution, lasting around ten years, the goal of which was the reevaluation of the old and a search for new ways of socio-economic development of the country while preserving foreign policy attributes and a course of building socialism. If inside the country blows were dealt against supporters of Liu Shao and Lin Biao’s group, then in the sphere of foreign policy the main blow was against the USSR, although this was accompanied by loud chatter in the direction of American imperialism, which was waging war on the Vietnamese people.

I didn’t think to touch upon this subject, but the February 15th, 1992 publication in Komsomolskaya Pravda of the article “How We Kept Our Finger on the Red Button” brought me back to 1967 – the year of the greatest tension in the Sino-Soviet crisis.

In the course of 1966-67, the situation around representatives of “Soviet revisionism” continued to be strained. Several times our officers were subjected to attacks by Red Guards. I spent almost an entire night not far from the gates of the trade delegation in my new Moskvich, which was covered with glue stuck to all sorts of Da Zi Bao proclamations and its tailpipe wrapped with straw (burn, revisionist, you’ll set yourself aflame if you start the motor). The tension grew. The Red Guards treated the embassy compound to a two-week physical and sound blockade that forced us, with the help of other diplomatic missions, to carry out the evacuation of family members.

In order to lower the tension, we decided to organize solemn mourning and send off to the Motherland three Soviet air defense operators who had died in Vietnam. On the square in front of the embassy building, to the surprise of the Red Guards, we arranged a mass gathering and through a loudspeaker told all of Beijing that we were bidding farewell to our soldiers who had defended the skies of Vietnam. A car with the bodies of the fallen passed before a line of Soviet mission personnel, the gates opened, and it slowly moved toward the airport through a parting crowd of earlier-frenzied Red Guards. They more or less quieted down for a few days, and then tried to storm the embassy complex, where they overwhelmed the consulate building and burned down the porter’s booth. In the building of the embassy itself, all the first-floor windows were broken. The provocation was clearly calculated at breaking diplomatic relations. But Russian nerves proved sufficiently strong. The subsequent meeting of Kosygin with Zhou Enlai at the Beijing airport removed the acute tension for some time.

Not long before the storm of the embassy by the Red Guards, our officers were able to spend time in Hai-Lung-Chiang and Harbin Provinces and meet with our elderly fellow countrymen. One of them told how Chinese authorities had evicted him from the plot of land he owned and turned it into a giant sandbox, as seen in tactical courses at military academies. The area on the land was a representation of a section of neighboring Soviet territory. The 84-year-old Amur Cossack officer was very puzzled by this.

During a conversation, a representative of the company Krupps in Beijing called the Russians idiots who couldn’t see what was being done under their noses. He expressed concern, since he had been where Soviet citizens were no longer permitted. Krupps is steel, and steel is needed for war.

My Western colleagues who observed Sino-Soviet border relations carefully made it known that the Chinese were strengthening their group of forces on the border with the USSR.

We processed this and other data and sent reports to the Center, having set forth a request to verify the information by means of space, radio-technical, military, and border guard intelligence. No answer followed.

In the autumn of 1967 I arrived at the Center for vacation, where my direct superior announced that my reports would give him another heart attack. I was silent. In our unit I was told that an alarming report was sent to the highest levels, whence it returned with the dread resolution:

Check – if it is not confirmed, punish the resident.

They checked, and everything was confirmed. No one apologized; it wasn’t practiced.

In 1969, in the area close to the old Cossack’s plot of land, the famous armed conflict [Damansky Island] occurred.

There have been more than enough warnings made to put us on guard in recent years, as well as in relation to a series of phenomena we painfully endure today. Are we again repeating the mistakes that led to June of 1941, and are we not confirming the truth that the Russian muzhik is wise after only after an event takes place? Meanwhile, the warnings of an intelligence service are suffered at the price of the incredible labors of its officers.

All that I experienced in those tense (in every sense) years is material for a separate large book. Its time will likely come. Work in China gave me the opportunity to understand this country and even love it for its uniqueness. Many Chinese friends of mine remain there, and I hope they still remember me. Today, with much recognition I recall our ambassadors S.V. Chernovenko, S.G. Lapin, the diplomats F.V. Mochulsky, Y.I. Razdukhov, A.A. Brezhnev, and others who helped me adapt to a new country where it’s impossible for a European to dissolve in the crowd.

In the hard years of the Cultural Revolution in the PRC during the second half of the 1960s, I had good relations with diplomats from both socialist and capitalist countries. The wave of extreme nationalism that crashed on the foreign diplomatic corpus at that time brought us closer together and made us help one another at difficult moments.  One of the victims of the Cultural Revolution was Lyudmila Malova, the wife of one the diplomats from the East German embassy in Beijing and a good acquaintance of my wife. In the “Friendship” store on Wan-Fuzin Street, one of the Chinese extremists, either half-drunk or intoxicated on patriotism, seriously wounded her when he swung a meat cleaver at her lower jaw. She fell to the floor, soaked in blood, and with screams of “Death to Soviet revisionists!” he attempted to rip open her stomach, seeing that she was pregnant. Store employees managed to detain the attacker. Lyudmila Malova was immediately taken to the hospital, where she was rendered aid; the child was saved. Later she and her husband told us how she was visited in the hospital by deputy foreign minister Wan Bin-An, who expressed regret that “the wife of an East German diplomat became a victim,” but entreated her to “wear the scar she received in the fight with Soviet revisionism with pride.”

In the days of the Cultural Revolution, the embassies of Great Britain and Mongolia in Beijing were also stormed. A “solidarity” of European diplomats that naturally arose then helped the English to endure a difficult time. Apparently this explains the fact that an advisor of this embassy, Mr. Wilford, sent me and some other Soviet diplomats an invitation of Her Majesty’s Government to visit England at a convenient time. Unfortunately there wasn’t a suitable occasion for such a visit. Whatever the countries we represented, during subsequent meetings in Europe, America, or Southeast Asia, we always found a way, even in difficult matters, to come to a beneficial compromise.

At the end of my tour of duty I was sent a request by Yuri Andropov: aside from an operational report, I should also describe my impressions of work in China and the environment there. Over the course of a month I labored over my notes “Four Years in China,” setting out everything that I considered necessary. This “unique” work was read by the KGB leadership and the Politburo, Andropov told me as he returned it marked with multicolored notes and underlines. Evidently it is still is preserved somewhere in an archive, now and then reminding those interested about those far-off times. I keep a red enamel metallic sign, made by idle Red Guards, with the address of the USSR embassy in Beijing with the inscription: “Soviet Revisionist Street, No. 1.”

Work Translated: Дроздов, Ю.И. Вымысел исключен. Записки начальника нелегальной разведки. Артстиль-полиграфия. М: 2009.

Translated by Mark Hackard.

Journalist and retired Soviet military intelligence (GRU) Colonel Nikolai Poroskov provides the inside story of Swedish Air Force Colonel Stig Wennerström, who ferreted out NATO secrets for the GRU for nearly 15 years from 1948 to 1962. Poroskov relies on the first-hand testimony of Wennerström’s case officer and friend, GRU General Vitaly Nikolsky.

On June 13th, 1952, a Soviet Mig-15 interceptor shot down a Swedish Douglas DC-3 on a reconnaissance mission over the neutral waters of the Baltic Sea. There were eight crew members on board. At that time the Swedes announced that the plane was carrying out a training flight.

A half-century later, in 2003, 55 kilometers east of Gotland the Swedes uncovered the body of the airplane and raised it from a depth of 126 meters. The tail end of the vehicle was torn to pieces by machine gun fire. The bodies of four men were found; the fate of the other four has remained unknown.

This time around the Swedish side admitted that the plane was monitoring Soviet military bases. They were sharing that information with the United States and Great Britain. It was then that NATO wanted to find out as much as possible about Soviet anti-air defenses in the area of the Latvian and Estonian coasts: in the case of war US and British bombers would pass precisely through this “Baltic corridor” with atomic bombs bound for Leningrad and Moscow.

The downed plane was named Hugin after Odin’s raven that would inform him of all news across the world. In the cabin there was American and British equipment – the result of a secret agreement between neutral Sweden and NATO: hardware in exchange for the results of intelligence flights.

In Moscow the objectives of the Swedish “transport plane” coursing near the edge of Soviet territorial waters were well known. Information came from a colonel in the Swedish Air Force, Stig Erik Constans Wennerström, who worked nearly 15 years for Soviet military intelligence – the famed Main Intelligence Directorate of the Armed Forces General Staff, or simply the GRU. The airplane was also shot down on his lead.

Eagle – A Multifaceted Personality

Perhaps GRU Major General Vitaly Aleksandrovich Nikolsky, who was Wennerström ‘s handler in the two years before his arrest, knew him better than most. I met the retired General Nikolsky at the beginning of the 1990s. He came to the editorial offices of Red Star and shared recollections of war comrades in his partisan days. One day he invited me to his home and told me he was writing a book on the Swedish period of his life.

In Stockholm Nikolsky worked “under the cover” of the Soviet military attaché. In his book of memoirs Aquarium-2 (as opposed to Viktor Suvorov’s The Aquarium), he was allowed to put in a small chapter on Stig Wennerström.

Wennerström ‘s operational code name was Eagle, though Nikolsky called him Viking. On the day of establishing contact with the Soviet military attaché, Wennerström was the chief of the Air Force section of the Swedish Ministry of Defense’s Command Expedition. Stig was 54 then and looked strong, and he was always a good-humored and interesting storyteller. Aside from that, he was a master of snow and water skiing, a Swedish curling champion, a marksman, photographer, pilot, and driver. He was highly fluent in Finnish, German, and English, and proficient in French and Russian. Not counting, of course, his native Swedish and Danish. He knew how to hold himself in society.

Wennerström was a distant relative of King Gustavus VI Adolphus and even served as his adjutant for a time. Stig had a wide sphere of acquaintances in military circles and practically unlimited access to documents of state importance. He mainly gave information on NATO: plans for the defense of Northern Europe, a description of the new English Bloodhound surface-to-air missile, the basics of British anti-air defenses, characteristics of new American Sidewinder, Hawk, and Falcon air-to-air missiles, and also data on major alliance maneuvers. He also informed us of the development of the Swedish all-weather interceptor, the J-35 Draken, and the coordinates of an underground Swedish Air Force base being built in the coastal cliffs.

Stig Wennerström completed the naval academy and flying school, and he served on the staff of the Swedish Air Force. In November of 1940 he received an appointment as the air attaché to Moscow. By that time Stig, by temperament inclined toward adventurism, was already passing secret information to German counterintelligence. In 1943 Wennerström would command a squadron, and in 1944-45 he was the Swedish Air Force officer responsible for liaison with representatives of foreign air forces. In 1946 through General Reinhard Gehlen, one of the former chiefs of German military intelligence on the Eastern Front and then the founder of the Gehlen Organization (predecessor to the BND), the United States received Abwehr documents in which Wennerström was positively portrayed. After that he was recruited by the Americans. In the same year, having been at a Soviet Air Force parade in Moscow, he wrote a report on the prospects of intelligence activity on the territory of the USSR. In a word, Viking was of an extremely multifaceted nature.

Two years later, Colonel Wennerström accompanied (and minded) the Soviet military attache, Ivan Rybalchenko, for a trip around Sweden. Subsequently the Swede would recall:

As a result of our constant being together in cars, airplanes, or trains, there grew a certain likeness of friendly relations between us… Once he read out an article from a local newspaper on the modernization and strengthening of landing strips at some military airbase. He lit one of his invariable hand-rolled cigarettes, thought awhile, and then uttered, “I should confirm that in documentary form.” I laughed: “There’s an old saying: one hand washes the other.” He said, as before not looking at me, “We can pose the question another way. How much do you want for that miserable airstrip? Two thousand?” We finally agreed to five.

Sometimes recruitments go that way. Wennerström was to keep the GRU up-to-date on the course of US strategic plans and military potential. He did that so well that Soviet military intelligence accorded him the rank of major general. It’s true that this version is denied by some officers.

The Minister’s Right Hand

From April of 1952, Swedish military attaché in Washington Wennerström oversaw the purchase of armaments for his country’s Air Force and was well-informed of all that concerned American projects. Returning to Sweden in 1957, up to his retirement in 1961 he was a chief of sector under the operations department of the general staff. He was in close contact with NATO staffs in Denmark and Norway, since he taught strategy at Swedish Air Force officer school and was a major expert on disarmament issues.

But let’s return to General Nikolsky. As he told me, he established personal contact with Wennerström in October of 1960, when the Soviet military attache paid a visit to the Command Expedition for the first time. Nikolsky’s predecessor, who had worked with Stig, introduced the general as his future case officer. During the first meeting, Wennerström quite simply took out of his safe one-and-a-half dozen photo cassettes. On the films were technical descriptions of the US Hawk missile, which the Swedes had recently acquired. Nikolsky was even somewhat dismayed. He had to shove the film rolls into his pockets.

For half a year – until the spring of 1963 – Viking passed his Soviet handler several thousand slides of special “Shield” film supplied him by the GRU, with operational documents on military, military-political, and military-economic matters. This film couldn’t be developed without special processing by chemicals known only to the GRU’s laboratory. It’s true that later this didn’t turn out quite that way: after Wennerström’s arrest, Swedish counterintelligence officers selected the chemical within a few days. However, no one could deny that the materials reached the GRU before then made it to the desks of high-ranking Swedish officials. The safes at the defense staff were open for Soviet military intelligence.

Especially valuable was Wennerström’s information on US and British missile weaponry intended for supply to the Swedes. In General Nikolsky’s words, all 47 regiments of the Swedish Army were studied up and down by the GRU residency. Their level of training was precisely known, as were their contacts with NATO staffs. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Wennerström gave details of the US Navy’s shift to combat readiness and the entry of a formation of US submarines into the North Atlantic – possibly for blocking Soviet ships on the way to Havana.

To pass this message, Stig called the Soviet embassy military attaché’s office directly and invited Nikolsky to a restaurant not far from the Command Expedition. It was risky, but a refusal would be even more suspicious for audio surveillance, and the general agreed. In the restaurant the Soviet handler didn’t hold back: “If we are going to observe tradecraft this way, then I’ll have to leave the country in 24 hours, and you’ll be in prison for life.” Stig then laughed and said that contacts of the Soviet military attaché with local residents were under his personal control. Indeed, the Command Expedition monitored contacts with foreign military attaches, fulfilling the functions of military intelligence and counterintelligence.

Games of Risk

The transfer of a cassette with film in one direction and monetary reward and orders from the Center in the other took place at many diplomatic receptions. Sometimes written instructions by the Center were passed through Soviet cigarettes. Vitaly Aleksandrovich was always afraid of mixing up the special packs with normal tobacco. Once, during a movie showing, Wennerström passed over ten cassettes in the presence of the chief of Swedish counterintelligence (How’s that for intelligence humor?!). In the practice of espionage, this is possibly a singular case.

Problems with tradecraft continued. One day Wennerström, in his service car with a red light and siren, drove straight up to the house where his handler lived. He needed to immediately hand over the layout of the government’s command center and defense staff for a state of emergency, although transfer of these documents didn’t require any hurry. There was a case when Viking intercepted his handler on the way to work. Nikolsky even threatened to report Wennerström’s lack of discipline to the Center and refuse to work with him at all. That frightened Wennerström; he didn’t want to part ways with the GRU.

Viking’s compensation was a quarterly 12,000 Swedish Kroner denominated in hundreds. Larger notes were closely controlled by fiscal agencies. In Nikolsky’s opinion, the sum was not large, taking into account the value of Viking’s information. A rather large bag with new cassettes and money were left by the handler, for example, in the medicine cabinet of his own apartment, where he invited Swedish officers. The keys were in the hands of only two initiates. The same type of medicine cabinet was also at Wennerström’s villa.

In the spring of 1961, Stig was knocking on 55 years, the age limit for a colonel. He didn’t have any prospects of becoming a general, and he was set to retire. According to the law, even the king couldn’t leave him in the army. He was losing access to valuable documents. Afraid that the GRU would reject his services, Viking launched energetic activity, having forgotten completely about tradecraft. With Stig’s retirement, there was no more official excuse for meetings with his handler. Nikolsky assigned him the selection of three dead drops in a city park for the exchange of microdot messages. Signals for loading and unloading the “cargo” were agreed to be placed at spots on the way from the Soviet military attaché’s house at No. 2 Linneigatan to the Soviet embassy at No. 12 Villigata.

Exposure

Every intelligence officer, especially a major one like Stig Wennerström who worked for Soviet military intelligence for almost one-and-a-half decades, has a number of blank spots and untold stories in his biography. And many versions, guesses, speculations, and fantasies, including in relation to how he was blown.

Yes, Maj. Gen. Nikolsky admitted, Stig clearly flouted tradecraft. The likely reason was his character, adventurous by nature. Wennerström’s position in the country’s military hierarchy was likely another reason for his recklessness. Stig, we will remind you, served in the Command Expedition’s department carrying out contacts with foreign military attaches and fulfilling the functions of military intelligence and counterintelligence.

But there were also other reasons that today could be seen as hypothetical because of a lack of weighty foundations and proven facts. A month before his retirement, personnel officers offered Reserve Col. Wennerström two positions within five minutes: the military advisor for the Swedish foreign ministry or the general consul in Madrid. Viking asked Nikolsky for advice. The general sent a message to the Center with a proposal to agree to Madrid. The Center, on the other hand, chose the first offer. This likely accelerated the agent’s exposure.

MI5 and Casinos

One of the multitude of versions of the colonel’s exposure and compromise posits that everything originated with British counterintelligence, MI5. Its officers had turned their attention to the fact that the Russians were often better informed of what kinds of armaments Britain was supplying the Swedes than the Swedes themselves. Surveillance of Wennerström was conducted from the summer of 1962. They managed to establish that the reserve colonel had an account in a bank in Geneva, where he was then working as a Swedish foreign ministry expert on disarmament issues. The monitoring of Wennerström’s telephones was organized. On June 19th, 1963, housekeeper Karin Rosen, recruited by Swedish counterintelligence, uncovered a cache of microfilms in Wennerstrom’s attic. On the morning of June 20th, Wennerström, a knight of Sweden’s Legion of Honor and a distant relative of Gustav VI Adolphus, was arrested on the way to work.

Wennerström’s biographers also name other possible versions of treachery: an unconquerable passion for gambling in casinos and the Swede’s pacifist and even pro-communist views. According to the information of Western journalists, Moscow was blackmailing Wennerström, having in its possession facts of his espionage work for the Nazis during World War II.

Still another version: On June 20th, 1960, Säpo, Swedish counterintelligence, received from CIA agent and GRU officer Dmitry Polyakov, who worked for the Americans for a quarter-century, information on the existence of a GRU agent code-named Eagle in Swedish military intelligence. After that the trap was set for Eagle, and there began the thorough study and analysis of Stig Wennerström’s personal expenditures.

More convincing than others is General Vitaly Nikolsky’s version. In the spring of 1962, the Center decided to set up a meeting with Wennerström in Helsinki. One of the deputy chiefs of the GRU (Nikolsky doesn’t name him, but according to some information it was Lt. Gen. Pyotr Melkishev) was sent to the Finnish capital for the briefing. In general the agent could have been briefed in Stockholm, as well, but it’s possible that the ranking officer needed an excuse for a trip abroad.

In Helsinki the high-level guest, for reasons unknown, involved an officer from “the neighbors,” i.e. the KGB First Chief Directorate. Along with that Melkishev used the apartment of deputy KGB resident in Helsinki Anatoly Golitsyn, who was listed as an economist in the trade representation for cover. In December of 1961, Golitsyn defected to the United States and requested political asylum. It was there he also told British intelligence about a man who had arrived in Helsinki from Sweden for a meeting with a GRU general.

Vitaly Nikolsky conceded that Wennerström was living large and often traveled abroad. He inhabited a luxurious villa in a suburb of Stockholm, retaining several servants. His expenditures clearly exceeded a colonel’s salary of 4,000 Kroner a month. It’s noteworthy that he also received as much from the GRU. One time the Soviet military attaché said as much to his friend and agent – to be a bit more careful about expenditures in the interests of security. Stig began to reassure him; after all, his wife was a well-off woman who worked in a bank, the villa was her dowry, and two cars per family was the norm for Sweden. As it later turned out, Stig was presenting wishes as reality to calm his overly vigilant Soviet friend. Wennerström’s extravagance, along with his negligence, confidence in the stability of his position, and certain other circumstances were the reason why he attracted the attention of counterintelligence at the beginning of the 1960s.

Penkovsky’s Trail

The most central reason for Viking’s downfall, again following the version of Vitaly Nikolsky, was that the “traitor of the century,” GRU Colonel and MI6 and CIA agent Oleg Penkovsky, had found out about Wennerström.

The GRU passed all information on new Western armaments, as obtained from foreign sources, to the Soviet military-industrial complex – in filtered form, of course. But documents coming from Wennerström went to the Committee on Science and Technology, where from 1960 Penkovsky had begun working. He didn’t have a direct relation to the Scandinavian line, but for a long time he did utilize documents that Viking-Eagle had purveyed. The traitor told of this during his meetings in London with the representatives of MI6 and CIA who were working with him. From there the lead was passed to Swedish counterintelligence, and the rest was a technical matter.

In July of 1962, the Center ordered Nikolsky to hand Viking over to another residency officer who worked undercover as the embassy’s first secretary. The Center’s logic was simple: since the agent went to work in the foreign ministry, let a diplomat meet with him at receptions. They didn’t account, however, for one thing: such minor officials, as Wennerström had then become, practically weren’t invited to diplomatic receptions, and communications with Stig had essentially suffered interruption.

Nikolsky thought that Wennerström was the most valuable agent Russian military intelligence ever had after Colonel Alfred Redl, who had provided Austro-Hungarian mobilization plans before the First World War. In Sweden he’s known as their most famous Cold War spy. Wennerström, however, didn’t make it into the book 100 Greatest Spies.

