8. Knight, The KGB, pp. 64-5.
9. k-9,183.
10. Medvedev, Andropov, p. 56.
11. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 434-5, 483-4; Arbatov, The System, p. 266; Dobbs, Down With Big Brother, p. 13.
12. k-25,1.
13. k-1,191. Because of the dissidents’ contacts (both real and imagined) with the West and the expulsion of some of their leaders, FCD archives included material on them from both the Second (internal security) Chief Directorate and the Fifth Directorate, founded by Andropov to specialize in operations by domestic ideological subversion.
14. Mitrokhin later found evidence of similar plans to end the dancing career of another defector from the Kirov Ballet, Natalia Makarova.
15. The approximate size of the FCD archive c. 1970 is given in vol. 6, ch. 2, part 1.
16. When FCD Directorate S at the Lubyanka asked to consult one of the files transferred to Yasenevo, Mitrokhin was also responsible for supervising its return.
17. k-16,506.
18. Blake, No Other Choice, p. 265.
19. While working on the notes at the dacha, Mitrokhin kept them hidden at the bottom of a laundry basket, then buried them in the milk-churn before he left. He was not the first to bury a secret archive in a milk-churn. In the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942-3 Emanuel Ringelblum buried three churns, rediscovered after the Second World War, which contained a priceless collection of underground newspapers, reports on resistance networks, and the testimony of Jews who had escaped from the death camps. One of the milk-churns is among the exhibits at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
20. Mitrokhin’s archive is in four sections:
(i) k-series: handwritten material filed in large envelopes
(ii) t-series: handwritten notebooks
(iii) volumes: typed material, mostly arranged by country, sometimes with commentary by Mitrokhin
(iv) frag.-series: miscellaneous handwritten notes Endnote references to Mitrokhin’s archive follow this classification.
21. Solzhenitsyn’s letter of complaint to Andropov and Andropov’s mendacious report on it to the Council of Ministers are published in Scammell (ed.), The Solzhenitsyn Files, pp. 158-60. See also Solzhenitsyn, The Oak and the Calf, pp. 322-3, 497-8; Scammell, Solzhenitsyn, pp. 739-43.
22. Pipes (ed.), The Unknown Lenin, pp. 48-50.
23. Solzhenitsyn, The Oak and the Calf, p. 1.
24. Shentalinsky, The KGB’s Literary Archive, pp. 80-1. In 1926 the OGPU had confiscated Bulgakov’s allegedly subversive diary. Though Bulgakov succeeded in getting it back a few years later, he himself subsequently burnt it for fear that it might provide evidence for his arrest. Happily, a copy survives in the KGB archives.
25. “Some aspects of the political and moral-psychological situation among members of the Moscow Theatre of Drama and Comedy on the Taganka.” Report submitted to Andropov in July 1978 (k-25, appendix).
26. Solzhenitsyn, The Oak and the Calf, pp. 2-4.
27. See below, chapter 19.
28. The Afghan War will be covered in volume 2.
29. A characteristic example was a plan (document no. 150/S-9195) for agent infiltration into Russian émigré communities to monitor and destabilize dissidents abroad, signed jointly by Kryuchkov and Bobkov (head of the Fifth Directorate), submitted to Andropov on August 19, 1975, and approved by him a few days later; vol. 6, ch. 8, part 6. Kryuchkov now improbably maintains that he “had nothing to do with the struggle against dissent” (Remnick, Resurrection, p. 322).
30. vol. 10, ch. 3, para. 23.
31. vol. 6, app. 2, parts 3, 4; k-2,323; k-5,169.
32. Since he does not wish to reveal some details of his departure from the Soviet Union to the present Russian security service, Mitrokhin is unwilling to identify the Baltic republic in which he contacted SIS.
33. Kessler, The FBI, p. 433. Despite its limitations, the story confirms Kessler’s well-deserved reputation for scoops.
34. Michael Isikoff, “FBI Probing Soviet Spy Effort, Book Says,” Washington Post (August 18, 1993).
35. “Fun and Games with the KGB,” Time (August 30, 1993).
36. The British media also assumed that the KGB defector had gone to the United States. See, for example, “Top US Officials ‘Spied For KGB,’” The Times (August 19, 1993); “KGB Recruited ‘Hundreds’ of American Spies,” Independent (August 19, 1993).
