Chapter Fifteen
Progress Operations
Part 1
1. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, ch. 9.
2. Leonhard, Child of the Revolution, p. 303. Leonhard accompanied Ulbricht back from Moscow.
3. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, ch. 9.
4. Szász, Volunteers for the Gallows, p. 105.
5. Flocken and Scholz, Ernst Wollweber.
6. After being expelled from the Party in 1958, Wollweiser lived in obscurity until his death in 1967. Childs and Popplewell, The Stasi, pp. 64-5.
7. Kopácsi, Au nom de la classe ouvrière, pp. 119-22. Mikoyan and Suslov, who also arrived secretly in Budapest at the beginning of the revolution, reported to Moscow on October 24, “One of the most serious mistakes of the Hungarian comrades was the fact that, before twelve midnight last night, they did not permit anyone to shoot at participants in the riots” (“Soviet Documents on the Hungarian Revolution,” p. 29).
8. Kopácsi, Au nom de la classe ouvrière, pp. 122, 240-8.
9. The best account in English of the repression of the Hungarian Revolution, based on full access to Hungarian archives and limited access to Soviet sources, is contained in a volume edited by Professor György Litván, Director of the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, The Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
10. k-19,136.
11. t-7,299.
12. k-19,136.
13. t-7,299.
14. k-19,136.
15. Kalugin, Spymaster, p. 313.
16. Dawisha, The Kremlin and the Prague Spring, p. 16. In March 1968 Novotný was also forced to resign as president.
17. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 485-6.
18. Dubček, Hope Dies Last, p. 139.
19. Dobrynin, In Confidence, p. 179.
20. Pikhoya, “Chekhoslovakiya 1968 god,” part 1, pp. 10-12.
21. See below, chapter 15.
22. Litván, The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, p. 58.
23. Shevchenko, Breaking with Moscow, p. 104.
24. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 434-5.
25. k-16,250. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 1. vol. 7, ch. 7, 68.
26. k-19,299.
27. t-7,280.
28. Their names are listed in k-20,93,94.
29. GROMOV was Vasili Antonovich Gordievsky, who at different times assumed the identities of Kurt Sandler, Kurt Molner and Emil Frank (t-7,279). SADKO was an Estonian, Ivan Karlovich Iozenson, who posed successively as a Canadian of Finnish origins, Valte Urho Kataja, and as the Germans Hans Graven and Pobbs Friedrich Schilling (vol. 8, ch. 8; k-8,23,167,574). SEVIDOV’s real name is not recorded in Mitrokhin’s notes. When traveling in the West, he usually carried a West German passport in the name of Heinrich Dremer or Kurt Ernst Tile; he also possessed an Austrian passport in the name of Dremer. At one stage a Swiss passport was also held in reserve for him at the KGB residency in Vienna. When traveling in Poland, he posed as the East German Willi Werner Neumann (k-16,455). VLADIMIR was a Soviet ethnic German, Ivan Dmitryevich Unrau, who obtained his first West German passport under an assumed identity in 1961; he used at least two different names, Hans Emil Redveyks and [first name unknown] Maykhert. His wife Irina Yevseyevna was the illegal BERTA (k-16,61). VLAS was a Soviet Moldavian (real name unrecorded) who posed as the West German Rolf Max Thiemichen. His wife LIRA was also an illegal (k-11,6; k-8,277). The aliases of all five illegals, like others, were noted by Mitrokhin in the Cyrillic alphabet; their retranslation into the Roman alphabet may in some instances produce spelling errors.
30. GURYEV was Valentin Aleksandrovich Gutin, who posed in Czechoslovakia as a businessman (alias not recorded), probably from West Germany; he accompanied GROMOV to Prague (k-19,655). YEVDOKIMOV’s real name is not recorded; he used the alias Heinz Bayer (k-20,94; t-2,65).
31. The first list of illegals selected for postings in Czechoslovakia contains the name of PYOTR, also known as ARTYOM. Later records reveal that his wife ARTYOMOVA, also an illegal, played an active role in Czechoslovakia, but Mitrokhin’s notes contain no reference to operations by PYOTR/ARTYOM. ARTYOMOVA was a MGIMO graduate (real name unknown) who held a West German passport in the name of Edith Ingrid Eichendorf, but posed in Czechoslovakia as an Austrian businesswoman (alias unknown) (k-8,44; k-20,176). DIM (or DIMA) was V. I. Lyamin; he traveled to Prague on an Austrian passport (alias not recorded) (vol. 5, sec. 14; k-20,85). VIKTOR was a Latvian, Pavel Aleksandrovich Karalyun, who obtained a Brazilian passport in 1959 and later assumed Austrian nationality (vol. 6, ch. 5, parts 2, 4; k-16,483).