After Stig Wennerström’s arrest, Nikolsky as the Soviet military attache, and also the embassy first secretary involved in the affair, were forced to leave Sweden. Fearing provocations, the GRU sent Nikolsky home not by a normal flight, but on the cargo ship Repnino, the loading of which was cut short. The general, the lone passenger, was brought through the Baltic on an almost empty ship with a displacement of 5,000 tons and a crew of more than 40 men. In the Motherland responsibility for what happened was laid upon Nikolsky. A scapegoat had been found.

Nikolsky only found himself guilty of not insisting on impersonal contact with the agent through dead drops. He thought that the officer to whom he had passed Viking for handling might have attracted Swedish counterintelligence’s attention. Nikolsky doesn’t name him, but knowledgeable people in the GRU point to a G. Baranovsky. Despite his humble rank, immediately upon his arrival in Stockholm he acquired an expensive Mercedes 220. And this was at a time when even advisors drove in embassy duty vehicles. Moreover, this young man rented and luxuriously furnished a nice apartment, the sort his colleagues didn’t have. He stood out with knowledge of several foreign languages and was active beyond his rank with the locals.

Swedish authorities promised they would give the press an announcement about the expulsion of two Soviet diplomats only in the morning. Yet it was hardly dawn when journalists of all leading and local media had put Nikolsky’s apartment under siege. The woman concierge deceived the reporters, saying that the Russian general had already left for the port, and so everyone rushed in that direction. Nikolsky was accompanied just by his deputy, to whom he handed over secret documents and currency before departure.

Vigilance Lost

By a hurried escape on a cargo ship, without any dignified farewell, the Soviet side indirectly admitted the correctness of the Swedish government’s charges. As Nikolsky told me, the Center blamed him for the residency conducting “weak educational work” with the agent, which led to his loss of vigilance. As they would say today, hindsight is 20/20. Someone in the leadership accused Wennerström of suffering a pathological greed, which made him neglect caution.

The court sentenced Viking to life in prison. In his last word he denied the charge of harming Sweden’s security – he couldn’t be judged for revealing NATO plans. Wennerström also said that he had been working for the prevention of a new world war. And truly, the Cuban Missile Crisis didn’t escalate into nuclear conflict partly due to his information.

For Vitaly Nikolsky, Viking’s compromise meant the end of his intelligence career. He was removed from operational work. For two months, while an investigation was ongoing, he was at the disposal of the chief of the GRU. In November of 1963, he was appointed the head of a faculty at the Military-Diplomatic Academy. Five years later he retired.

Wennerström, meanwhile, was sitting in prison. He demonstrated model behavior there and worked in a center for juvenile prisoners as a teacher of foreign languages, including Russian. Consequently, in 1974 at age 68, he was amnestied and freed for exemplary behavior, returning home to his wife in the city of Dursholm. One must give Soviet intelligence its due – several times they attempted an exchange for Wennerström, but for some reason it didn’t work out.

Court inquiry materials with Wennerström’s detailed confessions and information from the investigation were declared a state secret for 50 years. In 1959 Nikita Khruschchev had cancelled his visit to Sweden under the pretense of an anti-Soviet campaign that had been unfurled in the Swedish press, but in 1964 he nonetheless travelled to Sweden despite the scandal of Soviet spy Stig Wennerström’s unmasking.

Wennerström lived his last years in a Stockholm home for the elderly and died just short of 100 years. Vitaly Aleksandrovich Nikolsky, having dedicated over 40 years to military intelligence, until his final day didn’t know whether his friend and protégé was still alive.

Work Translated: Поросков, Николай. “Успехи и провал Викинга.” Независимое военное обозрение, 05.06.2015.

Translated by Mark Hackard.

KGB officer Vadim Nikolaevich Sopryakov – “Comrade Maxim” – tells of a key recruitment he made in 1968 while serving under diplomatic cover in Delhi, India. Sopryakov, a retired captain first rank, began his service in the KGB Border Guards naval units, then transferring to the First Chief Directorate (Foreign Intelligence), and even serving in the elite Directorate S (Illegals) and spetsnaz. In his account of his time in India, Sopryakov sheds light on the practical psychology applied by an intelligence officer for recruiting potential agents, in this case “Mr. B.,” whom the KGB would code-name “Herman.”

On the next-to-last day of a 1967 coming to its end, the Soviet intelligence resident in Delhi received an assignment from the Center:

Pinpoint individual “B.” Collect characteristics on him. Determine the expediency and practical possibility of his development for recruitment. Report on results.

Within the message was also mention that the lead on Mr. B had been received from “Michele.” A longtime vetted agent of the KGB, Michele had met several times with the Indian during a business trip through a number of West European countries. Michele’s professional flair suggested to him that Soviet intelligence would definitely be interested in Mr. B. And not only because of his high position in India’s leadership circles, but most of all because of his widespread contacts with Americans, of whom he wasn’t fond in addition.

The resident’s resolution on the message was extremely short: “To Comrade Maxim for execution.” “Maxim” was one of the operational pseudonyms of now-retired Captain First Rank Vadim Nikolaevich Sopryakov.

***

Why did the choice fall on you? You had just arrived to the Delhi residency in August. You probably didn’t have time to orient yourself as necessary. Or was that the way they welcomed newcomers?

The mission to recruit Mr. B was dumped on me during my fifth month of work in Delhi. I managed to learn the city and select verification routes to detect hard-bitten Indian surveillance and evade them. I marked places for clandestine meetings, and, moreover, I already had two valuable agents I was handling. One of them was local, a high-level government official. The other was from the diplomatic corpus, a leading diplomat of one of the accredited embassies in Delhi. Working with agent networks wasn’t new for me, and therefore business with them got started well. Information came regularly and got a sufficiently high evaluation at the Center; the resident was satisfied. But I didn’t have my own recruitment in development, since I hadn’t managed to obtain one. That’s why he “tossed” the lead my way.

So it turns out that you came to Delhi as an already experienced field operative. Where and when did you acquire this experience?

Before India I had worked for four years in the Burma residency in Rangoon (now Yangon). This was my first assignment abroad, my baptism by fire, so to speak. I stayed satisfied with how it went. It’s also true that “Lady Luck” played no small role in that.

In the center of Burma’s capital were scattered several lakes. On the picturesque bank of one of the largest ones, Inya Lake, was founded the international Rangoon Sailing Club for yachts. Since I’m a naval officer, I sailed rather often, and I was made to be in that club.

I have to say that Inya is a capricious lake with its own personality. With its powerful unbridled winds that often changed direction, it was capable of confounding even the most experienced yachtsman.

Once two French diplomats had fallen victim to Inya – a gust of heavy wind had overturned their yacht in a second’s time. I hurried to the rescue. I picked up one of the victims, and the second I asked to stay next to the capsized yacht and wait for rescuers. That was required by club rules.

Having brought the Frenchman to shore, I offered him a dry towel and invited him to the bar. Two or three portions of whiskey calmed him down somewhat, and he relaxed. On his face there appeared a smile. He introduced himself, and for some moments I had to endure a light shock. Rene Milier was the new, and yet to have been accredited, French ambassador in Burma (now Myanmar). Lady Luck was providing me a chance, and what a chance it was!

After a drawn-out friendly conversation, Rene Milier asked, “if it wouldn’t burden me,” to drop him off at the French embassy. Do I need to say that I did this with great pleasure?

From that moment until the end of my tour of duty, I would without fail receive invitations (along with my spouse) to all official receptions and other protocol events that were arranged in the French embassy, or, in a more narrow circle, at Rene Milier’s personal residence. He even obligatorily invited me on familiarization trips around the country. Thanks to all this, my sphere of connections in the diplomatic corpus at the level of ambassadors and advisors, as well as among leading officials of the Burmese foreign ministry and others, expanded incredibly. And that meant that my search for sources of information and candidates for recruitment was made easier.

Also, in the Rangoon residency, as in Delhi, no one was given downtime. Two weeks after my arrival in Burma, I was transferred for handling the first agent in my life. He was a local citizen. He provided operational information on Americans, in particular on contacts with Burmese officials.

As soon as I set up work with him, I was tossed another agent, also from the locals. But this one occupied a rather solid position in one of the government structures and passed us political information, about the Americans, by the way, which was rated sufficiently highly in the Center.

And that’s how I acquired experience working with agents. Simultaneously my work against the Americans was being sketched out, who at the time were the “main adversary.” My specialization in the main adversary was consolidated after I managed, again thanks to Rene Milier, gain access to a major political figure in Burma – “Dan,” as I christened him. This was my first recruitment, and it took a whole year of Dan gradually being brought into cooperation with our service. At the very beginning I limited it to obtaining spoken information on Burmese-American bilateral relations. Then I began requesting written explanation of information and his opinion on one or another aspect of Washington’s regional policy in Southeast Asia. And ultimately I brought him to see that it was most practical for him to pass me documents.

Dan’s fruitful partnership with our service also continued after my departure for the Motherland, right up to his retirement.

So I think that my Burmese experience plus my orientation of work against the Main Adversary influenced the resident’s decision to assign me to figure out the lead on Mr. B.

And what did you start from? After all, India isn’t Burma. Isn’t that the case?

Yes, there were two major differences. India immediately struck me with its scale and energetic political and socio-economic life. My first love, Burma, looked like a province in India’s context, where political and diplomatic life hardly had a pulse.

I was also at first surprised by the operational environment in Delhi. On the one hand, everywhere you could hear “Hindi-Rus bhai, bhai!” – “Long live Indo-Soviet friendship!” On the other, from my first day I was under the dense coverage of local surveillance. Wherever I went, with my wife or alone, surveillance cars accompanied me without fail. In the stores, at the bazaar, or simply outside – everywhere were people who imposingly introduced themselves to me, attempting to find out as much information as possible about me and my acquaintances, even random ones. I understood that my Burmese “friends” from CIA and SIS took care to orient Indian counterintelligence about me in a timely manner, as well as about my time in Rangoon, and apparently they relayed their suspicion that I belonged to the KGB. I had only to take all this into account and behave accordingly.

Now about the assignment on Mr. B. To “establish” in our operational language means to clarify where and with whom the target lives, and also where he works and what he does. At the moment of my receiving the assignment, Mr. B. was wasn’t known to the residency; no one from the operational staff had even heard his name. We had to turn for help to our agent network. We found out that Mr. B. had entry to a circle of quite influential politicians. He appeared at official events and even state receptions extremely rarely.

Finally, we learned that Mr. B. was very suspicious of Americans, but he carefully hid it, since by the nature of his service he maintained working contacts with them.

Even this far-from complete-information was wholly enough to recognize that “Herman” (as we named Mr. B.) presented, as we would express it, “undoubted operational interest.”

Also obvious was the necessity of me establishing personal contact with him – introduce myself, that is. But I needed to do it in such a manner that it would in no way expose our interest in him either to local counterintelligence or, God forbid, the CIA or SIS. Yet where and how would I make my approach to this hermit?

A suitable occasion presented itself approximately a month later. Our acquaintance occurred on neutral ground, as if it was unforced. And the main thing was that Herman not only didn’t avoid contact, but he also, it seemed to me, demonstrated interest in continuing an acquaintance with a Soviet representative.

And again the same conundrum – how could I develop our contact? We thought a long time, and the resident and I agreed that even within a circle of people loyal to Herman, my communication with him would inevitably beget the legitimate question: where did this Russian come from, and why is he here? That would be fraught with unpredictable consequences. There was only one option left: direct “cold pitch” recruitment, i.e. a frank offer to Herman on cooperation with our service. We took into account that he might refuse; after all, we couldn’t figure out for the life of us his true political convictions. At the same time we weren’t worried that if in the case of refusal he’d decide to create a scandal, since the offer on partnership would be made one-on-one, without witnesses.

From Comrade Maxim’s operations brief:

In accordance with the approved plan, I undertook a one-on-one meeting with Herman. The discussion continued nine minutes. Herman heard out my proposal silently, showing envious composure. Not one muscle on his face twitched, although my offer was clearly unexpected for him. Only for a moment his eyes shot toward me, and in them I captured just slightly the surprise. After some thought, nodding his head, he pronounced: “Well, you guys are risky!” Then he looked at me fixedly and added:

Alright. Here on my business card is my home address, where I live only with my spouse. If you’re so brave, come tomorrow at midnight. There won’t be any servants in the home. But you should appear at my place together with your wife. I’ll be waiting for you there. And now you must excuse me, I have to get ahold of myself after your surprising proposal.

He gave me his business card and we bid each other farewell.

As you noted in the report, Herman listened to your recruitment pitch with “enviable composure.” It’s true he also then admitted that he had to “get ahold of himself.” How did you feel at that moment?

I was soaked. I was covered in sweat from my head to my feet. I felt streams of sweat flowing down between my shoulder blades to my waste, and how my knees were stuck to my pant legs. And that was despite it being cool in the room – the air conditioner was on.

I started coming out of my petrified state when Herman passed me his business card and offered to meet me at his house. I hazily remember how I ended up outside, took a taxi and reached the hotel where my colleagues were expecting me.

At the embassy the resident was awaiting me impatiently. I didn’t manage to open my mouth as he shook my hands with the words: “Looking at your unscathed face, I see that everything went successfully.” And then he somehow noted: “Your physiognomy just radiated the joy of victory.”

From Comrade Maxim’s operations brief:

At the time appointed by Herman, my wife and I walked up to his house on foot. He met us warmly. I introduced my wife. While the women were engrossed in conversation, Herman took the initiative and invited me to “smoke” in his office. Herman also wasn’t rushing to wrap everything up. We exchanged opinions on events in international life, on India’s policy on the subcontinent, and on relations between our countries. Finally Herman began speaking on the main subject, beginning from his wish to spend a few more meetings with me in his home in order to size me up better and decide for himself the question of the practicality of working namely with me. “Although,” he emphasized, “in principle I’ve already made the decision. Now I must affirm for myself the idea that I am acting correctly.” Without lingering, I agreed to his offer of spending a few more meetings at his house.

Comrade Maxim and his wife were to pay night visits to Herman another five or six times before the latter would join the list of agents personally recruited by the Soviet captain, third rank.

“During one of the final night visits,” Vadim Nikolaevich remembers, “a dangerous incident took place. Somewhere around two in the morning, a courier from the presidential palace unexpectedly arrived at Herman’s house. At that time we were still drinking tea in the sitting room. As always, Herman was unflappable, but I tensed up, as this unexpected visit could bring about tragic results. Our host accompanied the courier through the sitting room to his office. As he was walking, he took the sealed envelope from him, and passing by us, mentioned to the courier that these were dear guests from Sweden. And that’s it. A minute later they came out, and the courier left.

Herman was calm, and in the presence of the women he said that it had been an ordinary messenger who hardly paid any attention to the foreigners in the house, inasmuch as there was nothing unusual about it. To my question of whether we looked like Swedes, with a smile Herman answered that my wife Lydia was a striking blonde, and therefore he said she and I were Swedish. For a messenger Sweden was somewhere far away in the snow. The important thing was that we weren’t from the United States or England. If Herman had said we were Americans or Britons, then that might have remained in the courier’s mind, but neutral Sweden would hardly stay long in his memory.

Somewhat later I clarified with Herman that this unexpected arrival didn’t have any consequences. ‘The messenger forgot about everything,’ Herman waxed ironic, ‘as soon as he exited my house.’

A bold question: did you pay for Herman’s cooperation?

Unconditionally no! In his partnership with us he saw a direct benefit for India. If it was to the contrary he would have told us to go…far away. And we wouldn’t have dared to make him the offer.

Work Translated: Жемчугов, Аркадий. Шпион в окружении Андропова: Разведка в лицах и событиях. М: Вече, 2004.

Translated by Mark Hackard. 

Before he was the KGB’s top analyst, Lt. Gen. Nikolai Sergeevich Leonov was a field officer of the First Chief Directorate specializing in Latin America. With experience in Mexico and ties to Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, Leonov was a key player in the USSR’s strategy of prying Latin America from Washington’s grip. In 1968 a left-leaning military junta came to power in Peru – shortly thereafter, Leonov was sent to Lima on a fact-finding mission under journalistic cover.

I returned to Moscow at the very end of 1968, and I had just turned 40. My time in the service seemed to be going without any problems. Soon I was appointed the deputy chief of the Latin American Department. Such a promotion was unprecedented – I had immediately jumped through two positions. But at that time, I apparently ascribed to the maxim later formulated by future First Chief Directorate head Leonid Shebarshin: “Don’t ask for anything, and don’t refuse anything.” I still wholeheartedly believed that “the leadership saw things the clearest,” and consequently, it would know what to do.

My family obligations had developed in such a way that it was impossible to travel on tours of duty for long periods. I was limited to temporary trips abroad for concrete one-time assignments. I fell into that option, by the way, because new responsibilities of an organizational and management nature came crashing down upon me.

Soon the time came to try a new form of work. In the autumn of 1968 in Peru, nationalist-oriented officers under General Juan Velasco Alvarado acted to form a new government more open to contacts with all countries. The previous regime had taken an extremely right-wing course in foreign policy. The USSR had never had diplomatic relations with Peru, and for us it was a denied area, a “blank spot” on the map. Now the environment allowed us to undertake a serious acquaintance with the depth and breadth of the revolutionary process on site. The leadership of intelligence decided to send me under the cover of a correspondent of the press agency Novosti, all the more so that they already knew me at Novosti and were wholly satisfied with how I carried out my responsibilities undercover in Mexico City.

I was going to an absolutely “clean” place. We didn’t have an embassy or any other diplomatic representations in the country, and I would turn out to be the one Soviet there. I didn’t have any connection with the Center besides regular mail. My living quarters were to be in the Hotel Crillon, where everyone’s belongings – I knew this – were daily rifled through by security service informants among the local employees. You couldn’t seek protection anywhere, and there was no one to whom you could complain.

The assignment, which I had myself formulated in the Center, was to acquire as large a circle of contacts as possible in Peru’s government and political circles, turn these contacts into stable communications, collect information on the condition of the country and the prospects of the military regime, and compose evaluations of leading figures in the state. This was necessary to render Peru support against growing pressure against the United States. To pass information that interested the Center, I could go to Chile, where there was an embassy, and, naturally, a channel for encrypted communications. Jumping a bit forward, I can say that one time I did indeed fly to Chile to “unload” accumulated information.

The appearance of a Soviet journalist in Peru was its own type of sensation. Wherever I happened to be, I was looked at liked an extraterrestrial, with mixed feelings of fear and curiosity. The years-long propaganda processing conducted in the country made people see in a Soviet first and foremost an adversary, mysterious, incomprehensible, remote, and very alien. Happily, man is called Homo Sapiens not in vain, and a pair of meetings and conversations were usually enough to break the ice that had been frozen in people’s souls by hacks and scribblers.

The first thing I did was go to the Peruvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Press Department, where I informed its chief, Lt. Col. Oscar Harama, of my arrival and immediately expressed my desire to interview Peru’s president and a number of top ministers. Matters that had earlier been prepared were brought to his desk: I had, after all, earlier practiced journalism legally. I was promised assistance. Then I told him in general terms about the scale of my interest in studying the country’s state of affairs and the connections I intended to strike up. I felt like convincing the lieutenant colonel that I wasn’t planning on engaging in any clandestine intelligence operations. This was necessary, as the Americans could announce their doubts in relation to my “clean” journalism. My fears, unfortunately, were justified.

In the first days of my time in Peru, there was enormous psychological pressure applied against me with the goal of causing my departure. Somehow on the telephone a voice rang out, announcing in Russian with the use of high-caliber abuse: “We know you very well… (son of a such-and-such!). If you don’t get out of here, then we’ll smash your head open! Remember that, (there followed further swearing).” What was there to do? Act according to the plan that had previously been thought out for such a case? It was completely normal to assume such a turn of events, and psychological preparation is equal to being forearmed. To cower and submit would mean to be lost in the eyes of your friends and comrades, your own, and those of your enemy, as well. Common sense suggested that if someone was indeed thinking of smashing your head, they’d do it without a warning over the phone. It doesn’t take much valor or guts to kill an unarmed, defenseless person who hasn’t compromised himself in any way. No, my enemies wouldn’t resort to a “wet job!”

Therefore, having listened through it all, I informed him in the same type of language over the phone: “I’m engaged in normal journalistic activity, and I won’t allow anyone to scare me… And today I’m planning on going to the movie theater, and I’m going to go by way of such-and-such street.” The last words I pronounced with a spark of temper, and probably an unnecessary challenge. But the train, as they say, had already left the station. That evening I went to the theater; I already had to fulfill my promise. I can’t say that it was a pleasure watching the movie that time, but when I returned to my hotel and nothing had happened to me, I cackled with joy that I had achieved another small victory.

There were also “tricks” later on. Once while I was dining in a restaurant with an acquaintance, a “wandering” photographer suddenly burst in and began snapping pictures with a powerful flash effect right in our faces. Or a car full of half-naked girls would begin pursuing me on the street, or something else.

On my next visit to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Press Department, over a cup of coffee with Lt. Colonel Harama, I referred to the local security service’s extremely low level of professionalism. He exploded, “That’s not us, that’s the Americans!” “For Americans such provincialism would be a total humiliation,” I noted. After that conversation the tension lessened significantly. Only when sending correspondence at the post office was I insistently requested not to seal the flaps of envelopes with sticky tape (I knew that it was very difficult to open such envelopes and not leave any traces of inspection).

Work without weekends, at 14-15 hours a day, was my vacation. Every day included three to four business meetings that opened new strata of information and brought me together with interesting people. I had to compose a plan to master the Peruvian “blank spot.” At first these were meetings with ministers or their deputies, and in extreme cases with senior officials. When that was finished, there came the turn of political parties and social-political movements. Then followed universities and student organizations. Separately there were centers of industrial production and modern enterprises for refining agricultural production. The people who attracted me the most were those who possessed information that had already been accumulated and soundly processed: academics (economists, sociologists, professors) as well as journalists.

Peru at that time was experiencing a period of radical transformations. The military government nationalized American oil-refining facilities and endured the pressure of US threats and blackmail that were usual in such cases. Aside from that, the issue of agrarian reform was being decided, in which the traditional Latin American landowning system had to be replaced by a modern one opening the way to capitalist development of agriculture. The driver of this process was the Peruvian military, which took upon itself responsibility for the modernization of the country. Leading ministerial posts were occupied by generals, of whom there was a surplus, as in any weakly developed country. The government’s patriotic course was supported by the majority of the population except for a part of constantly revolting students. In the open opposition were only proponents of Aprismo, a social-democratic-type party.