37. The first exposure of Hernu’s alleged role as a Soviet Bloc agent was the article by Jérôme Dupuis and Jean-Marie Pontaut, “Charles Hernu était un agent de l’Est,” L’Express (October 31, 1996).
38. “Le contre-espionnage français est convaincu que Charles Hernu a été un agent de l’Est,” Le Monde (October 31, 1996). For British versions of the Hernu story, see, inter alia, the reports in the Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Independent and The Times on October 31, 1996, and in the Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph on November 3, 1996.
39. Since Mitrokhin’s notes, though voluminous, are not comprehensive, the absence of any identifiable reference to Hernu is not proof of his innocence, especially as his initial contacts were, allegedly, with Bulgarian and Romanian intelligence. Hernu’s family insist that he is innocent of the charges against him.
40. Focus (December 1996, March 1997). Focus’s report in December 1996 provoked the vigorous SVR denunciation quoted at the beginning of this chapter.
41. Andreas Weber, “Die ‘Grot’ geschluckt: Die Lagepläne zu den KGB-Waffen- und Spreng-stoffdepots in Österreich sind überaus präzise,” Profil (May 26, 1997).
42. t-7,65.
43. See below, chapter 22.
44. Focus (June 15, 1998). Other errors in the Focus story included the claim that the defector had “worked at KGB headquarters until the early 1990s.”
45. Focus (June 15, 1998). Roger Boyes, “Defector Says Willy Brandt was KGB Agent,” The Times (June 16, 1998).
46. ITAR/Tass interview with Yuri Kobaladze, June 19, 1998. Butkov’s memoirs, so far available only in Norwegian, contain much of interest (including KGB documents) on his career in the FCD from 1984 to 1991, but include no reference to Brandt. In 1998, while living in Britain, Butkov was jailed for three years for his involvement in a confidence trick which persuaded companies in Russia and Ukraine to pay 1.5 pounds to enrol employees in a bogus business school in California. “Conman from Suburbia is KGB Defector,” Sunday Times (April 26, 1998).
47. k-26,88.
48. See below, chapter 26.
49. vol. 6, ch. 11, parts 26, 28, 41.
50. Scott Shane and Sandy Banisky, “Lipka Was Wary of FBI’s Spy Trap,” Baltimore Sun (February 25, 1996); William C. Carley, “How the FBI Broke Spy Case that Baffled Agency for 30 Years,” Wall Street Journal (November 21, 1996).
51. Julia C. Martinez, “Accused Spy Admits Guilt,” Philadelphia Inquirer (May 24, 1997).
52. Joseph A. Slobodzian, “18-Year Sentence for Ex-Soviet Spy,” Philadelphia Inquirer (September 25, 1997).
53. The first edition was published in New York by Reader’s Digest Press.
54. vol. 6, ch. 8, part 54.
55. vol. 6, app. 1, part 28.
56. vol. 6, ch. 8, part 4.
57. Some of the KGB documents obtained by Gordievsky, all covering the period 1974 to 1985, were later published in Andrew and Gordievsky (eds.), Instructions from the Centre and More Instructions from the Centre.
58. Unattributable information. Since Mitrokhin had retired six years before the publication of the history by Andrew and Gordievsky, he had no access to KGB files on it.
59. Order of the Chairman of the KGB, no. 107/OV, September 5, 1990.
60. Costello later told Andrew and Gordievsky that he received the first order of KGB material shortly after the press conference to launch their book, at which he made an engagingly boisterous appearance to denounce their identification of John Cairncross as the Fifth Man as a plot by British intelligence. He subsequently changed his mind after seeing material from Cairncross’s KGB file
which confirmed that identification.
61. Costello, Ten Days to Destiny.
62. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. vi-vii. Costello’s untimely death in 1996 has been variously attributed by conspiracy theorists to the machinations of British or Russian intelligence. While Costello was somewhat naive in his attitude to the SVR, there is no suggestion that either he or any of the other Western authors (some of them distinguished scholars) of the collaborative histories authorized by the SVR have been Russian agents.
63. The collaborative volumes so far published are, in order of publication: Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions; Murphy, Kondrashev and Bailey, Battleground Berlin; Fursenko and Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble”; West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels; and Weinstein and Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood. Further publication details are given in the bibliography.