32. Mitrokhin notes that BELYAKOV used British identity documents but does not record either his real or his assumed name (vol. 6, ch. 5, part 4). USKOV was [first name not recorded] Nikolayevich Ustimenko, who used successively Irish and British passports (aliases not recorded). VALYA was USKOV’s Norwegian-born wife, Victoria Martynova, who took Soviet citizenship on her marriage in 1961; like her husband, she used a British passport in Czechoslovakia (vol. 7, ch. 7; k-20,190).
33. ALLA was Galina Leonidovna Vinogradova (later Linitskaya and Kaminskaya), a Yugoslav woman whose first marriage was to a GRU illegal, Vladimir Ivanovich Vinogradov. In 1954 she obtained an Austrian passport in the name of Maria Machek. After her husband was dismissed from the GRU on charges of “political immaturity and ideological instability” in 1955, ALLA married the KGB illegal INDOR, then operating in Switzerland as Waldemar Weber, and acquired Swiss citizenship as Maria Weber. Her marriage to INDOR was dissolved “for operational reasons” in 1957 and she began a relationship with an Egyptian (codenamed PHARAOH) whom she met in Switzerland. Mitrokhin’s notes on ALLA’s bulky file record that she operated in Czechoslovakia in 1968 as Maria Werner. It is unclear whether ALLA had actually changed her alias from Weber or whether the apparent change is due to a clerical error related to the transliteration of her pseudonym to and from the Cyrillic alphabet. vol. 4, indapp. 3; vol. 4, pakapp. 3; k-20,187.
34. SEP was Mikhail Vladimirovich Fyodorov. From 1945 to 1951 he worked in Polish military intelligence under the alias Mikhail Lipsinski. In 1952 he and his wife ZHANNA (also an illegal) obtained Swiss passports. From 1953 to 1968 he was illegal resident in Switzerland; Mitrokhin’s notes do not record his alias. k-20,94,201; vol. 7, ch. 7; vol. 7, app. 3.
35. YEFRAT was a Soviet Armenian, Ashot Abgarovich Akopyan, who assumed the identity of a living Lebanese double, Oganes Saradzhyan, who had migrated to the Soviet Union and obtained, successively, French and Lebanese passports. His wife, Kira Viktorovna Chertenko (TANYA), was also an illegal. k-7,9; k-16,338,419.
36. ROY (also known as KONEYEV) was Vladimir Igorevich Stetsenko, who assumed the identity of a Mexican citizen, Felipe Burns, allegedly the son of a Canadian father and Mexican mother. His wife PAT (also known as IRINA) was also an illegal. vol. 8, app. 3a.
37. The assumed nationality of the illegal JURGEN is not recorded in Mitrokhin’s notes.
38. k-20,93.
39. k-19,331.
40. k-20,93.
41. k-20,86. On Bárak’s imprisonment in 1962, see Renner, A History of Czechoslovakia Since 1945, p. 35.
42. k-20,87,189; vol. 3, pakapp. 3.
43. Gustav Husák, who was to succeed Dubček as First Secretary in April 1969, accused Bárak of personal responsibility for his brutal interrogation and trial on trumped-up charges in 1954. Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution, p. 380.
44. k-20,93.
45. k-20,96.
46. Dubček, Hope Dies Last, p. 150; Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution, pp. 231, 879.
47. k-20,79. Strougal lost his position in the CPCz secretariat during the April reshuffle. In January 1970 he succeeded ˇCerník as prime minister.
48. August and Rees, Red Star over Prague, pp. 126-7; Dubček, Hope Dies Last, pp. 145-6; Dawisha, The Kremlin and the Prague Spring, p. 63.
49. Dubček, Hope Dies Last, p. 160.
50. k-19,655. k-20,95.
51. In April 1968 GROMOV was awa
rded the “Honoured KGB Officer” badge for his part in exfiltrating FAUST (Yevgeni Ivanovich Ushakov, who had assumed the identity of a “dead double,” Olaf Carl Svenson). k-16,501; k-20,94. Cf. Gordievsky, Next Stop Execution, p. 188.
52. k-19,655.
53. k-19,655.
54. Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution, pp. 69, 568, 576, 696.