The Peruvian military was counting on the support of other Latin American countries first and foremost, not hoping for more. Their action in Peru was a reflection of the general behavior of army leaderships in Latin America at that time. Also in 1968, General Torrijos came to power in Panama, and he’d later cause quite a few headaches for the United States. As previously mentioned, in 1965 the US only managed with difficulty to repress a military revolution in the Dominican Republic. The military’s behavior was a reaction to the bankruptcy of traditional political parties, who had been mired in corruption and acted as lackeys to foreign interests. In many cases the temporary presence of these militaries in power rendered a cathartic influence on the social and political life of their countries and prepared the ground for the inculcation of healthier democratic roots.

Latin American militaries had a dualistic approach to the Soviet Union. On the one hand, their attitude was defined by a traditionally hostile guardedness toward socialist ideology. One-dimensional thought was characteristic not just of communism. On the other hand, it was impossible to reject the temptation of turning to the help and support of the Soviet Union when necessary. Our enormous country, painted on the map at that time in a poisonous red, lay far away from Latin America. We hadn’t fought with anyone on that continent, hadn’t managed to offend anyone, and little was known about us (and poorly at that). But we always stood in opposition to the United States, the main enemy of Latin America. Therefore the USSR naturally was seen as a potential ally in any difficult situation. “The enemy of the United States is our friend” was practically the credo of many political figures. And so relations between so-called progressive military regimes and the Soviet Union were often built on such a shaky basis.

Honestly speaking, Soviet intelligence didn’t have a clearly set mission in Latin America that was determined by state interests. We ourselves developed our program of action, orienting our approach toward national requirements. Although (and what’s the point of hiding it now) sometimes, we also wanted to attract attention to ourselves and present our work as highly significant. This would save our Latin American line from growing sickly and dying away. We generally succeeded in convincing the KGB leadership that Latin America represented a politically attractive platform where anti-American sentiments were strong, while traditional anti-Soviet attitudes were artificially supported by the US constantly pumping the media with propaganda yet didn’t have real roots. We were able to prove that through Latin America’s communications channels with the United States, developed countries of the West, and Japan, we could achieve serious results in scientific-technical intelligence. In a word, we ourselves searched out our frontline and developed the instruments necessary to reach set objectives.

Work Translated: Леонов, Н.С. Лихолетье: Записки главного аналитика Лубянки. М: Эксмо, 2005.

Translated by Mark Hackard.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s fateful invasion of Russia, known as the Fatherland War, was not only a titanic military clash, but also an espionage duel between Russian and French intelligence. The archives of the Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) reveal a classic true spy story set in Napoleon’s Paris, one filled with intrigue, adventure, and stolen secrets.

Alexander I of Russia and Napoleon I of France were the two main protagonists and antipodes of a military-political drama that played out on the battlefields of Europe at the very beginning of the 19th century. Both the Russians and French were watching each other vigilantly, understanding well that confrontation and military conflict were inevitable. In these conditions the acquisition of timely, reliable, and secret information on the designs and actions of the potential adversary took on a significance of the first degree.

Historians assert that the idea on the utility of obtaining paid “friends” – informants – came upon Alexander I after a secret discussion in Erfurt with French Foreign Minister Talleyrand, who to spite Napoleon informed the Russian Tsar about the French Emperor’s plans. However matters might have transpired, after the conversation with Talleyrand, Alexander undertook a number of mobilization measures and ordered the dispatch to Paris of a young and capable representative who could verify information coming from Talleyrand and inform the Russian autocrat on the situation in France and its preparations for military conflict. Alexander I’s emissary was the son of a young noble line, Aleksandr Ivanovich Chernyshev.

Aleksandr Chernyshev was born on December 30th, 1785, into the family of a lieutenant general who was also a senator and governor-general of the Kostroma region. In accordance with the existing custom at the time, from childhood Aleksandr was enrolled in military service as a sergeant-major in the cavalry. In 1801 he happened to be present at Alexander I’s coronation and was personally introduced to the Emperor. The youth produced quite a favorable impression, and soon with Alexander I’s assistance he joined the Cavalry Guards Regiment as a cornet. For the Battle of Austerlitz he received his first military award – the St.Vladimir Cross 4th Degree and a golden sword.

In February of 1808, combat veteran Chernyshev was sent to Paris with a personal letter from Alexander I to Napoleon. In March of 1809, Emperor Alexander charged Chernyshev with representing him personally on Napoleon’s military staff during the French army’s actions against Austria and Prussia. From 1810 Chernyshev was constantly in the court of the French emperor.

***

In the space of a moment, a ferocious fire erupted in the house of the Austrian ambassador, Prince Schwarzenberg. A silk curtain had suddenly ignited from one of the candles placed in a crystal sconce, and then the fire jumped over to the antique furniture, dry as powder, and began to devour a luxurious parquet that had been shined to mirror perfection. And nearby, literally two steps from the fiery nightmare beyond the doors, music sounded as lovely pairs spun in a whirlwind of reckless dancing – victims of fate from the Paris elite – who suspected nothing of what was underway.

Who among the dancers would have supposed that this festive evening would be the last for many of them? In the rush and panic, in a sea of raging fire, dozens of people perished. And there would have been even more if not for the quick thinking of one of the guests, a young guardsman, who immediately organized a group of dare-devil rescuers. One after another they threw themselves into the fire, seizing yet another helpless victim from the hell of the blaze. The hero’s name was Aleksandr Ivanovich Chernyshev.

Before the tragic night at the house of the Austrian ambassador, Chernyshev’s name could be seen only in the society pages and rumor mills of local Paris newspapers. A tall, handsome man with an unruly head of wavy hair, a wonderful and witty storyteller, without fail he would become the life of any company, especially where there were beautiful women present. In the high-society salons the opinion of the Russian Tsar’s emissary as a playboy and successful conqueror of women’s hearts was undoubtedly in currency. He was fancied by Napoleon’s sister, the Queen of Naples. Meanwhile, according to gossip, another sister of the French Emperor, the impetuous Polina Borgese, was said to be a lover of the curly-haired Russian rogue.

But that was only a theatrical mask. The reputation of a capricious Lothario served as a fine cover for the Tsar’s wily and intelligent emissary, who almost always was able to obtain important information on Napoleon’s political and military plans on the eve of the Franco-Russian conflict of 1812. Colonel Chernyshev was one of the first seven Russian “military agents” whom then-War Minister Barclay de Tolly sent to the capitals of a number of European states as officers of the Special Chancellery – a special organ of Russian foreign intelligence[i]. Aside from Chernyshev, de Tolly also sent Lieutenant G.F. Orlov; Colonel F.V. Teil Von Seraskerken, a Dutchmen by origin; Colonel R.E. Renin, the descendant of a Scottish immigrant (Vienna, Berlin); Lieutenant P.I. Brozin (Madrid); Lieutentant P.H. Grabbe (Munich); and Major V.A. Prendel (Dresden). In his youth Prendel was imprisoned in France for revolutionary struggle. Like other heroic intelligence officers – F. Vintsingerode, D. Davydov, and A. Finger – Prendel commanded a partisan detachment during the Fatherland War of 1812.

The activity of the Special Chancellery was carried out in three directions:

1. Organization of strategic intelligence (acquiring abroad strategically important secret information)
2. Operational/tactical intelligence (collection of data on enemy forces on Russian borders)
3. Counterintelligence (detect and neutralize Napoleon’s agent networks)

The idea for forming such a highly secret state intelligence service belonged to Barclay de Tolly.

In the summer of 1810, Barclay set before Alexander I the matter of organizing the activity of Russian intelligence abroad and requested permission to send special military agents to Russian embassies to collect information “on the number of forces; their order; armaments and morale; the condition of their fortresses and stores; the capabilities and merits of their best generals; the character and spirit of the people; the economic disposition; the internal resources of the powers and their means of continuing a war; and various conclusions provided on offensive and defensive operations.”[ii] These military agents would be placed in diplomatic missions under the cover of civilian bureaucrats and officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The apparatus of officers of the Special Chancellery was not very large at all; beyond the seven already-mentioned external intelligence agents, there served a director who was subordinate directly to the Minister, three expediters, and one translator. Before March 19th, 1812, the director’s post at the Special Chancellery was occupied by the Tsar’s adjutant A.V. Voeikov, a man close to Barclay, who had begun military service many years before as an orderly of the famed Suvorov. Namely Colonel Voeikov recommended Chernyshev for work in Paris, and he wasn’t wrong in his selection.

Chernyshev, a “lion of the salons,” quickly won the Emperor of France’s trust and was on good terms with many of his inner circle. Within a short period, the Russian colonel was able to form a network of informants in Paris’s government and military spheres, as well as arrange and expand the activities of figures bought off for large – including personally funded – sums. One of them, an officer of the French War Ministry by the name of Michele, became publicly known after a Napoleonic guillotine’s sharp blade deprived one of Colonel Chernyshev’s most valuable secret assets of his life.

Michele was part of a group that every two weeks would compose a briefing, limited to one exemplar, on the numerical strength and dislocation of the French armed forces for Napoleon personally. Colonel Chernyshev’s agent would secretly copy the document, rewriting neatly it by hand, and then pass the material to the Russian intelligence officer. Chernyshev, in turn, would hurriedly send a courier with the secret report to St. Petersburg. “Why could I not have a few more ministers like this young man?” Alexander I wrote in the margin of one of the messages from Paris. At that time Colonel Chernyshev was just 26 years old.

Along with the copy of Napoleon’s secret briefing, Chernyshev often attached his own observations and conclusions, in particular on the personnel among France’s top military figures. Here are preserved excerpts of “portraits” of Napoleon’s generals, as written by Chernyshev:

Oudinot, Duke of Reggio. Noted in all the French Army as possessing the most striking bravery and personal courage, the most capable of producing a breakthrough and generating enthusiasm in the forces under his command. Of all the marshals of France, he alone may be used with the greatest success in cases where one must execute an order requiring accuracy and fearlessness. Not being a very educated man, Oudinot doesn’t suffer from a lack of knowledge; his distinguishing characteristics are common sense, great frankness, and honesty. Both friends and enemies unanimously grant him that.

Lefebvre, Duke of Danzig. Marshal of Spain and senator. Received no education; being a deeply ignorant person, he has only great experience and much bravery and fearlessness. Incapable of acting independently, he can, however, successfully carry out the operations ordered of him. Marshal Lefebvre is around 55-60, but he is still fresh and of strong health.

Davout, Duke of Auerstadt, Prince of Eckmühl. Marshal of the Empire, supreme commander of forces in the north of Germany. A crude and brutal man, hated by all who surround Emperor Napoleon. A zealous supporter of the Poles, he is a major enemy of Russia… At the present time he is the marshal who has the most influence on the Emperor. Napoleon trusts him more than anyone else, and uses him most enthusiastically, confident that whatever his orders, they will be executed accurately and literally. Not revealing any special bravery under fire, he is very firm and stubborn, and, moreover, he is able to make everyone else obey him. This marshal has the unhappiness of being extremely short-sighted.

De Grouchy. Marquis of the Empire, colonel-general of the horse chasseurs. Not influential and is quite far from those favors rendered by Napoleon to his other comrades. In moral terms this general enjoys popular respect, the result of a spotless reputation and impeccable behavior. He is an officer of great virtue and has deep knowledge of military affairs, especially concerning the cavalry.[iii]

In such a manner Barclay de Tolly could report to Tsar Alexander not only on the general political situation in France at the beginning of the 19th century, but also communicate important information on the state of its armed forces and provide profiles of the highest-level military brass.

Colonel Chernyshev’s tour of duty in Paris ended rather unexpectedly. The French police organized extensive surveillance around him, not allowing for any suspicious meetings or trips to go unnoticed. The police came to understand that the “reckless Lothario and rogue” had long been playing them for fools, and they decided “neutralize the dangerous Russian colonel.” But for a report to Napoleon, they needed weighty evidence of Chernyshev’s impermissible activity. And, alas, such clues were found. A mislaid note from Michele, found during a covert search of Chernyshev’s home when he had gone to St. Petersburg, enabled them to establish the name of its author; after that everything was very simple. In Paris newspapers there appeared materials inspired by the police, from which it was clear that Colonel Chernyshev was engaged in espionage. Aleksandr Ivanovich didn’t return from St. Petersburg – he saw Paris again already after the victory over Napoleon, serving there as an adjutant in the victorious Tsar’s retinue.

The Emperor of France naturally expressed “righteous anger” over the “Colonel Chernyshev affair,” although he himself in every way encouraged espionage activity by the French special services, fairly assuming that to refuse such forms of action would mean to “have one less chance for success during war, or it would purchase success at the price of greater efforts and losses.” Not in vain was it shown in Russian documents from 1810 to 1812 that on the territory of the Russian Empire there were detained and neutralized 39 civilians and soldiers activated by foreign intelligence services. The statements of the English ambassador in Russia in those years, Sir Robert Moray, are curious in this regard. He deemed that in the 18th and 19th centuries, Russia was the “main center of espionage,” and he admitted that his own government assigned him up to 100,000 pounds for espionage and the bribery of Russian officials. Along with that Sir Robert claimed that France spent even more on these objectives, which threatened it with “near bankruptcy.”[iv]

History has preserved information on one “French pseudo-spy,” a certain quartermaster in the Russian Army, D. Savon, who on his own initiative announced his wish to work with Russian intelligence. When in May of 1812 Napoleon’s special emissary L. Narbonne arrived to reconnoiter the situation on the eve of French forces’ advance onto the territory of the Russian Empire, Savon was able to establish “business contact” with Narbonne and covertly pass “information” specially prepared by the Russian general staff. Within that information was contained very convincing intelligence on Barclay de Tolly’s serious preparations for immediate resistance to Napoleon right in the border zone after the Grande Armee’s crossing of the Russian frontier. Historians have noted that Napoleon was seriously dismayed when instead of the expected resistance and a pitched battle with the Russian Army during the initial period of the campaign, he encountered no advance by Russian military units, much less the expected counter-strike.

Tsar Alexander awarded Chernyshev, and with the beginning of the war, he was sent into the active army. His experience with intelligence work in Paris and his professional intelligence sense were of great use in organizing the partisan movement in areas occupied by Napoleon’s forces, and he became one of its active participants. Receiving the rank of general of the cavalry and the title of serene prince, in 1832 Aleksandr Ivanovich was appointed war minister, serving twenty years at this post. Various opinions exist with regard to evaluations of his activity as war minister, especially in the later period, the years preceding the Crimean War. Yet we must give him his due: there remains much documentary evidence of how Chernyshev devoted much attention to issues of the Russian Army’s technological rearmament. On his personal initiative, often with the signature of the Emperor himself, intelligence assignments to acquire foreign models of the newest types of weaponry were sent to Russian embassies abroad. The crown of this intelligence officer’s career was a most high position – chairman of the State Council.

[i] См. ЦГВИА, ф.ВУА, я.417, лл.189об.~202.

[ii] Там же.

[iii] ЦГВИА, ф.846, оп.16, д.3599, лл.1—5.

[iv] Richard Deacon. А Ніstory of the Russian Secret Service. — London, 1987. — Р.20.

Work Translated: Очерки истории российской внешней разведки: В 6-ти тт. 0-95 — Т.1: От древнейших времен до 1917 года. — М.:Между- нар. отношения, 1995.

Translated by Mark Hackard.

Aleksandr Ogorodnik, known as “Trigon” by his CIA handlers, was a Soviet diplomat who was lured into spying for Washington through sexual compromise – a honey trap. Historian Aleksandr Sever provides the inside story of how the KGB Second Chief Directorate (Counterintelligence) tracked and captured Ogorodnik, as well as speculation on his mysterious demise. 

Among the CIA agents unmasked by the KGB, Aleksandr Ogorodnik occupies a special place. It was this man who became the main antagonist in a ten-part Soviet television series. The story of Aleksandr Ogorodnik, as shown on TV screens, was close to what happened in real life. The plot of the TV movie TASS is Authorized to Announce was written on the basis of investigation materials, and Chekists [KGB officers], active participants in the operation to expose the American spy, functioned as consultants. It’s understandable that in the picture the action occurred in a made-up foreign state and the traitor was a nondescript individual, while the basic attention of the viewers was focused on the main positive and negative personages – KGB and CIA officers. Behind the scenes, there remained a multitude of important details of this “noisy” affair.

We will tell of the genuine plot of this spy story. In Bogota, capital of Colombia, the CIA recruited the second secretary of the Soviet embassy – Aleksandr Ogorodnik. Ogorodnik was a doctoral candidate of economics, an athlete, erudite, etc. Here is how the personnel service of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) characterized him:

During the years of his work in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he has shown himself as a disciplined, effective employee and an educated specialist who enjoys the trust and respect of the collective. He is politically literate, ideologically mature, and morally firm.

Alongside this the “exemplary” diplomat had three Achilles’ heels: an immoderate attraction to the weaker sex (he was simultaneously romantically involved with the wives of several colleagues, and one of those affairs received publicity and destroyed the family of an influential official at the MFA), suspicious financial operations (he obtained, for example, a foreign car at the beginning of his tour and then sold it in the USSR – the Foreign Ministry’s leadership found out, and our “businessman” had to return his profit of $800 to the state), and unsatisfied ambitions.

The Americans knew about these and other sins committed by the “Agronomist” (the nickname assigned him by KGB counterintelligence officers). They “matched him up” with a woman – Pilar Suarez Barcala, an employee of the Colombian Institute of Culture and US intelligence agent. Then they blackmailed him with photographs of the romantic romps – a classic honey trap.

Here’s what kind of note Aleksandr Ogorodnik made in his diary soon after his recruitment by the CIA:

I have the character of a fighter, a strong will, honesty, and devotion to the ideals of freedom. Finally, I have extraordinary professional training and a life rare in its wealth of the most complex events. I am a man who decided long ago that I won’t die decrepit in my bed…[i]

Returning to the Motherland, Ogorodnik began work as the second secretary in the American department of the MFA Directorate for Foreign Policy Planning. In this division were gathered the yearly reports of ambassadors and the conclusive analytical materials of MFA directorates and departments – generally everything that presented an interest to the leadership of the United States. And Ogorodnik was also planning on marrying the daughter of CPSU Central Committee Secretary Konstantin Rusakov.

According to one version, it was precisely during this period that he came under observation of Soviet counterintelligence. The fact of the matter is that the KGB possessed information that one of the employees of the Soviet embassy in Colombia had been recruited by US intelligence. During official business trips around the country Ogorodnik committed several mistakes. He had, for example, contacts with foreign delegations that went unsanctioned by the MFA leadership, he took notes on his notepad after meetings with high-level officials at the republican level, and he also traveled with several special self-defense weapons of West German manufacture (such as a pistol concealed in a pen).

Western experts claim that Ogorodnik was exposed by the Czech intelligence illegal Karl Koecher, who together with his wife Hanna was able to “break through the Iron Curtain” in 1965, ending up in the United States. Representing himself as a fervent anti-communist and fluent in Russian, French, English, and Czech, in 1973 Koecher was accepted for work in the CIA’s Soviet Division as a translator. The pair was only arrested in 1984 and then exchanged for Soviet dissident Anatoly Shcharansky.

But Ogorodnik made his main mistake in Moscow when he began to regularly visit Victory Park. During those journeys he always left his car in a visible place set along American diplomats’ traditional route of travel. At Lubyanka they justifiably assumed that the MFA official’s goal was to carry out sessions of impersonal communications. In other words, loading and unloading the contents of a dead drop.

The KGB established visual control over the apartment where “Agronomist” lived. The Chekists were able to record the fact that secret writing had been used on a piece of paper, and they also found out the location of the dead drop, within which were kept the CIA’s instructions to their agent.

Yet the opinions of KGB veterans diverge further in the story. Some asserted that the traitor was indeed a valued agent whose exposure was a success for the Second Chief Directorate (the leader of the operation received an Order of the Red Banner).[ii] Others, to the contrary, think that the Americans helped to “liquidate” their man according to three reasons: his connections with the family of a member of the Central Committee (the KGB regularly vetted the people surrounding high-level party functionaries); the low value of the information to which he had access in Moscow; and the CIA needed to divert the attention of Soviet counterintelligence away from more valuable sources in the “tower” at Smolensk Square (where Ministry of Foreign Affairs was located).[iii]

Independent of what point of view is correct, the finale of this story was Ogorodnik’s arrest on the evening of June 21st, 1977, by the door of his own apartment in Building No.2/1 on the Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment in Moscow. After that comes the screenplay scene from the film TASS is Authorized to Announce. Let’s “watch” it again, turning our attention to details.

We will begin from the fact that for some reason there was no prosecutor sanction for the arrest, while in those years the Chekists tried to observe the codex of criminal procedure. Moreover, they were taking down not a simple dissident, but someone with connections in the Communist Party Central Committee. Either this means that decision to interdict the espionage activity was taken unexpectedly, or that the outcome of the counterintelligence officers’ visit was determined in advance. Everyone who’s watched this film remembers well the scene when, after continual declarations of his non-complicity in the charges presented him, “Trianon” agreed to expound his confession on paper. Due to a lapse by the KGB during their frisk of Ogorodnik, he used his own Parker pen equipped with a special poison compartment, ending his life by suicide.

Participants in the events have attested that there was only one witness to what transpired – the interrogator who asked all the remaining members of the special group, of which a general from the KGB Seventh Directorate was part, no less, to excuse themselves from the room. Was bon vivant Aleksandr Ogorodnik prepared for such a step? Moreover, he still had the chance to save his own life if he was included in an operational game to expose his overseas controllers. Otherwise, why would the KGB subsequently need to search out a body double for Agronomist in order to catch CIA officer Martha Peterson red-handed?

The version exists that Ogorodnik was liquidated for the preservation of Yuri Andropov’s stable position as chairman of the KGB.[iv] Let every reader independently determine the degree of Chekist participation in this procedure. There can be variants ranging from professional error (when counterintelligence officers didn’t frisk the detainee) to the forcible ingestion of poison in imitation of suicide.