64. Extracts from the Philby file appear in Costello, Ten Days to Destiny; Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions; Borovik, The Philby Files; West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels.
65. See below, chapter 9.
66. Murphy, Kondrashev and Bailey, Battleground Berlin, p. 248. The authors rightly describe the SVR’s claim that it has no file on Kopatzky/Orlov as “obviously disingenuous.” The SVR’s selection of documents for the most recent of the collaborative histories (on espionage in the USA in the Stalin era) shows some similar signs of archival amnesia on embarrassing episodes. It claims, for example, that “available records” do not indicate the fate of Vasili Mironov, a senior officer in the New York residency recalled to Moscow in 1944 (Weinstein and Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood, p. 275). In reality, his fate is precisely recorded in SVR files. After his recall, Mironov was first sent to labor camp, then shot after attempting to smuggle details of the NKVD massacre of Polish officers to the US embassy in Moscow.
67. See below, chapter 9.
68. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii. The editor, Tatyana Samolis, is spokeswoman for the SVR. One striking example of this volume’s reverential attitude towards the pious myths created by the KGB is its highly sanitized account of the frequently unsavory career of Hero of the Soviet Union Stanislav Alekseyevich Vaupshashov.
69. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki. Three volumes were published between 1995 and 1997. They are based, in part, on formerly classified articles in the KGB in-house journal KGB Sbornik, some of which were noted by Mitrokhin.
70. Though the former head of the SVR, Yevgeni Primakov (who in 1998 became Russian prime minister), was given the honorary title of “editor-in-chief” of Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, his role can scarcely have been much more than nominal. As “literary editor,” Zamoysky is likely to have played a much more significant role. During the 1980s he regularly expounded his belief in a global Masonic-Zionist plot during briefing trips to foreign residencies. Oleg Gordievsky heard him deliver a lecture on this subject during his visit to the London residency in January 1985; Zamoysky was then deputy head of the FCD Directorate of Intelligence Information. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 42.
71. “Freemasons,” Zamoysky claimed, “have always controlled the upper echelons of government in Western countries… Masonry in fact runs, ‘remotely controls’ bourgeois society… The true center of the world Masonic movement is to be found in the most ‘Masonic’ country of all, the United States… Ronald Reagan has been characterized as an ‘outstanding’ Mason.” Zamoysky’s explanation of the Cold War was startling in its simplicity:
The first ever atomic attack on people, the use of atomic weapons for blackmail and the escalation of the arms race were sanctioned by the 33-degree Mason Harry Truman.
The first ever call for the Cold War was sounded by Mason Winston Churchill (with Truman’s blessing).
The onslaught on the economic independence of Western Europe (disguised as the Marshall Plan) was directed by the 33-degree Mason George Marshall.
Truman and West European Freemasons orchestrated the formation of NATO.
Don’t we owe to that cohort the instigation of hostility between the West and the Soviet Union…?
(Behind the Facade of the Masonic Temple, pp. 6-7, 141.)
An important part of the explanation for the survival of some old KGB conspiracy theories into today’s SVR is the continuity of personnel.
72. The third and latest volume of the SVR official history, which ends in 1941, concludes that Soviet foreign intelligence “honorably and unselfishly did its patriotic duty to Motherland and people.” Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, conclusion.
73. That is why the SVR selected as the first subject for a collaborative history between one of its own consultants and a Western historian a biography of Aleksandr Orlov, a senior foreign intelligence officer who, despite being forced to flee to the West from Stalin’s Terror, allegedly kept “faith with Lenin’s revolution” and used his superior intelligence training to take in Western intelligence agencies for many years. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions.
74. See below, ch. 5.
75. See below, chs. 15, 16, 19, 20, 29, 30.
76. See below, ch. 18.
77. On the destruction of KGB files, see Knight, Spies Without Cloaks, p. 194.
Chapter Two
From Lenin’s Cheka to Stalin’s OGPU
1. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 56-63.
2. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 52-3.
3. vol. 6, ch. 3, part 3, n. 2; k-9,218.
4. Leggett, The Cheka, p. 17.
5. k-9,67.
6. Pipes, Russia under the Bolshevik Regime, 1919-1924, pp. 92-3.
7. k-9,67,204.
8. Tsvigun et al. (eds.), V.I. Lenin i VChK, no. 48.
9. Ostryakov, Voyennye Chekisty, ch. 1.
10. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 69-75. On the evidence for Lenin’s involvement, see Brook-Shepherd, Iron Maze, p. 103.
11. Brook-Shepherd, Iron Maze, p. 107.
12. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 79.
13. Before his execution, Kannegiser was twice interrogated personally by Dzerzhinsky. Though he had formerly been an active member of the Workers’ Popular Socialist Party, he claimed—perhaps to protect other supporters of the Party—that, “as a matter of principle,” he was not currently a member of any party. Kannegiser said that he had carried out the assassination entirely on his own to avenge those shot on Uritsky’s orders as “enemies of Soviet power.” According to his father, one of those shot had been a friend of Kannegiser. The family maid, Ilinaya, claimed that Kannegiser “was linked with some suspicious people who often came to see him, and that he himself would disappear from his house at night, returning only during the day.” Rozenberg, another witness interrogated by the Cheka, claimed that Kannegiser had told him of his plan to overthrow the Bolshevik regime. Mitrokhin noted, after reading the Cheka interrogation records, that the conflicts in evidence had not been resolved. vol. 10, ch. 4.
14. The record of Kaplan’s interrogation was published in 1923; Pipes, The Russian Revolution, p. 807.
15. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 75-81.
16. Pipes (ed.), The Unknown Lenin, pp. 48, 54.
17. Though the KGB files examined by Mitrokhin do not record Filippov’s fate after his arrest by the Petrograd Cheka, he was never heard of again. k-9,67,204.
18. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 237.
19. Leggett, The Cheka, p. 417 n. 21. Conquest, The Great Terror, pp. 325-7.
20. vol. 7, ch. 1, para. 5. Buikis subsequently wrote two brief memoirs of his early experiences in the Cheka in Rozvadovskaya et al. (eds.), Rytsar Revoliutsii, and Lyalin et al. (eds.), Osoboie Zadanie.
21. See, for example, Ostryakov, Voyennye Chekisty, ch. 1.
22. For the text of the official document certifying Ulyanov’s “rights to hereditary nobility” (suppressed during the Soviet era), see Pipes (ed.), The Unknown Lenin, p. 19.
23. Pipes (ed.), The Unknown Lenin, pp. 3-5, 138-9.
24. Rad
zinsky, Stalin, pp. 11-12.
25. vol. 1, app. 3. Cf. Radzinsky, Stalin, pp. 12-14.
26. Radzinsky, Stalin, pp. 77-9. It is possible that Stalin’s determination about changing the day of the month as well as the year of his birth in official records may have reflected the fear that Okhrana records contained some reference which had been overlooked to an agent, otherwise identified only by codename, who had his date of birth.
27. On June 11, 1919 the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party stated: “[ We] have noted Comrade Dzerzhinsky’s announcement concerning the necessity of leaving illegal political workers in the areas occupied by the enemy… It is proposed that: (a) An Illegals Operations Department be created in the organizational office…” (vol. 6, ch. 5, part 1, n. 1).
28. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 1 and n. 1; vol. 7, ch. 1.
29. k-27,305.
30. Leggett, The Cheka, appendix C.
31. There is little doubt that The State and Revolution represented Lenin’s innermost convictions. Had it been otherwise, he would scarcely have chosen to publish it in February 1918, at a time when the Cheka was already in existence and it was only too easy for Lenin’s opponents to point to the contradictions between his words and his deeds. Its publication at such a difficult time was an act of faith that the regime’s difficulties were only temporary and that he would live to see the fulfillment of his revolutionary dream.
32. Report from the Cheka of the town and district of Morshansk in the first issue of the Cheka weekly, dated September 22, 1918 (k-9,212).
33. Mitrokhin noted the following report (k-9,210) of an inspection by Cheka headquarters of Cheka operations in Dmitrov in 1918:
Kurenkov, aged 18, operates as the chairman of the Dmitrov town Cheka of Moscow province. All his colleagues are young people, but young people who are competent, battle-tested and who work with energy.
However, the work of the Cheka was carried out in a primitive manner. Searches were carried out without elected observers and without representatives of housing committees being present. Confiscated food stuffs were not handed over to the food department, and inventories were not drawn up.
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