What’s important is another factor: everyone was interested in Agronomist’s death except KGB counterintelligence officers themselves. After all, they still had to undertake an operational game with the CIA, and to realize that with a dead agent would be significantly more complicated than with a live one. The chief of the KGB Second Chief Directorate, General Grigory Grigoriev, who carried out many similar measures during the Second World War when serving in Smersh’s Third Department, understood that perfectly well.

If Aleksandr Ogorodnik was alive, there would doubtless have to have been an “open” trial. And his ties to the daughter of a Central Committee secretary would surface there. Politburo members who treated the KGB chairman so coldly would obtain an excellent excuse to bring their wrath upon him. Such a trial would also ruinously reflect on Andropov’s relationship with top Soviet diplomat Andrei Gromyko. The process would be a most powerful blow to the pride and reputation of the latter. The foreign minister always claimed that he had no spies. And then it would be suddenly discovered that an official in the MFA central apparatus was working for the CIA.

In KGB Maj. Gen. Vyacheslav Kevorkov’s opinion, here’s the kind of discussion that might have taken place between these major state figures:

Andropov would most likely call first. Of course, he couldn’t begin immediately with the death of the traitor:

– Good morning, Andrei. Tell me, have you read the report by the International Department regarding the Liberation Army?

– I read it. And honestly, Yura, I was surprised how the International Department set the question. Naturally, these guys are waging a noble struggle for their liberation, but they’re using methods of terror. I think we need to distance themselves from them. In any case, no help with weapons.

– There can be no question of it.

Then they’d go over one or two routine subjects. And only at the very end of the conversation:

– Yes, Andrei, do you remember how I told you about our diplomat who was working for the Americans?

At this point Andropov would have paused to turn up the heat in their dialogue and let Gromyko worry a bit with regard to the unpleasant matter that was unexpectedly raised. Gromyko was silent – that meant he understood.

– So then, late tonight (Andropov continued, in no rush) my guys came to arrest him. And what do you know…

Gromyko didn’t know, but he waited for what kind of denouement would follow. Finally, after another pause, Andropov took pity on him and continued.

– Well, out of fear the spy took the poison capsule the Americans had sent him.

Now Gromyko needed a pause to not betray the gladness and relief in his voice and to think up a suitable answer.

– Well, then, Yura, traitors have their logic and their inglorious end as always.

Again silence. Then Andropov heartily concluded:

– So, Andrei, we can say that we’re of one opinion on the International Department’s note.

Gromyko readily confirmed:

– Naturally, it couldn’t be any other way.

We can confidently say that both men stayed satisfied with the outcome of the conversation, and what’s more important, the outcome of the affair.[v]

[i] Уваров О. «Тринон оказался огородником.» Российские вести, 2003 год, 26 февраля.

[ii] Кеворков, В.Е. Генерал Бояров. М.: 2003. С. 59.

[iii] Котов, О. О чем не был уполномочен заявить ТАСС. Независимое военное обозрение, 2003 года, 5 марта.

[iv] Там же.

[v]  Кеворков, В.Е. Генерал Бояров. М.: 2003. С. 77-78.

Work Translated: Север А. История КГБ. Москва: Алгоритм, 2008. – Щит и меч. К 90-летию ВЧК.

Translated by Mark Hackard

From the archives of the SVR comes a broad overview of the Second World War by the chief of Soviet intelligence in World War II, Lt. Gen. Pavel Fitin:

“Pavel Matveevich Fitin head the Fifth Department of the NKVD GUGB [Chief Directorate for State Security] – the NKGB First Directorate from May of 1939 to 1946. The basis of this material is formed by his memoirs, which were written by the author in 1970 for the 50^th anniversary of Soviet foreign intelligence.”

Not claiming to fully shed light on everything, for this would demand special research, I would like to recount certain matters of the multifaceted activity of the intelligence service of the Soviet state security organs during the years of the Great Patriotic War.

On June 17th, 1941, I had a conversation with Josef Vissarionovich Stalin. After that, a sense of alarm didn’t leave me, not for one day. This worried not only me, but also other officers who were in the know about this meeting[i].

A few days passed. At dawn I walked out of the People’s Commissariat for State Security [NKGB]; a tense week was behind me. It was Sunday, a day of relaxation, but the thoughts kept coming – thoughts like a clock’s pendulum: “Is this really disinformation? And if not, then how?” With that on my mind I arrived home and laid down, but I wasn’t able to fall asleep – the telephone rang. It was five in the morning. In the receiver was the voice of the duty officer at the People’s Commissariat: “Comrade General, the Commissar [Vsevolod Merkulov] is calling for you immediately, and a car has been sent for you.” I immediately got dressed and went out, being wholly sure that what we had spoken about with Stalin had happened.

When I entered the Commissar’s waiting room, there were several men there. Soon the rest of the comrades arrived. We were invited into his office. The Commissar was crushed by what had occurred. After a short pause he informed us that along the entire length of the western border – from the Baltic to the Black Sea – battles were underway, and in a number of spots German forces had invaded our country’s territory. The Central Committee and the Soviet government were taking all measures for the organization of resistance to the enemy who had invaded our territory. We had to think through a plan of action for the security organs, accounting for the unfolding situation. From that moment we all were in a state of war, and we had to announce this in all directorates and departments.

“And it’s necessary for you,” the Commissar turned to me, “to prepare corresponding orders for residencies abroad. I’ll call on you in an hour-and-a-half to two hours.”

With that we parted ways in order to attend to the execution of the Commissar’s orders. The information was extremely unpleasant, although for me and some other senior personnel who were with the Commissar, it didn’t come as such big news. Aside from the fact that the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis had been formed and directed against the Soviet Union, the First Directorate had received from residencies in Berlin, Paris, London, Prague, and elsewhere reliable intelligence on Germany’s preparation for a major war.

On June 16th, 1941, from our residency in Berlin there arrived an emergency message that Hitler had made the final decision to attack the USSR on June 22nd, 1941. This information was immediately reported to the highest levels.

Late at night on the 16th-17th of June, I was called into the Commissar. He said that at Stalin was inviting us over at 1 PM. There was much to think over on that night and morning of the 17th. However, I was confident that this meeting was connected to the information provided by our Berlin residency, information which he had received. I didn’t doubt the veracity of the report that had come in, inasmuch as I knew the man who had told us of this well.

Just two years had passed from the time I took charge of the Intelligence Directorate at the central apparatus, but I had studied our intelligence officers, both young and old, well, and I believed in their honesty and devotion to the cause. I was convinced of this when going about restructuring intelligence work in accordance with the Central Committee’s decision from 1938 “On Improvement of the Work of the NKVD Foreign Department [INO].”

The given decision had been caused by the abnormal situation in the state security organs, first and foremost in intelligence. In the 1930s there had developed an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion of many Chekists, mainly toward leading officers – and not only in the central apparatus, but also at Foreign Department residencies abroad. They were accused of betraying the Motherland and were subjected to repressions. In the course of 1938 and 1939, almost all the INO residents abroad were recalled to Moscow, and many of them were repressed.

The Central Committee’s passing of the aforementioned decision was also conditioned by the international environment that had been created: the formation of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo fascist bloc, Germany’s seizure of Austria, the Munich Agreement that clearly bore witness to Hitler’s course toward unleashing world war. Besides that, the duplicitous behavior of England, France, and certain other European states in relation to the USSR strained the international situation even further.

The situation urgently required our taking immediate measures to restructure the entire work of foreign intelligence. In March of 1938, the Party’s Central Committee mobilized around 800 Communists with a higher education and experience of Party and leadership work. After six months of training in the NKVD Central School, they were sent both to the central apparatus as well as to organs on the periphery. A large group of them, in which the author of these lines found himself, was selected for service in the Fifth (Foreign) Department [INO] of the NKVD.

In October of 1938 I came to work in the Foreign Department as an operational officer within the section covering Trotskyites and rightists abroad, though soon I was appointed the chief there. In January of 1939 I became the deputy chief of the NKVD Fifth Department, while in May of 1939 I became its full chief. I was at the post of head of foreign intelligence until the middle of 1946.

The new cadres who had poured into intelligence, along with the Chekist intelligence officers who remained in the service, formed a monolithic alloy of experience and youthful vigor. Their mission was to improve intelligence work abroad.

The directorate’s leadership first of all focused its attention on the selection of senior personnel for foreign residencies. In the course of 1939-40, old, experienced intelligence officers were sent abroad: V.M. Zarubin; E.Y. Zarubina; D.G. Fedichkin; B.A. Rybkin; Z.A. Rybkina; V.A. Takhchianov; M.A. Allakhverdov; and A.M. Korotkov. There were also young and talented Chekists: G.N. Kalinin; A.K. Trenev; A.I. Leonenko; V.G. Pavlov; E.I. Kravtsov; N.M. Gorshkov; and many others.

During selection of candidacies for intelligence work abroad, we were forced to come up against great difficulties because of weak knowledge of foreign languages by many comrades who had returned to intelligence and their lack of experience of operating abroad.

As a consequence of measures taken during the pre-war years, we were able to bring around 40 foreign residencies up to strength and direct over 200 intelligence officers to them. We were also able to deploy many Chekist staff officers for illegal work. That reflected on results immediately.

Taking into account the contributions of Chekist intelligence officers in the acquisition of valuable information necessary to the Soviet state, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Council awarded a number of officers of foreign intelligence with orders and medals in May of 1940. As the chief of the NKGB First Directorate, I was also accorded a high government decoration.

Thanks to the presence of agent networks with major intelligence possibilities in such nations as Germany, England, the United States, Czechoslovakia (by that time “The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia”), Bulgaria, France, and others, from the end of 1940 until the attack on the Soviet Union the First Directorate received data that said how Germany, having seized 13 European countries, was preparing for an attack on the USSR.

For example, our resident in Prague informed us of the movements of German military formation, hardware, and other military equipment to the borders of the Soviet Union. Similar intelligence also came from other residents. Naturally, all this information was sent to the Red Army’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), while the most important went to three addresses: Stalin, Molotov, and Voroshilov. The summons to Stalin on June 17th, therefore, didn’t catch us unawares.

Despite our being well-informed and our firm intention to defend our point of view regarding the materials received by the First Directorate, we still dwelt in a state of certain agitation. This was the leader of the Party and the country, with an unimpeachable authority. And it could so happen that Stalin wouldn’t like something or he’d see a failure by us in some matter, and then any of us could end up in quite an unenviable position.

Accompanied by such thoughts, we arrived with the Commissar at Stalin’s reception room in the Kremlin. After an assistant reported our arrival, we were invited into the office. Stalin greeted us with the nod of his head, but didn’t offer us a seat; he himself didn’t sit down the entire time of the conversation. He walked around the chamber, stopping to pose a question or to concentrate on the moments of the brief that interested him, or on the answers to his questions.

Having walked up to a great desk that was located to the left of the entrance and upon which lay piles of numerous messages and reports – on one of them was our document – Stalin, not raising his head, said:

I read your report. It turns out that Germany is planning to attack the Soviet Union?

We were silent. After all, just three days ago, June 14th, the newspapers had published an announcement by TASS in which it was said that Germany was observing the conditions of the Non-Aggression Pact just as steadfastly as the Soviet Union. Stalin continued to walk back and forth around the chamber, now and then puffing on his pipe. Finally, stopping before us, he asked:

What kind of man is it who reported this information?

We were ready to answer that question, and I gave a detailed profile of our source. In particular, I said that he was a German, close to us ideologically, and together with other patriots was prepared to assist the struggle with fascism in any way. He worked in the Air Ministry and was very well-informed. As soon as he found out the time for Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, he summoned our officer who handled him to an emergency meeting and passed over the original message. We had no basis to doubt the veracity of his information.

After the completion of the briefing, again there followed a long pause. Stalin, walking to his desk and turning to us, pronounced:

Disinformation! You are free to go.

We left anxious. There was much to rethink, and our tense state didn’t leave us for a minute. What if our agent had been mistaken? But in the name of the foreign intelligence directorate, I had assured Stalin that the information gave no cause for doubt.

Arriving at the People’s Commissariat of State Security and having exchanged impressions of the meeting, the Commissar and I right there and then composed an encrypted telegram to the Berlin residency on the immediate verification of the message that had been sent about a German attack on the USSR, which was supposedly marked for June 22nd, 1941. But we didn’t succeed in getting an answer. On that day fascist forces attacked our Motherland. The latter event was a bitter confirmation of the correctness of our agent’s report.

The GRU and our NKGB counterintelligence units possessed similar information. This exerted the needed influence on Stalin, and on June 21st he gave the order to the Red Army General Staff to bring formations on the border up to combat readiness. Stalin delayed carrying out the most necessary military precautions, obviously from fear of giving Hitler an excuse to attack.

In measures developed by the NKGB First Directorate during the first days of the war, the main attention was devoted to the selection of the most capable intelligence officers for work in operational groups that would stay behind on temporarily occupied territory after the withdrawal of Red Army units. Our intelligence officers were to organize, lead, and train Soviet patriots in waging partisan warfare behind enemy lines, and also simultaneously conduct intelligence and sabotage operations against the German invaders and their allies.

In the very first days of the war, dozens of Chekist intelligence officers underwent training and went first to Ukraine, and then to Belarus, Moldova, and the western regions of the RSFSR. All of them acquitted themselves worthily, honorably executing the missions assigned them. The Chekist intelligence officers Dmitry Medvedev; Viktor Korolev; Nikolai Prokopyuk; Mikhail Prudnikov; Nikolai Kuznetsov; Vladimir Molodtsov; Viktor Lyagin; Ivan Kudrya, and others were accorded the rank of Hero of the Soviet Union for carrying out special tasks.

Besides the resolution of this first-priority mission, it was necessary to strengthen our work abroad, mainly with the goal of wreaking the most damage possible to Hitler’s Germany. Its forces, despite the stubborn resistance of Red Army units, moved ever deeper into the heart of our Motherland. We were forced to leave the major industrial centers of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and the Baltic. Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad were under the threat of capture.

In this unbelievably difficult period for the Motherland, Soviet intelligence tasked all its intelligence officers and numerous agent networks with obtaining intelligence data on fascist Germany and its allies, its military-economic potential, and the movements of forces and military hardware. On the other hand, our intelligence officers facilitated the organization of resistance movements in countries occupied by the fascists in every manner even before the attack on the USSR.

Taking into account that the NKGB First Directorate’s activity in creating operational groups and organizing their work behind enemy lines was assuming a wide scale and required more attention, the Party Central Committee recognized the expediency of dividing the First Directorate into two directorates:

• The First Directorate [Intelligence], tasked organizing and conducting intelligence operations against Germany and its allies; shedding light on US and British policy relative to the Soviet Union and the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis, and also the policy of other capitalist states not participating in the war; carrying out technical intelligence operations; organizing counterintelligence work abroad.
• The Fourth Directorate [Sabotage & Assassinations], tasked with organizing operational groups behind enemy lines and directing them.

Leadership of the First Directorate was again placed on my shoulders, while one of my deputies became the chief of the Fourth Directorate. The division was formatted by an order for the People’s Commissariat of State Security. This restructuring didn’t take long in showing its effects: the results of the work of both the First and Fourth Directorates were improved.

The First Directorate, mainly directing the work of foreign residencies, sought to render all possible assistance in organizing human intelligence operations with the objective of attaining the most valuable information. In the course of the first two years of the war, we managed to acquire a large quantity of extremely important materials on foreign policy – both of our allies against Germany and that of neutral states. We also received important materials of a military and scientific-technical character.

However, despite the value of the intelligence materials we acquired, they still did not satisfy the High Command, which needed the fullest possible information on Germany’s military potential, US policy vis-a-vis the USSR, and especially the issue of opening a second front.

On June 5th, 1943, the State Defense Committee affirmed the document “Measures for Improving USSR Intelligence Organs’ Work Abroad,” in which were also designated the missions of the NKGB First Directorate. The best officers of our directorate were sent to work in foreign residencies, and they also organized new ones.

A year of unheard-of efforts by the foreign intelligence apparatus bore its fruits: the quality of political information was raised, and so was its volume. The most prized scientific-technical information, especially military-oriented, began to flow in in large quantities.

To expand opportunities for dropping our agents onto German territory and obtaining the most complete military and economic information on Germany and its satellites, we found it useful to arrange contacts with the intelligence services of our allies – the United States and England. In Moscow liaison with representatives of British intelligence was maintained by one of my deputies, while in London it was handled by our experienced officer I.A. Chichaev.

In December of 1943, the chief of the US Office of Strategic Services, General William Donovan, arrived in Moscow to establish contacts with Soviet intelligence. Through the American ambassador in Moscow, Averell Harriman, he addressed Molotov, who was at that time the Deputy Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars and the Commissar of Foreign Affairs.

The Commissar of State Security and I were invited to the Kremlin, where we were received by Molotov. He announced Donovan’s arrival in Moscow and his intentions.

“How do you view this?” Molotov asked. “We shouldn’t refuse, apparently. It follows to meet with him and clarify his plans.”

It was here the decision was made that I should conduct negotiations with Donovan and report them in detail to Molotov.

The next day my deputy and I received General Donovan and carried on a thorough discussion. The results of the meeting were reported to Stalin and Molotov, who gave their sanction to establishing contacts.

The following were stipulated: exchange of intelligence information; joint consultations during the execution of ongoing actions; rendering assistance in dropping agents behind enemy lines; and the exchange of sabotage equipment, etc.

Establishing contacts with the representatives of American and British intelligence, we weren’t counting on their forthrightness, but we nonetheless assumed that such contacts could be useful. It’s necessary to give due to the fact that the exchange of intelligence information, mainly of a military nature, on Germany and its allies had proven beneficial. The information that came to us for the most part went to the Red Army’s GRU, and, as much as I know, a significant portion of that confirmed or completed intelligence we had. On our part, we passed information on German forces and their dislocation and armaments, especially on units located in France, Belgium, and Holland, since these countries interested the allied intelligence services most of all.

Along with exchanging intelligence information, we swapped the technical means for carrying out sabotage behind enemy lines. However, it should be said that both we and our partners passed along resources that didn’t represent any big secret and weren’t a revelation to either side.

We undertook attempts to utilize Western intelligence possibilities, especially those of the British, for inserting our agents onto the territory of France, Czechoslovakia, Italy, and Germany itself. These drops didn’t yield positive results, though, and we declined the services of British intelligence.

Within half a year from the moment contacts with the Americans were established, we – as well as the Americans, apparently – became convinced of the low effectiveness of the joint work that had been conducted during that period. Our contacts with US intelligence, as with the British, gradually began to weaken, and soon after the second front was opened they ceased completely.

By that time our intelligence service possessed information that the allies weren’t opening a second front not over military reasons, but over political ones. They were calculating on weakening the Soviet Union. And, as is known, US and British forces landed at Normandy only at the start of June 1944, when the fate of fascist Germany was practically sealed as a result of the Red Army’s potent advance.

For positive results in foreign intelligence activity and the selfless work of its officers, in June of 1944 the Soviet government decorated a large group of intelligence officers with orders and medals. Included among them, I was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

After the opening of the second front, it was very important to know the plans and intentions of the US and British governments over postwar political issues concerning both Germany and the countries that had fought on its side. This was a task our intelligence service had to resolve, and we managed to do so rather successfully.

Our London residency played an enormous role in the achievement of positive results, as it maintained agent networks in government bodies, particularly within the Foreign Office. A significant portion of Churchill and Roosevelt’s telegraph correspondence, as well as the Foreign Office’s communications with British ambassadors in Moscow, Washington, Ankara, and other cities, was made the preserve of Soviet intelligence, and, consequently, the leadership of the Soviet state.

A great service by foreign intelligence during this period, especially by residencies of the First Directorate in the United States, England, and Canada, was acquiring scientific-technical information in the sphere of atomic energy, which helped in significant measure to accelerate the creation of an atomic bomb in the Soviet Union.

I often had to meet with Igor Vasilievich Kurchatov, who expressed great appreciation for the materials on atomic energy issues he had received from our intelligence service. In the postwar period, for the length of five years, I was to be engaged in matters tied to the special production and launching of uranium plants, and in relation to that I again met with Igor Vasilievich, a talented scientist and wonderful person. In our conversations he again emphasized what an invaluable service the materials obtained by Soviet intelligence had played in the resolution of the atomic problem.

A large quantity of materials on issues of aviation construction, building tanks, device design, and other matters were also obtained.

Everything that was done by the security organs’ intelligence service in the years of the Great Patriotic War was a major contribution to the victory of the Soviet people over fascist Germany, and also to the strengthening the might of the Soviet nation.

[i] On June 17^th, 1941, Stalin summoned Commissar of State Security Vsevolod Merkulov and chief of intelligence Pavel Fitin to discuss a telegram from Berlin, received from “Starshina” and “Corsican” on June 16^th, which began with the words: “All Germany’s military measures for preparing an armed campaign against the USSR are completed, and you can expect a strike at any time.” Stalin demanded verification of the information, considering it possible disinformation.

Work Translated: Очерки истории российской внешней разведки: В 6-ти тт. 0-95 — Т.4: 1941 — 1945 годы. — М.:Между- нар. отношения, 1995.

Translated by Mark Hackard.

From the archives of the SVR comes a broad overview of the Second World War by the chief of Soviet intelligence in World War II, Lt. Gen. Pavel Fitin:

“Pavel Matveevich Fitin head the Fifth Department of the NKVD GUGB [Chief Directorate for State Security] – the NKGB First Directorate from May of 1939 to 1946. The basis of this material is formed by his memoirs, which were written by the author in 1970 for the 50^th anniversary of Soviet foreign intelligence.”

Not claiming to fully shed light on everything, for this would demand special research, I would like to recount certain matters of the multifaceted activity of the intelligence service of the Soviet state security organs during the years of the Great Patriotic War.

On June 17th, 1941, I had a conversation with Josef Vissarionovich Stalin. After that, a sense of alarm didn’t leave me, not for one day. This worried not only me, but also other officers who were in the know about this meeting[i].

A few days passed. At dawn I walked out of the People’s Commissariat for State Security [NKGB]; a tense week was behind me. It was Sunday, a day of relaxation, but the thoughts kept coming – thoughts like a clock’s pendulum: “Is this really disinformation? And if not, then how?” With that on my mind I arrived home and laid down, but I wasn’t able to fall asleep – the telephone rang. It was five in the morning. In the receiver was the voice of the duty officer at the People’s Commissariat: “Comrade General, the Commissar [Vsevolod Merkulov] is calling for you immediately, and a car has been sent for you.” I immediately got dressed and went out, being wholly sure that what we had spoken about with Stalin had happened.

When I entered the Commissar’s waiting room, there were several men there. Soon the rest of the comrades arrived. We were invited into his office. The Commissar was crushed by what had occurred. After a short pause he informed us that along the entire length of the western border – from the Baltic to the Black Sea – battles were underway, and in a number of spots German forces had invaded our country’s territory. The Central Committee and the Soviet government were taking all measures for the organization of resistance to the enemy who had invaded our territory. We had to think through a plan of action for the security organs, accounting for the unfolding situation. From that moment we all were in a state of war, and we had to announce this in all directorates and departments.

“And it’s necessary for you,” the Commissar turned to me, “to prepare corresponding orders for residencies abroad. I’ll call on you in an hour-and-a-half to two hours.”

With that we parted ways in order to attend to the execution of the Commissar’s orders. The information was extremely unpleasant, although for me and some other senior personnel who were with the Commissar, it didn’t come as such big news. Aside from the fact that the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis had been formed and directed against the Soviet Union, the First Directorate had received from residencies in Berlin, Paris, London, Prague, and elsewhere reliable intelligence on Germany’s preparation for a major war.

On June 16th, 1941, from our residency in Berlin there arrived an emergency message that Hitler had made the final decision to attack the USSR on June 22nd, 1941. This information was immediately reported to the highest levels.

Late at night on the 16th-17th of June, I was called into the Commissar. He said that at Stalin was inviting us over at 1 PM. There was much to think over on that night and morning of the 17th. However, I was confident that this meeting was connected to the information provided by our Berlin residency, information which he had received. I didn’t doubt the veracity of the report that had come in, inasmuch as I knew the man who had told us of this well.

Just two years had passed from the time I took charge of the Intelligence Directorate at the central apparatus, but I had studied our intelligence officers, both young and old, well, and I believed in their honesty and devotion to the cause. I was convinced of this when going about restructuring intelligence work in accordance with the Central Committee’s decision from 1938 “On Improvement of the Work of the NKVD Foreign Department [INO].”

The given decision had been caused by the abnormal situation in the state security organs, first and foremost in intelligence. In the 1930s there had developed an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion of many Chekists, mainly toward leading officers – and not only in the central apparatus, but also at Foreign Department residencies abroad. They were accused of betraying the Motherland and were subjected to repressions. In the course of 1938 and 1939, almost all the INO residents abroad were recalled to Moscow, and many of them were repressed.

The Central Committee’s passing of the aforementioned decision was also conditioned by the international environment that had been created: the formation of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo fascist bloc, Germany’s seizure of Austria, the Munich Agreement that clearly bore witness to Hitler’s course toward unleashing world war. Besides that, the duplicitous behavior of England, France, and certain other European states in relation to the USSR strained the international situation even further.

The situation urgently required our taking immediate measures to restructure the entire work of foreign intelligence. In March of 1938, the Party’s Central Committee mobilized around 800 Communists with a higher education and experience of Party and leadership work. After six months of training in the NKVD Central School, they were sent both to the central apparatus as well as to organs on the periphery. A large group of them, in which the author of these lines found himself, was selected for service in the Fifth (Foreign) Department [INO] of the NKVD.

In October of 1938 I came to work in the Foreign Department as an operational officer within the section covering Trotskyites and rightists abroad, though soon I was appointed the chief there. In January of 1939 I became the deputy chief of the NKVD Fifth Department, while in May of 1939 I became its full chief. I was at the post of head of foreign intelligence until the middle of 1946.

The new cadres who had poured into intelligence, along with the Chekist intelligence officers who remained in the service, formed a monolithic alloy of experience and youthful vigor. Their mission was to improve intelligence work abroad.

The directorate’s leadership first of all focused its attention on the selection of senior personnel for foreign residencies. In the course of 1939-40, old, experienced intelligence officers were sent abroad: V.M. Zarubin; E.Y. Zarubina; D.G. Fedichkin; B.A. Rybkin; Z.A. Rybkina; V.A. Takhchianov; M.A. Allakhverdov; and A.M. Korotkov. There were also young and talented Chekists: G.N. Kalinin; A.K. Trenev; A.I. Leonenko; V.G. Pavlov; E.I. Kravtsov; N.M. Gorshkov; and many others.

During selection of candidacies for intelligence work abroad, we were forced to come up against great difficulties because of weak knowledge of foreign languages by many comrades who had returned to intelligence and their lack of experience of operating abroad.

As a consequence of measures taken during the pre-war years, we were able to bring around 40 foreign residencies up to strength and direct over 200 intelligence officers to them. We were also able to deploy many Chekist staff officers for illegal work. That reflected on results immediately.

Taking into account the contributions of Chekist intelligence officers in the acquisition of valuable information necessary to the Soviet state, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Council awarded a number of officers of foreign intelligence with orders and medals in May of 1940. As the chief of the NKGB First Directorate, I was also accorded a high government decoration.

Thanks to the presence of agent networks with major intelligence possibilities in such nations as Germany, England, the United States, Czechoslovakia (by that time “The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia”), Bulgaria, France, and others, from the end of 1940 until the attack on the Soviet Union the First Directorate received data that said how Germany, having seized 13 European countries, was preparing for an attack on the USSR.

For example, our resident in Prague informed us of the movements of German military formation, hardware, and other military equipment to the borders of the Soviet Union. Similar intelligence also came from other residents. Naturally, all this information was sent to the Red Army’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), while the most important went to three addresses: Stalin, Molotov, and Voroshilov. The summons to Stalin on June 17th, therefore, didn’t catch us unawares.

Despite our being well-informed and our firm intention to defend our point of view regarding the materials received by the First Directorate, we still dwelt in a state of certain agitation. This was the leader of the Party and the country, with an unimpeachable authority. And it could so happen that Stalin wouldn’t like something or he’d see a failure by us in some matter, and then any of us could end up in quite an unenviable position.

Accompanied by such thoughts, we arrived with the Commissar at Stalin’s reception room in the Kremlin. After an assistant reported our arrival, we were invited into the office. Stalin greeted us with the nod of his head, but didn’t offer us a seat; he himself didn’t sit down the entire time of the conversation. He walked around the chamber, stopping to pose a question or to concentrate on the moments of the brief that interested him, or on the answers to his questions.

Having walked up to a great desk that was located to the left of the entrance and upon which lay piles of numerous messages and reports – on one of them was our document – Stalin, not raising his head, said:

I read your report. It turns out that Germany is planning to attack the Soviet Union?

We were silent. After all, just three days ago, June 14th, the newspapers had published an announcement by TASS in which it was said that Germany was observing the conditions of the Non-Aggression Pact just as steadfastly as the Soviet Union. Stalin continued to walk back and forth around the chamber, now and then puffing on his pipe. Finally, stopping before us, he asked:

What kind of man is it who reported this information?

We were ready to answer that question, and I gave a detailed profile of our source. In particular, I said that he was a German, close to us ideologically, and together with other patriots was prepared to assist the struggle with fascism in any way. He worked in the Air Ministry and was very well-informed. As soon as he found out the time for Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, he summoned our officer who handled him to an emergency meeting and passed over the original message. We had no basis to doubt the veracity of his information.

After the completion of the briefing, again there followed a long pause. Stalin, walking to his desk and turning to us, pronounced:

Disinformation! You are free to go.

We left anxious. There was much to rethink, and our tense state didn’t leave us for a minute. What if our agent had been mistaken? But in the name of the foreign intelligence directorate, I had assured Stalin that the information gave no cause for doubt.

Arriving at the People’s Commissariat of State Security and having exchanged impressions of the meeting, the Commissar and I right there and then composed an encrypted telegram to the Berlin residency on the immediate verification of the message that had been sent about a German attack on the USSR, which was supposedly marked for June 22nd, 1941. But we didn’t succeed in getting an answer. On that day fascist forces attacked our Motherland. The latter event was a bitter confirmation of the correctness of our agent’s report.

The GRU and our NKGB counterintelligence units possessed similar information. This exerted the needed influence on Stalin, and on June 21st he gave the order to the Red Army General Staff to bring formations on the border up to combat readiness. Stalin delayed carrying out the most necessary military precautions, obviously from fear of giving Hitler an excuse to attack.

In measures developed by the NKGB First Directorate during the first days of the war, the main attention was devoted to the selection of the most capable intelligence officers for work in operational groups that would stay behind on temporarily occupied territory after the withdrawal of Red Army units. Our intelligence officers were to organize, lead, and train Soviet patriots in waging partisan warfare behind enemy lines, and also simultaneously conduct intelligence and sabotage operations against the German invaders and their allies.

In the very first days of the war, dozens of Chekist intelligence officers underwent training and went first to Ukraine, and then to Belarus, Moldova, and the western regions of the RSFSR. All of them acquitted themselves worthily, honorably executing the missions assigned them. The Chekist intelligence officers Dmitry Medvedev; Viktor Korolev; Nikolai Prokopyuk; Mikhail Prudnikov; Nikolai Kuznetsov; Vladimir Molodtsov; Viktor Lyagin; Ivan Kudrya, and others were accorded the rank of Hero of the Soviet Union for carrying out special tasks.

Besides the resolution of this first-priority mission, it was necessary to strengthen our work abroad, mainly with the goal of wreaking the most damage possible to Hitler’s Germany. Its forces, despite the stubborn resistance of Red Army units, moved ever deeper into the heart of our Motherland. We were forced to leave the major industrial centers of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and the Baltic. Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad were under the threat of capture.

In this unbelievably difficult period for the Motherland, Soviet intelligence tasked all its intelligence officers and numerous agent networks with obtaining intelligence data on fascist Germany and its allies, its military-economic potential, and the movements of forces and military hardware. On the other hand, our intelligence officers facilitated the organization of resistance movements in countries occupied by the fascists in every manner even before the attack on the USSR.

Taking into account that the NKGB First Directorate’s activity in creating operational groups and organizing their work behind enemy lines was assuming a wide scale and required more attention, the Party Central Committee recognized the expediency of dividing the First Directorate into two directorates:

• The First Directorate [Intelligence], tasked organizing and conducting intelligence operations against Germany and its allies; shedding light on US and British policy relative to the Soviet Union and the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis, and also the policy of other capitalist states not participating in the war; carrying out technical intelligence operations; organizing counterintelligence work abroad.
• The Fourth Directorate [Sabotage & Assassinations], tasked with organizing operational groups behind enemy lines and directing them.

Leadership of the First Directorate was again placed on my shoulders, while one of my deputies became the chief of the Fourth Directorate. The division was formatted by an order for the People’s Commissariat of State Security. This restructuring didn’t take long in showing its effects: the results of the work of both the First and Fourth Directorates were improved.

The First Directorate, mainly directing the work of foreign residencies, sought to render all possible assistance in organizing human intelligence operations with the objective of attaining the most valuable information. In the course of the first two years of the war, we managed to acquire a large quantity of extremely important materials on foreign policy – both of our allies against Germany and that of neutral states. We also received important materials of a military and scientific-technical character.

However, despite the value of the intelligence materials we acquired, they still did not satisfy the High Command, which needed the fullest possible information on Germany’s military potential, US policy vis-a-vis the USSR, and especially the issue of opening a second front.

On June 5th, 1943, the State Defense Committee affirmed the document “Measures for Improving USSR Intelligence Organs’ Work Abroad,” in which were also designated the missions of the NKGB First Directorate. The best officers of our directorate were sent to work in foreign residencies, and they also organized new ones.

A year of unheard-of efforts by the foreign intelligence apparatus bore its fruits: the quality of political information was raised, and so was its volume. The most prized scientific-technical information, especially military-oriented, began to flow in in large quantities.

To expand opportunities for dropping our agents onto German territory and obtaining the most complete military and economic information on Germany and its satellites, we found it useful to arrange contacts with the intelligence services of our allies – the United States and England. In Moscow liaison with representatives of British intelligence was maintained by one of my deputies, while in London it was handled by our experienced officer I.A. Chichaev.

In December of 1943, the chief of the US Office of Strategic Services, General William Donovan, arrived in Moscow to establish contacts with Soviet intelligence. Through the American ambassador in Moscow, Averell Harriman, he addressed Molotov, who was at that time the Deputy Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars and the Commissar of Foreign Affairs.

The Commissar of State Security and I were invited to the Kremlin, where we were received by Molotov. He announced Donovan’s arrival in Moscow and his intentions.

“How do you view this?” Molotov asked. “We shouldn’t refuse, apparently. It follows to meet with him and clarify his plans.”

It was here the decision was made that I should conduct negotiations with Donovan and report them in detail to Molotov.

The next day my deputy and I received General Donovan and carried on a thorough discussion. The results of the meeting were reported to Stalin and Molotov, who gave their sanction to establishing contacts.

The following were stipulated: exchange of intelligence information; joint consultations during the execution of ongoing actions; rendering assistance in dropping agents behind enemy lines; and the exchange of sabotage equipment, etc.

Establishing contacts with the representatives of American and British intelligence, we weren’t counting on their forthrightness, but we nonetheless assumed that such contacts could be useful. It’s necessary to give due to the fact that the exchange of intelligence information, mainly of a military nature, on Germany and its allies had proven beneficial. The information that came to us for the most part went to the Red Army’s GRU, and, as much as I know, a significant portion of that confirmed or completed intelligence we had. On our part, we passed information on German forces and their dislocation and armaments, especially on units located in France, Belgium, and Holland, since these countries interested the allied intelligence services most of all.

Along with exchanging intelligence information, we swapped the technical means for carrying out sabotage behind enemy lines. However, it should be said that both we and our partners passed along resources that didn’t represent any big secret and weren’t a revelation to either side.

We undertook attempts to utilize Western intelligence possibilities, especially those of the British, for inserting our agents onto the territory of France, Czechoslovakia, Italy, and Germany itself. These drops didn’t yield positive results, though, and we declined the services of British intelligence.

Within half a year from the moment contacts with the Americans were established, we – as well as the Americans, apparently – became convinced of the low effectiveness of the joint work that had been conducted during that period. Our contacts with US intelligence, as with the British, gradually began to weaken, and soon after the second front was opened they ceased completely.

By that time our intelligence service possessed information that the allies weren’t opening a second front not over military reasons, but over political ones. They were calculating on weakening the Soviet Union. And, as is known, US and British forces landed at Normandy only at the start of June 1944, when the fate of fascist Germany was practically sealed as a result of the Red Army’s potent advance.

For positive results in foreign intelligence activity and the selfless work of its officers, in June of 1944 the Soviet government decorated a large group of intelligence officers with orders and medals. Included among them, I was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

After the opening of the second front, it was very important to know the plans and intentions of the US and British governments over postwar political issues concerning both Germany and the countries that had fought on its side. This was a task our intelligence service had to resolve, and we managed to do so rather successfully.

Our London residency played an enormous role in the achievement of positive results, as it maintained agent networks in government bodies, particularly within the Foreign Office. A significant portion of Churchill and Roosevelt’s telegraph correspondence, as well as the Foreign Office’s communications with British ambassadors in Moscow, Washington, Ankara, and other cities, was made the preserve of Soviet intelligence, and, consequently, the leadership of the Soviet state.

A great service by foreign intelligence during this period, especially by residencies of the First Directorate in the United States, England, and Canada, was acquiring scientific-technical information in the sphere of atomic energy, which helped in significant measure to accelerate the creation of an atomic bomb in the Soviet Union.

I often had to meet with Igor Vasilievich Kurchatov, who expressed great appreciation for the materials on atomic energy issues he had received from our intelligence service. In the postwar period, for the length of five years, I was to be engaged in matters tied to the special production and launching of uranium plants, and in relation to that I again met with Igor Vasilievich, a talented scientist and wonderful person. In our conversations he again emphasized what an invaluable service the materials obtained by Soviet intelligence had played in the resolution of the atomic problem.

A large quantity of materials on issues of aviation construction, building tanks, device design, and other matters were also obtained.

Everything that was done by the security organs’ intelligence service in the years of the Great Patriotic War was a major contribution to the victory of the Soviet people over fascist Germany, and also to the strengthening the might of the Soviet nation.

[i] On June 17^th, 1941, Stalin summoned Commissar of State Security Vsevolod Merkulov and chief of intelligence Pavel Fitin to discuss a telegram from Berlin, received from “Starshina” and “Corsican” on June 16^th, which began with the words: “All Germany’s military measures for preparing an armed campaign against the USSR are completed, and you can expect a strike at any time.” Stalin demanded verification of the information, considering it possible disinformation.

Work Translated: Очерки истории российской внешней разведки: В 6-ти тт. 0-95 — Т.4: 1941 — 1945 годы. — М.:Между- нар. отношения, 1995.

Translated by Mark Hackard.

KGB Lt. General Vitaly Gregorievich Pavlov (1914-2005), a senior officer of the First Chief Directorate (Foreign Intelligence), responds to charges made by Soviet defectors to the West regarding disinformation campaigns in the Cold War. Pavlov notes that disinformation is a normal tool for ensuring the secrecy of ongoing intelligence operations by any espionage service, and that Anatoly Golitsyn’s claims of a “grand deception” were proven as fantasy by the historical record.

Now I’d like to speak a bit on the so-called active measures of Soviet foreign intelligence – those very active measures over which Anatoly Golitsyn, Stanislav Levchenko, Vladislav Bittman, and still others among the traitors, launched into their hysterics after having left for the West. In their portrayal, such measures represent calculated, wide-scale activity to deceive a world audience and lead it into confusion regarding the true goals and motives of Soviet foreign policy.

Anatoly Golitsyn kept it up until all postwar complications and conflicts that the Soviet Union encountered in relations with Yugoslavia, Hungary, Poland, China, and Czechoslovakia were not a manifestation of real problems generated by everyday life, but merely a “demonstration” executed on a grand scale with the goal of dis-informing and deceiving a trusting Western public. He released his opus literally on the eve of the cardinal changes that unfolded in our country, the states of Eastern Europe, and in the international arena as a whole. In light of these events there is no need to waste words on refutation of such, so to say, a “concept.” Even Golitsyn’s colleague in betrayal, Stanislav Levchenko, called his “theoretical research” an absurdity. Levchenko, however, also made his share of “revelations” regarding Soviet disinformation against the West, bringing forth not a single fact meriting attention to back his assertions.

From a leadership position in Soviet intelligence, I encountered this problem more intimately than earlier, and I even looked deeper into its history. Disinformation is familiar to humanity from time immemorial. Its classic example is the legendary Trojan Horse. But here we must account for the following.

One should not confuse, as iour opponents often do intentionally, political disinformation with operational disinformation. The latter presents an essential tool in the arsenal of all intelligence services, a tactic applied to camouflage one’s own actions, the neutralization of damage incurred, etc. In itself, what is an intelligence officer’s legend, his cover, other then certain disinformation techniques? A widely known exemplar of operational disinformation was Operation Trust, conducted by Soviet intelligence in the 1920s, the objective of which was to strike a blow against sabotage and subversive action by the White Guard counterrevolutionaries. Therefore, references to Trust as an argument, as if disinformation is characteristic of our intelligence service from its birth, are deprived of any basis. Such disinformation, I repeat, is an integral element in the activity of any intelligence service.

For those who would slander us, it wouldn’t be bad to remember what kind of disinformation measures, for example, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) carried out through the French and Dutch Resistance. Agents inserted behind enemy lines were given materials and information directly calculated to fall into the hands of the Nazis. Intentionally false data about the period and place that the allies would land were announced to leaders and participants of resistance organizations, and when they fell into the clutches of the Gestapo – not without the help of provocateurs – they would give the confessions desired by the Anglo-American command. Cruel methods, one might even say cynical ones, although they found their attempted justification in “operational necessity.”

In addition, our intelligence service, in spite of the ill-willed claims of some in the West, never purposely sacrificed its sources. An example of this was saving two valued agents, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, at the price of a certain weakening of Kim Philby’s security.

When I oversaw foreign counterintelligence, however, we several times had to confront a difficult dilemma. We received extremely valuable information from sources inserted into the intelligence services of our then-opponents, yet to realize it was quite complicated, as it could create threaten the source with exposure. Such a situation arose with the reports of George Blake, Kim Philby, and other of our agents. We constantly had to weigh how great the risk would be during the realization of the information acquired by them.

Concerning active measures, their basic objective is to facilitate the execution of our state’s foreign policy course. This is a most important component of the work of a foreign intelligence service in any state. The Americans, it seems, call it “covert operations,” while we use the term “active measures.” Their composition amounts to the dissemination hardly of disinformation, but rather of information necessary to us, which for one or another reason is hidden or silenced. It is brought to the attention of the wider public or certain circles, upon whom it is directly oriented.

I was to carry out such measures in Canada when, through our own possibilities, we were forced to disseminate statements and documents of the Soviet leadership that had been silenced by the local media so that the public could receive a correct – and not one-sided – representation of transpiring events, as well as of the positions and actions of our state.

But I essentially didn’t have any business with “agents of influence,” of whom we supposedly had a multitude, as is sometimes claimed in the West. At one time, it’s true, this term was in currency, but it didn’t stick because such a category of agents wasn’t there within our intelligence service. For example, when I ran the Vienna residency, among our numerous (I won’t specify how many) agents, there wasn’t one whom we had grounds to classify as such, although they influenced our policy with their information.

It is also not disinformation when an intelligence service makes public genuine, verified documents and materials of the opposing side, evidence that reveals some of its not-so-noble intentions, plans, and actions that had been kept secret, precisely due to their character.

Work Cited: Павлов В. Г. Управление “С”: во главе нелегальной разведки. Яуза-Эксмо, 2006 г. Москва.

Translated by Mark Hackard.

Lt. Col. Vladimir Nikolaevich Zaitsev, an officer of the KGB’s elite spetsnaz Group A (Alpha), commanded the operation to arrest CIA agent Adolph Tolkachev in 1985. Zaitsev recounts the affair and its strategic significance in the Cold War.

Group A’s very first snatch operation against a “werewolf” was the summer 1985 arrest of Adolph Tolkachev (agent code name [CK] SPHERE), an engineer at a USSR Ministry of Radio Industry scientific research institute – one of the leading specialists in aero-navigational systems. Back in February of 1977 – on his own wishes – Tolkachev took the initiative and proposed his services to US intelligence, passing the CIA secret information in the area of radar construction for military aviation over the length of several years. And so, for example, Tolkachev handed over to Langley documentation on the newest projects for the Soviet Air Force and Air Defense’s cockpit-based “friend-foe” identification system.

Before Sphere’s exposure the CIA was able to build up more than two million dollars in his accounts in American banks – a sum paltry compared to what could have been spent by the United States on corresponding research in the electronics sector. The spy thus saved American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.

“…CIA officers like to joke that Tolkachev paid their way,” Aldrich Ames would later report to Moscow.

He was the one who compensated all the CIA’s budget expenditures, literally bringing Soviet aviation’s radar-electronics to the United States on a plate. If a new world war started, NATO would have held an incontestable advantage in the air.

The Americans immediately shared the secrets received from Sphere with their strategic ally in the Middle East, Israel, and soon the Arabs, whose air forces were to a significant degree were supplied with Soviet combat jets, discovered their vulnerabilities and that they were within reach of the IDF’s anti-air assets.

According to some evaluations, the benefit obtained through the “CIA-Sphere Joint Enterprise” amounted to around $20 million. With a correction for inflation, we could boldly multiply that figure by five.

In the middle of the summer of 1985, during the full swing of vacations, I was called in by the chief of our group, Gennady Nikolaevich Zaitsev. However, despite the established protocol, I was to go even higher, to the chief of the Seventh Directorate [Surveillance], E.M. Rasshchepov, for concrete orders without delay.

We (in the given case and in the first phase – I) were ordered to carry out the clandestine detainment of one person, after the necessary technical preparation, of course. His name had not yet been given. But the general emphasized that not one hair should fall from the head of the target. And a situation in which he could commit suicide was completely impermissible.

Responsibility for the operation was entrusted to me personally. It was the first time I had received such a clearly accented assignment. Before that my “profile” was predominantly terrorists of various calibers. 1985 was underway, the beginning of Gorbachev’s Perestroika. I remember thinking at that moment, “I wonder whom we’re supposed to grab with such precautionary measures.” Because of the political situation at that time, this person could turn out to be anyone at all. Therefore, receiving the mission, I felt sufficiently uncomfortable.

Returning to my place, I began to prepare. My first order of business was to mark down which of my guys to take on the operation. I had to take a multitude of factors into account – in particular, aside from purely professional characteristics, also certain acting talents, an ability to blend into the landscape: we had to carry out our business not in the thick of the city, but in such a place where the “client” would probably notice and spot us from far away. And, meanwhile, nothing was supposed to evoke his suspicions.

On one of the days listed on the training schedule, a surveillance officer and I went to the place of the upcoming operation to seize the werewolf, on one of the highways on the outskirts of Moscow…

This was a comparatively little-traversed road that could be surveyed from one side to another. On the one hand, it was an ideal place: there was the chance that at the moment of detainment unnecessary witnesses wouldn’t be around. On the other hand, this circumstance bothered us just as much, since the snatch group would be visible from all sides, like a fly on a window panel. We began to search out something more suitable. We chose a forest opening that, although watery, gave me and my men some advantage: with a skilled approach, this grove facilitated our stealth.

Getting into my role as much as possible, I thought of what might be needed there. On our list were militia patrol cars and an ambulance, equipment matching the time of the operation’s execution and the nature of the assignment, and additional forces to secure the event. Then my officers went out to “take stock” of the place with their own eyes. Later we laid out our observations and exchanged opinions on who would do what.

I arrived to Rasshchepov with a preliminary outline ready. In his office I found out from a counterintelligence officer I didn’t know that we were to grab an American intelligence agent. Getting information on who was who, I cheered up – politics was excluded! Although the “client” was rather specific, he was nonetheless one of “my types.”

Static like any sort of document, any plan is sufficiently dry and conventional. A live case, especially in our line of work, had the habit of sometimes bringing truly destructive edits to beautifully composed plans. Yet at the same time, such a detailed plan allows one to designate, beyond the necessary forces and capabilities, a hard and clear list of upcoming actions, step by step. Its executioners should have known it by heart like the Our Father or the multiplication table.

As was already noted, the decision to detain the spy not in Moscow, but beyond the city, was dictated exclusively by operational necessity. Tolkachev’s masters overseas were to stay ignorant of their agent’s fate for as long as possible.

Our surveillance officers, because of the specifics of their work and having more wide-ranging impressions of Tolkachev, reported that he wasn’t just an auto enthusiast, but a serious and sometimes risky “racer.” Under certain circumstances a car in the hands of such a man could be turned into a serious weapon.

But it was here that the counterintelligence general announced that our client, among other things, also loved to “tie one off.” I said:

If the target doesn’t like limits, we can assume that he’ll allow himself to relax on the weekends at his dacha. And then most likely his wife, who also has a driver’s license, will be behind the wheel of his Zhiguli instead of him. That changes the case at its root.

Under such an option, our plan of action and the arrangement of assets came out to be different. There was also another circumstance, the main one: no one among us had any idea of Tolkachev’s potential fighting abilities.

A Double Game

The day of the operation had come. Externally everything looked “normal.” There was a patrol car and yet another one: the road cops were doing their usual thing. We were at top-level readiness at earlier designated points.

To our good fortune, and mine personally, Tolkachev was riding as a passenger. When you have experience and maintain your form day in and day out, when an understanding of the mission and a clear objective exist – both full coordination reached through psychological compatibility and developed through years of joint action – then to an observer it seems that everything happens by itself.

Tolkachev’s wife wasn’t able to collect herself, while we had already hauled her spouse into our car. Everything was done simultaneously and quickly: handcuffs, off with the clothes, as all sorts of things could turn up in his pockets. Tolkachev, it’s said, recounted that we had ripped his jacket off without removing the handcuffs and asked to explain how that could happen.

Of course we had taken his handcuffs off; it’s just that he was so shocked that he didn’t notice it. Overall, we acted quickly, toughly, and decisively. It was enough to fully demoralize the individuals we detained – quickness and the onslaught. In no case were we to drop our tempo or let the person overwhelmed by surprise come to his senses.

A couple minutes later, there was already no sign of us on the highway. It was as if we were never there… Tolkachev gave up rather quickly. And without enthusiasm, perhaps, he still precisely carried out everything required of him by the rules of a major operational game, which officers of KGB counterintelligence initiated with the American CIA station.

I would like to complete the story of Tolkachev with a quote from state security veteran Igor Atamanenko’s book:

Planning to use Sphere for their objectives, the KGB proceeded from the fact that Tolkachev, many years servicing his overseas masters, enjoyed their unconditional trust and had so accustomed them to the consumption of refined delicacies – top-secret information – that, without thinking, they would swallow other already-prepared treats made in the kitchens at Lubyanka. And why not? The addicts were swallowing placebos instead of narcotics. The main thing was that the patient trusted the physician!

In the course of investigating the subscriber cards of the radio-industrial research institute’s secret library, counterintelligence officers established that beginning in 1981, Tolkachev without fail demonstrated heightened interest to technologies for the creation of a stealth bomber by Soviet specialists. Namely at this time the Americans began to actively develop their variant of an aircraft that was impossible to fix on radar. The American Stealth Bomber was a complete analogue to our own. We were significantly ahead of the United States in this direction, and therefore the services of Sphere, a contract supplier of top-secret intelligence relating to our project, were fate’s gift to the opponent.

In the course of the next ten months, Tolkachev meticulously supplied his overseas customers with information slapped together under the KGB’s recipe in special “kitchens” – secret laboratories in branches of the radio-industrial research institute. Suddenly a waterfall of intelligence crashed down on American scientists and technicians who were working on the Stealth project. As a result and with Sphere’s help, we were able to hinder the completion of the Stealth within the time frame the Americans had set, and force the US military-industrial complex to undertake unjustifiably high expenditures.

But the main point was that thanks to the efforts of Soviet counterintelligence officers, the American variant of our stealth project presented no greater threat to the USSR than a zeppelin. American generals were able to become sure of this during the Stealth’s first test flights. A head-spinning discovery awaited the Pentagon: their newest airplane was invisible only for US anti-aircraft systems! $30 billion, meanwhile, had been spent on its creation.

Such was the finale to the activity of CIA agent Adolph Tolkachev.

Work Translated: Зайцев, В.Н. “Охота на шпионов.” СПЕЦНАЗ РОССИИ, N 3 (174). МАРТ 2011 ГОДА.

Translated by Mark Hackard.

Africa has long been a geopolitical battleground among the great powers, with the Cold War representing an especially intense round of this struggle. From the archives of Russia’s SVR comes an overview of the KGB First Chief Directorate’s intelligence, covert action, and political influence operations in Africa during the 1960s and 1970s.  

In the postwar period, Soviet foreign intelligence had to work on an African continent almost unknown to it up to that time. In the 1950s, Soviet intelligence’s interest in Africa was conditioned mainly by the acquisition of information on the plans and intentions of Western countries. At that time many air and naval bases of NATO member nations were situated in Africa. Their interest in the continent was rooted not only in strategic reasoning: Africa was rich in food and mineral resources, and her depths preserved deposits of materials necessary for modern industry, such as uranium, cobalt, wolfram, copper, nickel, oil, and many others.

To what measure did the NATO countries seek to use the African continent in their confrontation with the Soviet Union? Our intelligence service was looking for answers to that question. To meet these objectives it had earlier mainly utilized its possibilities in Western nations. In Africa itself, Soviet foreign intelligence’s positions were more than modest. There were small residencies only in Egypt and Ethiopia, and by the end of the 1950s, residencies had also opened in Sudan, Ghana, and Guinea.

Soviet intelligence began its real work in Africa starting in the year 1960, when the process of African countries’ decolonization began to gain strength. 17 independent states immediately appeared on the map of the African continent. The UN declared 1960 the Year of Africa.

Within Soviet intelligence there was established an African department. Its tasks could be summarized as the following:

• Facilitate the quickest liquidation of remnants of the colonial system.

• Help national liberation movements in remaining colonies.

• Track the policies of former and current colonizers: Britain, France, Belgium, and Portugal;

• Make sense of US policy in relation to Africa;

• Analyze the situation in each African country – will it remain in the orbit of the old system or take a new path?

• Acquire friends and allies among Africans.

To that were added security issues for Soviet diplomatic colonies, embassies, and other Soviet institutions.

The 1960s proved themselves to be a “hot” decade both for young African nations and Soviet foreign intelligence. African countries that had just been liberated immediately encountered harsh confrontation with their former metropoles, who sought to maintain political and economic positions in their former colonies. In a number of cases this led to the emergence of crisis situations, such as in the former Belgian Congo, for instance.

Coups d’etat that occurred with the interference of Western powers and their intelligence services, accompanied by internecine conflicts, tribal feuds, and civil wars, became a habitual phenomenon. In every concrete situation, information from Soviet intelligence was required on who came to power, what forces carried out the coup, and along which path they were intending to lead the country. To answer all these questions was not easy. At times the participants in the events themselves didn’t know. African residencies, just formed and usually composed of young officers, couldn’t give exhaustive answers to all these questions. But in good faith they sent information directly from the scene of events, information that was useful to Moscow since it allowed the leadership to see and evaluate events more clearly.

From our very first steps working in African countries, our officers met with serious problems. Everyday disorganization, a lack of elementary sanitary and living conditions, and interruptions in the supply of food were understandable. It was difficult to expect comfortable work and living conditions in backward nations that had just yesterday been under the colonizers’ yoke.

But then complications in reaching mutual understanding with Africans turned out to be a complete surprise to the majority of our intelligence officers. Africans had a totally different mentality, habits, and mores. Naiveté and the hope for quick assistance combined with irritability and distrust. Colonial times had accustomed them to not trust the white man, and deceiving him was considered merited. All these particularities of the post-colonial African character had to be overcome by our officers, and not without hard work.

It wouldn’t be completely correct to claim that the very fact of African countries obtaining independent status caused the Soviet leadership to automatically make a decision on organizing intelligence work in the young African states.

The process of decolonization was a natural and historically inevitable phenomenon that depended little upon the will of the Soviet Union and Western colonial powers. However, in the conditions of the Cold War and confrontation between the two world blocs, this process itself became an object of the confrontation.

The loss of colonies weakened the bloc of Western powers. That answered to the interests of the Soviet Union and strengthened its foreign policy positions. The Soviet Union, therefore, supported African nations’ struggle for their own political and economic independence.

The United States and colonial countries, in their turn, sought to hinder this process by any means, including the use of their intelligence services. In such a manner, the African continent turned into an arena of ideological and political confrontation for the two blocs.

And so the African peoples’ struggle for their liberation became an object of great-power rivalry. Such was the logic of the Cold War era.

Soviet intelligence conducted work in government and political circles of young African countries with a progressive orientation with great caution, limiting matters, as a rule, to confidential relationships. Therein was one of the most important particularities of its work in Africa: it wasn’t directed against African countries, but rather, was objectively answering to the interests of fighting to strengthen their own political and economic independence and their sovereignty. The interests of African nations liberated from colonial dependence and those of the Soviet Union coincided on these questions.

Therefore, from the very beginning of organizing work in Africa, the leadership of Soviet foreign intelligence did not recommend conducting recruitment work in the political and government circles of progressive African countries. This hardly made the acquisition of information – necessary for completing the tasks set before foreign intelligence – any easier. We were made to search out new techniques and methods of work. Processing open-source information such as various publications, directories, the press, radio and television, for example, acquired great significance. Of course the main weapon, however, remained confidential ties in political and social circles.

Such work demanded good political training, a knowledge of the problems, and great professional mastery. Political and social figures, government servants of various ranks, right up to the highest, all enthusiastically came to establish contacts. Usually these relationships were built and developed on a commonality of political or ideological interests. However, the intelligence officer’s art was to lend these relationships a certain direction, gradually, and in a natural way make them less noticeable to the surrounding public, bringing them to such a degree of privacy that one could count on receiving the confidential information required.

For many years confidential ties remained the dominant form of work in African countries. In such a way our intelligence officers were able to acquire no small number of friends and secure the acquisition of needed intelligence information.

In a number of African countries viewed by the Soviet leadership as progressive in orientation, such as Algeria, Guinea, Ghana, Congo (Brazzaville), Somalia, Ethiopia and an whole set of others, our residencies were tasked with a mission quite unique for intelligence – with its specific assets, it was to facilitate the development and strengthening of these countries’ relations with the Soviet Union. The balance of power among our African partners was not simple. There were supporters of developing relations, and there were opponents, both open and hidden. Sometimes such a position was the result of being insufficiently informed and misunderstanding Soviet policy in African nations. Often a negative attitude toward the Soviet Union was the consequence of failures in our foreign policy, as well as the narrow institutional approach of our diplomatic and foreign trade organizations that enacted the partnership, red tape, and bureaucracy.

On the other hand, Western diplomacy and intelligence conducted work to undermine relations between the Soviet Union and African countries, cultivated and bought off African leaders, used their agent networks, and disseminated disinformation that represented in distorted form the policy and intentions of the USSR in Africa. Alongside that, of course, they used our mistakes and miscalculations.

Soviet foreign intelligence subjected all circumstances connected to the problems of relations with African countries to thorough analysis, and then reported their proposals to the leadership in Moscow.

The Soviet leadership often used intelligence possibilities to convey intelligence of a delicate character to the leaders of African nations. And so, for example, the Soviet leadership informed Algerian president Boumediene through intelligence channels on the activity of Western agent networks in the highest echelons of the Algerian leadership.

KGB cooperation with the security services of a number of young African countries played an important role in the development of friendly relations between them and the Soviet Union and strengthening their sovereignty, with this partnership enacted mainly through foreign intelligence. This cooperation basically amounted to the exchange of information that presented a mutual interest, the short-term training of personnel in Moscow and locally, and assistance through operational hardware. Certain Soviet aid was also rendered in the structuring and organization of work for African countries’ security services. Advice and recommendations were given, but the Africans took decisions, which far from always corresponded with what was recommended by our advisors. Overall, cooperation between the security services of young African countries with the USSR’s special services helped them to build their state apparatus.

A very crucial function carried out by Soviet intelligence in Africa was to maintain ties with the liberation movements of countries not yet free from colonialism. Help and support was provided not only by the Soviet Union. These movements were oriented toward various countries – the US, USSR, China, etc., and sometimes toward several countries at a time. They were extended different types of assistance – political, financial, and political, as well as through training cadres and providing advisors and specialists. This help was directed along various channels: both through the state and social, humanitarian, and international organizations. Assistance along intelligence lines was usually carried out clandestinely. And so the United States long managed to conceal their support for the Union of Peoples of Angola (UPA), headed by Holden Roberto, support that was realized through the CIA.

The Soviet Union also extended assistance to these movements through various channels. The Party Central Committee’s International Department entrusted a significant volume of the work for maintaining contacts with liberation movements and according them help to foreign intelligence.

There was a logic to this arrangement. The majority of liberation movements were underground, and the intelligence services of the metropolitan countries worked actively against them. They tracked liberation organizations not only in their colonies, but also in third countries where they had their bases and representative offices, hunting down their leaders; executing terrorist acts; infiltrating their agents; intercepting communications channels; and detecting the contacts of these organizations with the outside world and their sources of obtaining support. The CIA was also engaged in similar work on these organizations. The Americans sought to infiltrate the liberation movements and take them under their control in order to assert their positions in these young states after their liberation.

In such a way the operational environment inside liberation movements was complex. Aside from good political preparation, working with them demanded professional knowledge and skills from an intelligence officer.

Carrying out these tasks, our intelligence officers established and maintained contacts with the leaders of the majority of liberation movements, such as the National Liberation Front of Algeria (FLN), the National Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the African Party of Independence for Guinea and the Cabo Verde Islands (PAIG), the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), the People’s Organization for Southwest Africa (SWAPO), and others that came to power after achieving the liberation of their countries.

In general the leaders and representatives of the liberation movements were full of an earnest desire to wage the most decisive struggle for the liberation of their countries. Others were cautious and chose allies from the outside world while hedging their bets. The third group, oriented toward Western assistance, made contact with us to find out the Soviet position and tease out to whom, how, and through what channels the USSR was extending aid. There were also those who played at politics; speculated on the liberation struggle; lived on the assistance provided to the liberation movements; acquired luxurious villas and automobiles; jetted around to international conferences and congresses; vacationed and went to hospitals on the invitation of foreign states; and gave an endless number of promises, thinking least of all about their country’s liberation struggle. All of that we had to carefully sift through. There were also errors, especially when our partners stubbornly set out to prove that their position was one of “scientific communism.” For the Party’s highest echelons, by whose orders Soviet foreign intelligence worked with the liberation movements, it was sometimes difficult to refrain from dogmatic temptations.

Soviet intelligence didn’t make a hard ideological choice among movements. It sought to encompass as wide a circle of liberation organizations as possible and analyze their real possibilities in the struggle for national liberation. And so in the Angolan liberation movement, along with Aghostino Neto’s MPLA, our intelligence service attempted to arrange relations both with Holden Roberto’s Union of Peoples of Angola (UPA) and Jonas Savimbi’s National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). In Zimbabwe Soviet intelligence maintained contacts with of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). It was another matter that not all these parties decided on partnership with the Soviet Union; some of them preferred to rely on the United States and other Western countries.

Today, when much is published and analyzed, having entered the circulation of academic and popular literature, we can assert that the CIA’s work with liberation movements (we are not touching upon other Western intelligence services) was no less large-scale than that of Soviet intelligence. Into these activities were involved not only state, but also academic, social, international, and private commercial organizations. With this objective the CIA created an entire network of research centers, foundations, and associations; it brought in major Africa scholars and prominent political scientists, and it mobilizes enormous financial assets.

Contacts with the representatives of liberation movements at times turned into a genuine university on politics. Exchanging information was underway, problems of world and African policy were analyzed, as well as experiences on the path of struggle and liberation – their achievements and mistakes – from countries that had already broken free from manacles of colonialism. At that time our intelligence officers, with their African friends, had to analyze the theories popular among the African intelligentsia, such as Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan-Africanism, negritude, and the African socialism of Leopold Senghor. These leaders preached the uniqueness of the African people’s historical path of development and how common laws of historical development were inapplicable to Africa. Our liaisons wanted to know how correct these theories were and what we thought of them; we had to learn while improvising.

Enrichment was mutual, and nevertheless, our officers gave more than they received, a rare case for intelligence. A natural process of formation of political positions and worldview was occurring among the leaders of Africa’s liberation movements. The Africans themselves found their orientation in the information they received in the course of our communications, and they themselves chose and defined their positions.

Work with representatives of liberation movements diverted intelligence officers from purely intelligence missions – the acquisition of sources of information and penetrating objects of the main adversary. Not all officers, therefore, liked it, and the Center also didn’t especially reward those who devoted much time to it. It wasn’t always that every intelligence officer would be able to find a “golden mean” in this contradiction.

The anti-colonial liberation process in Africa was a historically inevitable phenomenon. The colonial powers didn’t want to lose their positions and defended them at first by force – through military or terrorist methods, and then, under the influence of events, in a growing measure through political means. They viewed Soviet policy in Africa as a threat to their interests, the USSR’s attempt to spread influence in Africa and a communist threat to the African continent. And on the African continent there were both objective and subjective underpinnings for a confrontation between intelligence services.

One way or another, in these conditions – sometimes in a most difficult environment of political instability, crises, and wars characteristic of Africa in the 1960s and 70s, Soviet foreign intelligence performed its duty. To the best of its abilities, it resolved the tasks set before it by our country’s leadership and facilitated the process of asserting independence by colonized and subject peoples.

Work Translated: Очерки истории российской внешней разведки: В 6 т.
Т. 5 : 1945 — 1965 годы. М.: Международные отношения, 2003, 768 с., ил.

Translated by Mark Hackard.

While it is known that German intelligence targeted Soviet leader Josef Stalin during World War II, how close did they come to succeeding? The following tells the story of SS Operation Zeppelin and the brilliant counter-moves, known as Operation Fog, undertaken by Soviet military counterintelligence (SMERSH) officer Grigorii Grigorenko, who would go on to head the KGB Second Chief Directorate during the Cold War. 

Much has been said and written about the attempt to liquidate Stalin during the Second World War—at the same time, nothing specific, but rather things at the level of speculation or fiction.

The failed assassination of the Supreme Commander of the Soviet Union, planned by German saboteurs, is a thrilling subject, after all. And they indeed planned to kill him. However, the story of capturing terrorist saboteurs turned into the prequel to one of the most successful operations by Soviet counter-intelligence, codenamed Fog and carried out by Major Grigorii Fedorovich Grigorenko, a resident of Poltava, today’s Ukraine. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) recently declassified this operation.

Why Was Zeppelin Launched?

The Wehrmacht’s winter failure outside Moscow and its Blitzkrieg’s lack of success forced German intelligence services to seek new opportunities. In this regard, in March of 1942, the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) developed a specific plan codenamed Unternehmen Zeppelin. Four frontline Sonderkommandos linked to police operational groups and security forces in the occupied territories of the USSR were assigned to its immediate implementation as part of the 6th Department. This also included several reconnaissance and sabotage schools for training agents to operate in the Soviet rear.

At the same time, Zeppelin Sonderkommandos were also meant to cooperate with the frontline Abwehrkommandos and Abwehrgruppen. In essence, operation Zeppelin presupposed the mass-scale deployment of agents with intelligence, sabotage, propaganda, and guerilla-organizational tasks for inspiring armed anti-Soviet uprisings. RSHA plans directly stated:

We cannot be limited to dozens of groups with disparate activities; for the Soviet colossus, they are just pinpricks. We need to implement thousands.

Hitler’s counterintelligence chief Walter Schellenberg wondered— in his memoirs called The Labyrinth—how global this operation was, and how much importance was placed upon it.

POWs and Soviet soldiers who changed sides voluntarily were chosen for this operation. After giving consent to work for German intelligence and consequent verification, they were in the same boat as the soldiers of the Wehrmacht, including the provision of excellent food and living conditions. They were even allowed to travel to Germany.

An Important Mission

Following a number of serious setbacks in the spring of 1944, the Nazis began to consider another possibility for liquidating Stalin. Let us recall that Operation Cicero—the goal of which was to assassinate the three leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition during the Tehran conference—failed. Walter Schellenberg recalled that in the summer of 1944, he was summoned to the Fuschl castle by Joachim von Ribbentrop. When they met, their conversation turned to the necessity of eliminating Stalin and the work of the technical department of the RSHA and Security Service (SD). Then came a conversation with Heinrich Himmler, who approved the operation.

According to the new plan, two agents were sent to Moscow. They were to plant a bomb into the car used by the “leader of the peoples.” The justification for this project was as follows: the saboteur had a long-standing acquaintance with one of the drivers of the Kremlin special garage. However, at the height of preparing this mission, that agent “disappeared somewhere.”

As a result, the operation to eliminate the Soviet leader was entrusted to Petr Tavrin—a repeat Ukrainian offender, whose real name was Shilo. Petro Shilo was one of “those cadres.” Several times he escaped from the camps and not only changed appearances, but also his last name. Shilo-Tavrin was quite the find for intelligence services, since he had vast experience: a long-time criminal, he managed to insert himself into law-enforcement agencies, and, before the war, he even worked as an investigator at a regional prosecutor’s office in Voronezh.

In 1941, Tavrin was drafted into the army, but only four months later, he voluntarily surrendered. The Abwehr and SD took note of him in the camp where he was being held. After analyzing his capabilities, Tavrin was delivered to Heinz Gräfe, who was in charge of several programs of the Zeppelin operation. His training took place as part of a separate program in the Zeppelin-Nord intelligence branch. At first the branch was stationed in Pskov. Then it was transferred to Riga. When Tavrin had achieved certain successes, he was shown to Otto Skorzeny, Germany’s superspy. The latter rated his capabilities highly.

Shortly afterward, Tavrin was already living at a safe house in Pskov, where he met his future wife, Lydia Shilova. She was not just his wife, according to the cover story, and, in addition to spousal duties, she also had to work as a radio operator for Tavrin’s mission.

These saboteurs received excellent false documents: Tavrin was made to be a Hero of the USSR, Major General, and the Deputy for the Division of Counterintelligence of SMERSH (an abbreviation of “death to spies”) in the 39th Army of the First Baltic Front. His wife, radio operator Shilova, “became” a second lieutenant in SMERSH.

The operation was so significant and unique that its organizers used a special aircraft, the Arado-232. The plane was ready to fly at night, in any weather, and to land and release any reconnaissance and sabotage groups on almost any surface, excluding the mountains. Under the fuselage in case of landing in a swamp, the aircraft had 12 pairs of rubber-coated caterpillar tracks. This air machine was well equipped, whereas its crew undertook special training.

Tavrin was to assassinate Stalin by using a special device, the Panzerknacker, loaded with nine rounds. In essence, this was a miniature grenade launcher— the Faustpatrone. It consisted of a short barrel mounted on a leather cuff of the terrorist’s arm and was easily concealed under a wide-sleeved coat.

The Panzerknacker could easily shoot through an armored plate thicker than 30 mm at a distance of 300 meters. In addition, Tavrin was supplied with a magnetic mine that had a radio-controlled fuse along with different kinds of hand guns, including a Webley & Scott eight-round revolver with 15 explosive bullets loaded with poison.

SD Proposes, But SMERSH Disposes

The transfer of terrorists took place on September 5, 1944 in Karmansovskii district of Smolensk region. However, the ever-praised Arado aircraft did not handle the Russian weather. The pilots got stuck in a night storm and poorly chose the landing site. As a result, the plane crashed and could not return. After disembarking from the aircraft, the Tavrins rolled out a motorcycle and headed east.

German pilots decided to blow up the plane—to avoid declassifying the assignment—then, to cross the frontline and come back themselves. But things turned out the opposite: the explosion drew the attention of patrols and Soviet counterintelligence. A search began, and the pilots were rounded up. They chose to return fire. As a result, one of them was shot dead, and two were captured.

The NKVD managed to obtain testimony: this is the way the Soviet side learned about the plane’s passengers. The Tavrins were caught outside Smolensk and taken to their final destination—Moscow. Stalin was personally informed about the incident. He listened to the opinion of counterintelligence that suggested using the captured agents. Following their interrogation, the Soviet side decided to engage in a radio game with the Germans. This task was assigned to Captain Grigorii Grigorenko with the overall command in the hands of Major-General G. Utekhin, Major-General V. Baryshnikov, and Colonel-General V. Abakumov.

Captain Grigorenko versus Reichsführer Himmler

Gregorii Federovich Grigorenko was born on August 18, 1918 in the town of Zenkov, Poltava region, today’s Ukraine, in the family of state workers. After high school, he was planning to work in agriculture, but went on to study at the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of the Poltava Pedagogical Institute. Graduating in 1939, Grigorenko was invited to work in the “organs.” He began his service as an Operations Assistant Commissioner of the so-called Special Department in Konotop. In 1940, Grigorenko was called up for military service. That same year, he became an Assistant Security Officer of the Special Department in the NKVD’s 151st Infantry Division of the Kharkov Military District.

From the beginning of the war, Grigorii Grigorenko participated in battles as a security officer of the Special Department in the NKVD’s 4th Air Brigade of the Kharkov Military District. By August, however, he was already seriously wounded. After being released from hospital, he was sent to the Special Department of the De-mining Brigade at the Stalingrad Front.

In 1942, he finished coursework at the Higher School of the NKVD on leadership training and was sent to Counterintelligence at the NKVD, a department responsible for countering intelligence and subversive activities of the Germans. He joined a group of operatives in the Central Office tasked with organizing radio games against the German intelligence by using captured agents. Their goals included infiltrating Hitler’s secret services, obtaining information about the upcoming subversive actions against the Soviet Union, and adopting measures for their localization, as well as misleading the German High Command by disseminating misinformation about the intentions of the Soviet side.

In 1943, Captain Grigorenko was transferred to the 3rd Department of the Main Counterintelligence, SMERSH, in the People’s Commissariat of Defense (NKO), specializing in radio games with the enemy. Before the incident with Tavrin, Grigorenko had already gained experience from his participation in the operation Enigma (Zagadka). Therefore, it was he, who was entrusted to lead Tavrin’s radio game.

Fog Envelops the Zeppelin

On September 27, 1944 under Grigorenko’s supervision, Tavrin engaged in his first broadcast. He sent a message to the German Center about his arrival. Days went on, but Berlin was silent. A month later, the Germans responded by acknowledging telegram receipt and asked what happened to the plane and the Arado crew. The following message was sent back to Germany:

I am in the suburbs of Moscow, Lenino village, Kirpichnaia Street, 26. Let me know whether you have received my additional message about the landing. Once again, I ask for an experienced radio operator. Pass on the messages slowly. Say ‘hello’ to everybody. L.I .

After that, the answer came almost immediately: “Your mission is to firmly root yourself in Moscow and prepare to carry out your assignment. In addition, you must report on the situation in Moscow and the Kremlin.” Grigorenko informed the higher-ups that the Germans swallowed the hook. Thus began the operation code-named Fog (Tuman).

Initiating mutual contacts did not guarantee absolute success. Abwehr and SD were far from being stupid, and Tavrin could and should have been checked. Grigorenko decided that the main goal was to imitate Tavrin’s successful work in order to persuade the Germans to abandon their attempts to create, train, and send a duplicate terrorist group with a similar mission, of which the Soviet side may not be aware. In addition, Grigorenko suggested convincing Berlin to subordinate other agents to Tavrin.

German intelligence received this radiogram: “Working in Moscow turned out to be more difficult than anticipated. Searching for people. Want to find work. Please answer what happened to Lydia’s family.” The following answer came: “There are friends working nearby. Would you like to meet them for mutual support?”

This proposal raised concerns that the Germans were preparing to test whether Tavrin is operating under NKVD surveillance. Tavrin was made to respond cunningly: “You know better. If this helps to accelerate my mission, then I agree.”

For several months, Grigorenko and SMERSH outsmarted the German intelligence services. This was 1945, and the Germans began to cling to the slightest opportunity and hope, one of which was the death of Stalin. The Center urged Tavrin to speed things up, whereas he sent telegrams that things were moving along: “In this trying time, I assure you of my dedication. I will pursue the set objectives, living in hope of victory.” In January of 1945, the Tavrins received a radiogram that read:

Petr and Lydia…We shall win. Perhaps victory might be closer than we think. Help us and do not forget our oath. Kraus.

The Fog radio game went on until Germany’s surrender. One of the senior officials in the Reich Main Security Office mentioned that in the Zeppelin circles, Tavrin was talked about often. He was considered important, and was supposed to provide Zeppelin with honors, distinctions, and significant power in intelligence operations.

After Fog was completed, all the participants received state awards, whereas Grigorenko was now considered a real pro of radio games. Gregorii Fedorovich himself viewed this operation as an example of the confrontation between the intellects of the two most powerful secret services—the Soviet Union and Germany. And it was the USSR that demonstrated its total superiority. Overall, this counterintelligence agent carried out 183 radio games.

Epilogue: The Fog Clears

After the war, Grigorenko worked in military intelligence for some time, then became the head of the 14th Department in the First Chief Directorate of the KGB (foreign intelligence). In 1962, on the basis of his Department, the 2nd Service of the KGB (foreign counterintelligence) was established. He ran it successfully from 1962 to 1969. From 1969 to 1983, Gregorii Federovich headed counterintelligence of the USSR – the KGB 2nd Chief Directorate. He developed and implemented a complex system of interrelated operational measures in order to manage all the elements of the counterintelligence process. In fact, it is because of his system that we talk about the “golden age” of counterintelligence. At this time, several agents of foreign-intelligence services were exposed each year under Grigorenko’s leadership.

Among the CIA agents caught red-handed were the Second Secretary of the Foreign Ministry A. Ogorodnik (in the famous movie TASS is Authorized to Announce…. Grigorenko was portrayed as the General played by M. Gluzskii); A. Nilov, V. Kalinin, GRU staff members Filatov and Ivanov, aviation employee Petrov, KGB officer Armen Grigorian, Aeroflot staff member Kanoian, representative of the Ministry of Chemical Industry Moskovtsev, scientist Bumeister, Vneshtorgbank staff member Kriuchkov, and many others. Under Grigorenko’s leadership, CIA staff officers Vincent Crockett, Martha Peterson, Richard Osborne, and a number of other spies who worked in Moscow under diplomatic cover, were caught red-handed and expelled from the USSR. It is no wonder that Grigorenko wrote a book called Only Rats Can be Found in the Underground that became a bestseller in the late 1970s.

In his final years working for the KGB, he was one of the Deputies for General Secretary Yuri Andropov. In 1983, the brilliant Colonel General Grigorenko, who became a threat for the CIA, was transferred to the Ministry of General Machine-Building as the Deputy Minister. Apparently, following Andropov’s death, someone did not want for Grigorenko to continue heading the KGB.

His personal qualities were fully manifested in honorable acts as the President of Vetkon, the Association for Veterans of Counterespionage, created upon his own initiative. He died on May 19th, 2007 at the age of 88.

Article Source

Translation and editing by Nina Kouprianova.

From the archives of the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service, comes a fascinating story of the early-twentieth-century Great Game between Imperial Russia and the British Empire, as the two sides intrigue and maneuver for geopolitical advantage in the mysterious mountain kingdom of Tibet. 

His Imperial Majesty’s Minister of the Court, Baron Fredericks, was clearly irritated. Only at the last moment was he informed that the program for visits to the Tsar for January 14th, 1904, had to be changed, since the Russian Army’s General Staff requested Nicholas II to immediately receive two Don Cossacks on a secret mission to Tibet for a “confidential audience.” The Tsar agreed, and Baron Fredericks had no other option but to relay to the organizers of the Tsar’s hunt in the Ropsha pheasant preserve that His Majesty could not arrive today and would delay the hunt for several days, about which would be additionally reported.

Discontentedly furrowing his brow, Fredericks snapped at his adjutant, “I hope you told His Majesty’s guests that they must arrive to the audience in their parade uniform?”

“I told them,” the adjutant answered with a stumble, “but they prefer civilian clothes to not attract attention to themselves. Moreover since they are…Kalmyks.”

The secret audience took place. In his diary on that day, the Tsar noted:

January 14th, 1904… We got up a bit earlier. In the morning I read much; two times I ran around the garden with the children. After briefings I received ten senators. I put on my Prussian uniform and went with Alexei and Misha to breakfast with the German embassy on the occasion of Wilhelm’s birthday. At 3:00 I received two Don Kalmyks – officer Ulanov and Lama Ulyanov, who are going to Tibet…[i]

The threat of conflict with England over the Tibet question was what made the Tsar change his plans.

Russia had already long conducted an active foreign policy in the Far East. This also concerned Tibet, over which hung the danger of English invasion. At this time, Russia had begun arranging ties with the Tibetan government. A stream of Russian pilgrims to this country increased. In 1901 a delegation from Lhasa, headed by one of the Dalai Lama’s inner circle, arrived in St. Petersburg.

A German newspaper that was published in Shanghai at the time, Der Ostasiatische Lloyd, wrote:

From the time of the assertion of Russian dominance in Central Asia, thousands of Buddhist pilgrims, flowing into Lhasa, have spread the charm of the Russian name in Asia through their stories of Russia’s might, and in such a way, consciously or unintentionally, have facilitated the expansion of Russian influence.[ii]

Relations with Tibet were limited by its remoteness from Russia and mainly the lack of well-reconnoitered access routes to the country. The Tsar’s government, therefore, devoted great attention to the study of regions bordering Tibet as well as the territory of that land itself. This was important not only to maintain regular communications with it, but also to clearly conceive the degree of probability of using those routes for moving English forces into Xinjiang, up to the borders of Central Asia.

There were several expeditions organized into these regions. They acted under the aegis of the Russian Imperial Geographical Society, including four under the leadership of Przewalsky, and also expeditions under the direction of Roborovsky and Kozlov.

Other than expeditions, other ways of acquiring intelligence information on the situation in Tibet were used. The newspaper Novoe Vremya, published at that time in St. Petersburg, wrote that in 1898 and 1899, the well-known specialist in the area of Tibetan medicine, Dr. Badmaev[iii], spent time in Lhasa, travelling in the clothing of a lama. Along with this, hints were made that he was carrying out a secret assignment there.

In 1902 the decision was made to send a special intelligence group to Tibet in the guise of Buddhist monks, which was to be headed by Senior Lieutenant N.E. Ulanov, a Kalmyk by nationality, who had mastered the Tibetan language well and knew Buddhist customs and rites. Before that Ulanov had been an officer in one of the Don Cossack regiments. In 1901 he was brought in to work as a translator with the Tibetan government delegation that was in Petersburg at the time.

In 1902 Ulanov was seconded to the Main Directorate of Cossack Forces and enrolled as an extern at the General Staff Academy.

Training for the operation continued for two years. Ulanov paid special attention to studying topography, communications, astronomy, and other disciplines which could be useful to him during the upcoming mission.

Sending an intelligence group to Tibet was dictated by quite important causes. England was conducting an aggressive policy in relation to Tibet. From 1888 to 1889, London carried out several military expeditions, while in 1904, using a favorable setting (the Russo-Japanese War), it initiated an open armed intervention. The Tibetans showed stubborn resistance. The forces, however, were uneven, and the English would occupy Lhasa.

The Dalai Lama was forced to flee the country to Mongolia, and it was there he settled in one of the major Buddhist monasteries. He established communications with the Russian government, simultaneously also maintaining contacts with the Chinese authorities, to whom Tibet was formally subordinated.

Russian diplomacy applied great efforts to hinder England’s establishment of total control over Tibet. Petersburg’s position was that Tibet, under China’s supreme authority, should preserve its famous autonomy. Such a resolution of the matter answered to Russia’s national interests.

After the Dalai Lama’s departure, though, events unfolded in an unfavorable direction for Russia. Later, in September of 1904, England signed a treaty – according to which China almost completely lost its dominion over Tibet – with Tibetan officials who had no authority to do so.

At the same time, the struggle against the English did not abate. Tibetan higher clerics also maneuvered and behaved unpredictably. The Dalai Lama, as well, didn’t know what to do.

In this environment the Russian government made the decision to accelerate the dispatch of the intelligence group to Tibet and analyze in detail what was occurring.

War Minister Adjutant-General Kuropatkin devoted great attention to the preparations of the expedition. To keep the operation secret, it was decided to cashier Ulanov into retirement so that unnecessary speculation didn’t arise in various military chancelleries. The Tsar was periodically briefed on the course of the work.

In January of 1904, the following report was sent to the Tsar:

On January 3rd, it was favorable to Your Imperial Majesty to allowing for the detachment, quite secret, of Senior Lieutenant Ulanov, seconded to the Main Directorate of Cossack Forces of the Suvorov-Ryminsky First Don Cossack Regiment, for the collection of information on this country for a period of approximately one year in the company of Staff Chaplain Dambe Ulyanov, of the Potapovskaya village of the Don Army, and translator-constable Lidja Sharapov of the same village.

For the maintenance of secrecy of this detachment, it would be assumed, according to previous examples, to cashier Senior Lieutenant Ulanov into retirement under the rubric of “domestic circumstances” with the condition of acceptance into military service upon completion of the trip, and with credit for time spent therein as active service with the preservation of all rights.

The expenditures called for by this journey, amounting to 13,480 rubles, would be shifted over to the Chancellery of the War Ministry’s reserve funds.

Along with that, Senior Lieutenant Ulanov should have made available for his and his companions’ armament, as well as for gifts, five Cossack-model rifles and eight tri-linear revolvers with a proper quantity of rounds.

We solicit, shall it please Your Imperial Majesty to sanction what has been outlined?

Adjutant-General Kuropatkin.[iv]

The Tsar’s sanction was received. This circumstance indicates the great importance that was accorded within the government to the upcoming intelligence operation. Yet another document, signed by the war minister, attests to this:

Tomorrow on January 14th, at the Winter Palace the Emperor will receive at 3 in the afternoon, in a manner wholly secret, Senior Lieutenant Ulanov and Lama Ulyanov, who are being sent to Tibet. The aforementioned individuals have already been informed of this.

I request to make this known to the Expedition of Ceremonial Affairs with the denotation of the private character of the reception, and that they ask that measures be taken so that information on this meeting did not reach the newspapers…

Adjutant-General Kuropatkin. January 13th, 1904.[v]

The group set out from Petersburg in January of 1904, and until September it was in Central Asia, where preparations for the journey were made. Importance was allotted to drawing up the documents with which the travelers would continue on their way to Tibet. According to excerpts of data in the case files, the members of the group posed as residents of the Chinese province Xinjiang, and correspondingly they should have had documents on hand that native residents would possess. Great assistance in preparations for the expedition was rendered by the Russian consulate in Kuldja, Xinjiang, where the group arrived in October. It was here that another four men were added to the team – experienced guides and caravan leaders from among the locals.

From Kuldja the group first moved along roads leading deep into Chinese territory. They had a small caravan, approximately ten camels. The members of the group were dressed as Buddhist monks, and by their external characteristics they couldn’t be distinguished from normal pilgrims going to the holy places.

Yet on the way, the unforeseen happened. Two men immediately fell sick: the leader of the intelligence group himself, Ulanov, and constable Sharapov. The disease was some sort of unusual one, about which no one in these parts had heard, and the local doctors were unable to heal them. All hope was on the robust constitutions of the Cossacks. Sharapov began to gradually get better, but Ulanov’s health didn’t improve. A few days later he died, and the group was left without its chief.

Leaving the group and caravan in their place, Ulyanov, as the deputy leader, headed out to Kuldja, where he reported in the Russian representation on what transpired, and received sanction for continuing the route. From that point the group followed under his leadership, which had its advantages: Ulyanov was a religious Buddhist chaplain in the Cossack forces, understood the Buddhist religion in all its subtleties, and could naturally and believably play the role of a well-born pilgrim. But he didn’t have the experience and military training of Ulanov, who had brilliantly finished military school and the General Staff Academy.

By the end of December, the group had reached the Tsaidam Kalymks, who lived in the Chemen Mountains at the northeastern end of the Tibetan Plateau. To move further was impossible; the mountain passes were blocked by snow, while the frosts and blizzards had begun. The group wintered with the Kalmyks until March 20th and then again went on its way. At the crossing of the Tibetan border there was an encounter with the Tanguts, a warlike nomadic tribe. If they met Russian expeditions with hostility, constantly a concern with their bold raids, the “pilgrims” were received with great honor. In his report Ulyanov wrote:

They took me as a lord (gegen), thanks to which we didn’t have any raids, but to the contrary, during our passing through their horde, men and women came toward me with their children to bow, and I received and blessed them. We again continued our route.[vi]

The group arrived in Lhasa sometime around May 20th. The “pilgrims” were met with much honor, with Ulyanov received as a Great Khubilgen or gegen, a senior representative of the Buddhist clergy. To venerate him there began to arrive both local residents and foreign pilgrims. However, Ulyanov started to avoid receiving believers, devoting his first days to venerating the local khubilgens, gegens, and other saints.

The suspicion which had arisen at first was replaced by trust toward them by Lhasa’s Buddhist circles. Soon the local lamas were convinced that they had met in Ulyanov a great adept of Buddha’s teaching. During his training for the Tibet assignment, Ulyanov had written an treatise in Tibetan on one of the controversial matters of Buddha’s doctrines, a question over which there had been no agreement among Buddhist authorities. He spoke before the local khubilgens during his visits to them, discussing this treatise, and in doing so he completely removed any suspicions in relation to his mission in Tibet. He began to be treated as a great adept of Buddha’s teaching and a major Buddhist religious figure.

However, despite that, English agent networks from among the Nepalese at first kept the group under tight observation. But with some time they became sure they were dealing with a religious authority and ceased their surveillance.

Having completed his first obligatory veneration of the saints, Ulyanov went to be received by Goldan Tiva-Rambuche, who was ruling the country in the Dalai Lama’s absence. From the information point of view, the visit was extremely important, since it gave him the opportunity to acquire first-hand information on the situation in the country.

At the reception Rambuche told him that after the population’s anti-English actions had taken place, the English had left Lhasa, but he feared that they could return again. In his words, the British understood perfectly well that the people couldn’t extend any serious resistance, and that they were contained more by the probable reaction of other nations. Rambuche also expressed the opinion that the population’s attitude to the Dalai Lama hadn’t changed, with Tibetans continuing to consider him their spiritual leader. He indicated that he was impatiently awaiting the Dalai Lama’s return, but the situation in Tibet itself remained dangerous because of the English military threat.

The group spent three months in Lhasa. In that time Ulyanov met with Rambuche and other high dignitaries of the court more than once, and he studied in detail not only the situation in the capital, but also in other regions of the country through conversations with arriving pilgrims and caravan leaders.

Ulyanov and the group members devoted much attention to learning about the population’s way of life. There was an attempt to seriously take up the study of Tibetan medicine, for which an occasion, even if quite distressing, presented itself. Two to three weeks after the arrival in Lhasa, one night Constable Sharapov somehow fell out of the window of the third floor of the building where they were living. He was brought in critical condition into the house and a local healer was sent for. The doctor established several breaks in the leg and pelvis and damage to the spinal column. It would seem that there was hope for Sharapov to move. The healer said, though, that he would have him on his feet in two months. And indeed, after the specified time, the Cossack began to recover. In two months he had fully healed and was in shape to travel. Ulyanov’s attempt to find out the secrets of Tibetan medicine didn’t meet success. The healer didn’t disclose any secrets to him, saying that in conjunction with local customs, they would be passed by inheritance to one of his children.

Completing all of its business, on August 15th the group went on its return route. They couldn’t idle any longer, since winter could catch them on the way and their return could be delayed for several months.

The group returned to Petersburg on March 17th, 1906. The information they brought received a high evaluation and played a serious role in Russia’s development of policy on the Tibetan question. During his trip Ulyanov kept a travel journal, where he jotted notes on events, observations, and other information. So that third parties couldn’t read it, he wrote in the diary in Kalmyk.

Ulyanov’s information on the situation in Tibet evoked particular interest in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the War Ministry. At that time Russian diplomacy was conducting delicate work with the goal of stopping English expansion into Tibet and creating the conditions for strengthening Russian positions in China.

The question of the timing of the Dalai Lama’s return to Tibet was accorded rather important status in the diplomatic maneuvers undertaken in that period. Contact with him was constantly maintained. His deputy, D.L. Khambo Dorzhiev, often came to Petersburg.

In March of 1906, after the return on the intelligence group, the decision on the expediency of the Dalai Lama’s departure to Tibet, or at least to one of the monasteries in the Chinese regions bordering Tibet. This information was conveyed to the Dalai Lama. Since the journey was long and hazardous, he requested that his escort of Buryat Cossacks be strengthened. Agreement was given. However, the matter was so delicate from every point of view that the request for the escort was discussed more than once by the minister of foreign affairs and war minister with the Tsar himself. There was the fear that the Chinese authorities would take the presence of a large escort as distrust towards them and could suspect the existence of some sort of special plans for the resolution of the Tibetan question.

As a result of the negotiations with the Dalai Lama, they were able to agree that the escort would stay at its regular strength and accompany him only up to the border with Tibet.

Simultaneously, the Dalai Lama raised the issue of sending two scientific expeditions to Lhasa, which would, in the case of necessity, harbor him and help him reach a safe place. Aside from that, he also proposed to deploy a Cossack unit of Buryats in civilian clothing for communication with Russian representatives and rendering – if necessary – armed support to the Tibetan spiritual leader.

Later, though, St. Petersburg had to decline this undertaken. In the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs it was thought that “all governments interested in the affairs of this country would approach it with extreme attention, and therefore it was in no way possible to expect that they could hide a circumstance like the presence of foreign, especially Russian, expeditions from their vigilance. The arrival of Russian officers in Lhasa would doubtless be discovered and serve as the basis for heightened intrigues by agents of other powers, since no one would recognize the scientific authority of the former, and their participation in the expedition would only serve as an excuse to suspect Russia of all types of hidden objectives.”[vii]

In view of this, the presence of Russian representatives in the Dalai Lama’s retinue was to be kept to a minimum. The Tibetan ruler’s request to send a Russian official representative was given a negative answer. Petersburg agreed only to include one man under the guise of a Buddhist monk – a Buryat Cossack sergeant, Dilykhov.

Russia applied great efforts toward the normalization of the situation in Tibet and conducted active negotiations with China and England, seeking the quickest restoration of the Dalai Lama’s authority in the country.

The Dalai Lama’s departure occurred in December of 1906. At first he settled in Chinese territory at the monastery Gumbut, near Sin-In and not far from the Tibetan border, and then crossed over to Lhasa.

The Russian government’s well-coordinated diplomatic steps allowed St. Petersburg to reach the Anglo-Russian Agreement in 1907, by which England recognized Tibet as a part of China and was obligated to maintain relations with it through China.

In such a manner the threat of English aggression was removed, China restored its control over Tibet, and within the country were re-established normal conditions for rule. Russian foreign intelligence, which supplied the government with needed information in the most difficult circumstances, played an important role in this affair.

[i] Дневник императора Николая II. — М.: «Полистар», 1991. — С. 135.

[ii] Der Ostasiatische Lloyd. — 1901. — №.5.

[iii] Новое время. — 1900. — 17 окт.

[iv] РГВИА, ф.447, д.77, с.29—30.

[v] Там же, с.27.

[vi] Там же, с.88.

[vii] РГВИА, ф.2000, оп.1, д.1091, с.14.

Work Translated: Очерки истории российской внешней разведки: В 6-ти тт. 0-95 — Т.1: От древнейших времен до 1917 года. — М.:Между- нар. отношения, 1995.

Translated by Mark Hackard.

From the memoirs of legendary Soviet intelligence officer Maj. Gen. Yuri Ivanovich Drozdov comes the incredible story of a false-flag recruitment operation by the KGB’s Directorate S (Illegals) against West Germany’s own intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) during the height of the Cold War. The following 1995 article from German Focus magazine tells the tale:

Former KGB General Yuri Drozdov admits: “Our valued agent in the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has still not been uncovered.” 

Firm handshakes, pats on the shoulder – the old guard in its narrow circle.

The men, in a predominant majority over 70 years old, are dressed strictly according to protocol. On this hot summer day they’re wearing austere coats and shirts with ties. Guests are received by Yuri Drozdov, general of the KGB, the former Soviet secret service, who just a short time later, over a glass of vodka, would allow himself to loosen his tie.

In an official building on Bolshaya Polyanka St., a few minute’s ride by automobile from the Kremlin, a conspiratorial fellowship had gathered. Drozdov, age 69, invited veterans of the KGB’s foreign intelligence [First Chief Directorate] over to his office. Some of them leaf through the pages of a book written by Drozdov, and which is dedicated to his colleagues in the struggle as well as the current generation of Russian intelligence officers.

In its content, the pamphlet for internal use, innocuously titled Necessary Work, is very groundbreaking.

Reproducing Drozdov’s memoirs on his intelligence work in Austria, China, Afghanistan, and the United States, the book describes certain details of a well-planned intelligence operation that will cause alarm in the German intelligence services engaged in security matters.

Focus magazine’s detailed investigation yielded the following results:

In all probability the KGB had a value high-level agent, who still hasn’t been uncovered, within the Federal Intelligence Service (BND). Last week Focus magazine’s corresponding request caused disarray among the leadership at BND headquarters in Pullach, outside Munich, which has already initiated a search for Moscow’s supposed spy.

And such excitation was wholly understandable: the unit headed by Drozdov [Directorate S], according to the investigation conducted by Focus, apparently in 1972 recruited a man who could expose the BND’s risky operations it was running in Eastern Bloc countries. And not only that; this KGB agent, under the pseudonym of “D-104,” apparently was active in the heart of the BND, had close contacts with representatives of friendly Western intelligence services, and possibly also informed the Kremlin on the operations of American, British, and French agents against the Warsaw Pact.

One expert from German counterintelligence commented on the affair to Focus magazine in the following fashion:

This would be an absolute fiasco, an unprecedentedly critical case of treachery for Germany and all of NATO. In comparison the Gunther Guillame case is a trifle.

Drozdov, whom Focus interviewed last year regarding his activity as the director of Illegal Intelligence (Focus, No. 27/1994), comported himself more reservedly during the new meeting. Acquainted with the analysis of his book and the results of the Focus investigation according to the book’s materials, the KGB general said:

Yes, D-104 was our valued source in the BND. His communications were even reported to Andropov.

To whether this valuable agent within the BND’s central apparatus was discovered, Drozdov answered reluctantly:

“D-104 up to this time hasn’t been exposed.” And then, with a certain measure of concern: “So why write about this one now? Leave him in peace.”

What might that be? Pangs of conscience from a senior intelligence officer, who in his own kind of memoirs – meant for internal use in the KGB – casually subjected a prized intelligence source to danger?

Or does Drozdov, in the past an experienced agent handler feared by Western intelligence services, want to consciously mislead them with the publication of his book?

One former Eastern-Bloc expert from the US CIA, who knew Drozdov during the Cold War as a tough opponent, makes the following supposition:

This may be an act of retribution by the KGB old guard in relation to the BND – an attempt to rub salt into old wounds. Or they deliberately want to liquidate a certain person in the BND. In any case, it’s a very powerful stroke. And indeed, the very fact they recruited the assumed valued source already could serve as the basis of a cool spy thriller.

The first step in this chess game was made at the end of the 1960s. At that time the KGB was urgently seeking a replacement for its exposed valued agent Heinz Felfe, who over the length of a number of years supplied Moscow with essential information from Pullach. Drozdov’s operational calculus was founded on the stability of old corporate ties.

The KGB knew, and not only from Felfe, of old officers of Hitler’s intelligence services – the Gestapo, the Sicherheitsdienst [Security Service – SD], and the Reichsicherheitshauptamt [Reich Central Security Office – RHSA], who had found refuge in the BND. At Pullach many still believed then in Grossdeutschland – a Greater Germany.

In 1970 Heidrun Hofer, an “affectionate” secretary from the BND, became acquainted with a very attractive man. He introduced himself as Hans Puschke, born in Koenigsberg. In actuality Puschke, one of Drozdov’s trusted men, would recruit the young woman under a false flag: in Puschke’s words, in South America he had joined a group of former Wehrmacht officers who intended to found a right-conservative organization in Germany. And for that, as the brand-new Romeo declared to the 30-year-old BND secretary, information from BND headquarters in Pullach would be very useful.

The daughter of a Wehrmacht captain, Heidrun Hofer supplied highly secret information from the BND regarding West Germany’s plans in crisis periods and missile positions, and she told of top-secret NATO plans. In 1967, not long before Christmas, she was arrested. During the interrogation at the Munich criminal police headquarters, she jumped out of a sixth-story window. In connection with the critical trauma, her criminal prosecution was never initiated, and in 1987 the case was ended over the lapse of time limits. The case and its materials on her development remain secret to this day.

At Pullach they’re glad that this case of grave treason hasn’t received wide publicity in Germany until this time. The BND assumed that Hofer’s operational direction was carried out by East Berlin’s Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit (MfS – Stasi).

However, at the present time this version has no foundation to it. The BND secretary, as Drozdov’s memoirs now attest, was only a pawn. “The net around Hofer had only one objective – she served to ensure the security of our real source,” the KGB general stated to Focus magazine.

In 1972, around two years after KGB agent Puschke’s first meeting with Hofer, Drozdov’s team reeled in a true big fish. The operation, which was underway during the Detente period between East and West, received the code name “Scorpion.”

By that time Moscow’s intelligence service had already long known from Heidrun Hofer who could be brought into the right-conservative cell. In his conversation with Focus, Drozdov spoke thus of an individual who was the object of Soviet intelligence’s operational aims:

This was a young man from a good home, who had received a strict upbringing. His father had been a senior officer in the Wehrmacht.

Yuri Ivanovich Drozdov, who fluently spoke German and had even studied in Max Reinhardt’s acting courses for his intelligence training, would play one of his favorite roles: from an intelligent KGB officer he’d transform into Wehrmacht officer Baron von Höhenstein, who had just returned to Germany from his South American exile.

The BND officer, who was about 35 years old, allowed himself to be entrapped in Innsbruck in 1972. He was accompanied by one of the phony members of the right-conservative officer club. This man called himself Walter – in actuality he was KGB officer Nikolai Stepanovich N., who also spoke German flawlessly.

Secret Operation Scorpion, as Drozdov evaluates it today, was running according to plan.

At the Innsbruck city train station, Baron von Höhenstein, a wiry man radiating power and authority, met the intelligence officer from Pullach. The candidate for recruitment, as Drozdov recalls today, was obviously proud that from that point he was part of a circle of conspirators. At a KGB safe house, Baron von Hoehenstein and the BND officer, who from that moment was to have the pseudonym D-104, discussed tradecraft and the system of secret communications for passing secret materials from Pullach to Moscow. At their farewell the Baron wished a hearty hello to the father of the new agent – let the old man remain henceforth loyal to his oath to Führer and Vaterland.

With the course of time, KGB source D-104, unexposed to this day, attained a nice position for himself. In this regard Drozdov says:

We knew totally precisely what information the BND possessed on our military and economic situation and what operations were being conducted against us.

Drozdov in no way wants to speak about in which department of the BND D-104 worked. In his discussion with Focus, he only quotes one passage from his book:

D-104 worked in a sub-department that was important to the BND and interesting to us.

To the question whether this was a Referat (division) engaged in counter-espionage and turning agents, Drozdov answers with silence and shakes his head: “I won’t say anything in that regard.”

In December of 1976 the KGB unit led by Drozdov was hit by fiasco: on the lead of a defector, Hofer was uncovered. Yet here the KGB’s strategic line went into action. Then-President of the BND Gerhard Wessel expressed his satisfaction regarding this successfully executed counterintelligence operation, but no one in the BND had any idea of D-104. Soon after Hofer’s arrest, for security reasons, the KGB disbanded the secret officer club. Yet by that time D-104 had already long known what organization he had gotten himself into.

Drozdov recounts:

Then we told him that should behave himself quietly, and in that case nothing would happen to him.

The KGB general’s memoirs, which were originally meant for a narrow circle of readers, might possibly cause D-104 real unpleasantness. Now the search for the mole begins in Pullach.

Work Translated: Дроздов, Ю.И. Вымысел исключен. Записки начальника нелегальной разведки. Артстиль-полиграфия. М: 2009.

Translated by Mark Hackard.

The great Russian White emigre philosopher Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin (1883-1954) was not just an erudite thinker, but also a practitioner of espionage and underground political work. Before he was exiled in 1922, Ilyin was active in the anti-Bolshevik resistance. This article, written at some point during the 1930s or 1940s, addresses Soviet NKVD provocations and subversion in the Russian White emigration abroad.

The word “tradecraft” signifies a conspiracy. The art of tradecraft is in the ability to run “conspiracies” secretly and bring them to a successful completion. This art has its own inviolable rules: whoever doesn’t observe them dooms his undertaking, and possibly himself and all like-minded men far and near. Here amateurism is tantamount to failure and death.

One of these rules holds: the secret of a conspiracy can be communicated only to individuals of unconditional trustworthiness and unconditional unity of thought – i.e., if their participation in the conspiracy is unconditionally necessary.

Let us imagine that a prominent agent of the NKVD comes to me and says:

We are conspirators in the NKVD; we are ready to carry out a coup in the Soviet state and establish a Russian national government if you, emigres, promise us to execute all our orders, and then give us full amnesty and allow us to join your government!

I, of course, let him finish. How should I answer him?

1) Why did you choose me for communicating your secret? Am I really your unconditional fellow-thinker who can be entrusted with a secret? To be your fellow-thinker, I should have known all your intimate plans against the emigration, plans you are professionally obligated to have. How and by what means will you prove to me that you are speaking with me now not as a professional provocateur from the NKVD, but as a patriot thinking of the nation? What unity of thought is possible between us? Unity of thought presupposes firmness of belief from two directions. If we accept that my firmness of belief is proven by my past, then your firmness of belief perished forever in your activity as a provocateur. You already can never believe yourself. What conspiracy is possible in the absence of unity of thought and firmness of belief? Really only one man’s [Judas’s] conspiracy against another Man…

2) Whence did you come by such unconditional trust in me that you resolve to inform me of a dangerous secret? How do you know that I am not chatty and not boastful? That I won’t let your secret slip orally or into print? How do you know that among my acquaintances there are none of your secret agents, hidden from you, who would immediately betray you to your higher-ups? Why do you consider me a fool who is capable of immediately believing in the proposals of a professional NKVD man? If you come to me with such an offer, then you obviously consider me a downright political idiot; but it’s impossible to place any trust in such an idiot. All of this means that you’re only playing at trusting me and you in no way fear betrayal. You’re clearly coming to me with the knowledge of your senior officers, and all of your undertaking can only be a new provocation.

3) But if there was truly unity of thought and trust between you, a professional provocateur, and me (which is ridiculous to contemplate), then you would have a reason to tell me of your “conspiracy” only if my participation was unconditionally necessary for your success. As a matter of fact, everything stands quite to the contrary: your “conspiracy” is being undertaken in an atmosphere completely falsified and professionally hived with spies and traitors. In the NKVD you even eavesdrop on each other’s thoughts at night and attribute your own fabrications and designs to each other. And, nonetheless, you’ve supposedly created an entire conspiracy. But then what insanity is it, on your part, to make it an object of “émigré export?” After all, for its success it’s necessary that not one mosquito in the emigration would suspect it or even buzz of it in the night…And you’re spilling to me, the first man you come across, your entire secret-police rationale? Tell me, how many emigres have you already initiated into this “plan to save Russia?” You understand, of course, that by so doing you’ve doomed your whole “conspiracy.” And you, the artful NKVD man, are pretending that you’ve not conceived of this. If your “conspiracy” is known to you, an émigré you’ve randomly happened upon, then of course it’s long been known to your higher-ups. And that means that it’s hopeless, and namely you have doomed it, or that it’s another provocation. It’s clear that the latter is correct.

4) You decidedly do not need the emigration to carry out a coup in the Soviet Union. Rather, their participation and gossip could only be damaging to you. If you are capable and wish to execute a coup, then carry it out silently, unexpectedly and decisively, but don’t announce it abroad.

You want “amnesty” from us. But why do you need amnesty if you’ll be in power? Then you’ll be granting the amnesties, not us. Along with that you know well that there’s no unity in the emigration: it’s multi-headed with various lines of thought, and there are many hundreds of thousands or more therein, yet you’re conversing with me. As Anempodist Chizhikov[i], as if I could guarantee you anything. On “joining your government:” Well then, we’ll just rush into your inconceivable government, we with our multiple heads and various opinions. Or are you promising this participation only to me, Chizhikov, personally? It must be that you find me a very ambitious and simultaneously stupid person…When you’ll be in power, then you will invite whom you wish, and the invitees will answer you individually. Until that time, do you yourself understand that only fools can be tempted by your promises and take your provocative twaddle seriously? But is it worth your energies to entice fools? Or do you want to turn them into your spies?

5) Concerning the execution of all your directives and demands and unconditional obedience to you in all things, that is a demand that was pronounced by your agent Fedorov-Yakushev, the founder of the “Trust” provocation well-known to all. We’re already familiar with that. And it’s precisely that that finally gives you away, head-first. So look for co-conspirators among men less experienced, blindly trusting, and painfully ambitious. But don’t disturb me with harmful discussions!

There is no need, of course, to expound all of these reasons to our sly interlocutor; one can say otherwise, more or less. But it namely follows to think this way for oneself. And then it follows to warn all one’s ideological fellows of a new provocation being prepared, perhaps through the emigre press.

[i] Anempodist Chizhikov was one of the sarcastic pseudonyms Ilyin used during his time in the underground. Translated from Greek, Anempodist means “unhindered.”

Translated by Mark Hackard.