55. The KGB file noted by Mitrokhin records that the Service V thugs chosen to assist GUREYEV in kidnapping Černý were named Alekseyev and Ivanov; Petrov and Borisov, also from Service V, were to help GROMOV make off with Procházka (k-19,655).
56. k-19,655; k-20,95.
57. k-20,155,156,203.
58. k-20,89.
59. August and Rees, Red Star over Prague, p. 129; Valenta, Soviet Intervention in Czechoslovakia, 1968, pp. 63-4. k-20,203.
60. Pikhoya, “Chekhoslovakiya 1968 god,” part 2, pp. 35ff; Gardner, “The Soviet Decision to Invade Czechoslovakia.”
61. August and Rees, Red Star over Prague, p. 129; Valenta, Soviet Intervention in Czechoslovakia, 1968, pp. 63-4.
62. August and Rees, Red Star over Prague, pp. 140-1. Mitrokhin notes that KGB plans “to carry out special assignments on nine people” in Czechoslovakia in August 1968 were canceled by the Centre, but gives no further details (k-20,203).
63. k-19,644.
64. This is the interpretation of Frantisek August, an StB officer who later defected to the West. According to August, Frouz was “a Soviet agent” (August and Rees, Red Star over Prague, p. 128).
65. Interviews with Kalugin in Komsomolskaya Pravda (June 20, 1990) and Moscow News, 1990, no. 25; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 487-8; Kramer, “The Prague Spring and the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia,” part 2, p. 6.
66. The minutes of the Politburo meeting of August 15-17, 1968, which agreed the final details of the invasion, are not yet available.
67. Littell (ed.), The Czech Black Book Prepared by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, pp. 64-70; August and Rees, Red Star over Prague, pp. 134-5.
68. Dubček, Hope Dies Last, p. 183.
69. Littell (ed.), The Czech Black Book Prepared by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, p. 70.
70. Kramer, “The Prague Spring and the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia,” part 2, p. 3.
71. Dubček, Hope Dies Last, chs. 22-25.
72. An Outline of the History of the CPCz, p. 305.
73. k-19,644.
74. k-19,644. It is unclear from Mitrokhin’s notes whether PATERA was an StB or KGB codename or an alias.
75. Kalugin, Spymaster, p. 107. Kalugin was “deeply moved by the resident’s words.”
76. Fourteen illegals were sent to Czechoslovakia in August 1968 (k-20,182); most had almost certainly been on previous short-term missions during the Prague Spring. The total sent, usually on more than one mission, to Czechoslovakia in 1968-9 was twenty-nine (k-20,203).
77. k-19,246.
78. k-20,181.
79. k-16,329; k-20,150,187.
80. k-16,329; k-20,176.
81. k-16,329; k-19,158.
82. k-16,329; k-19,158.
83. k-19,384.
84. vol. 8, ch. 8 and app. 1. ERNA, previously codenamed NORA, who had been born in France of Spanish parents in 1914, became a Communist militant and commanded a machine-gun company during the Spanish Civil War. In 1939 she moved to Russia, took Soviet citizenship and joined the NKGB in 1941. She worked as an illegal in France (1946-52) and Mexico (1954-57) before moving to Montreal in 1958. Despite her criticisms, ERNA told her shocked comrades in Budapest that she remained a committed Leninist. By the mid-1970s, however, she had become so disillusioned that she broke contact with the KGB.
85. Gordievsky, Next Stop Execution, pp. 81-2.
86. k-19,158.
87. vol. 3, pakapp. 3.
88. Gordievsky, Next Stop Execution, p. 187.
89. k-8,78; k-19,158,298,415,454; vol. 6, ch. 1, part 1; vol. 6, ch. 5, part 3.
90. Gordievsky, Next Stop Execution, pp. 172-3; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 491-2.
Chapter Sixteen
Progress’ Operations
Part 2
1. Dubček, Hope Dies Last, pp. 225-6.
2. The Ministry of the Interior existed at both federal and national levels. There were thus Czech and Slovak ministers in addition to the Czechoslovak minister.
3. Dubček, Hope Dies Last, pp. 236-9.
4. k-20,149.
5. k-20,189,177.
6. k-20,154. On Pachman, see Hruby, Fools and Heroes, ch. 4.
7. k-19,643.
8. Renner, A History of Czechoslovakia Since 1945, p. 98.
9. Jakeš’s contact in the KGB liaison office was G. Slavin (first name and patronymic not recorded in Mitrokhin’s notes; k-19,575).
10. k-19,552.
11. k-19,643.
12. k-19,615.
13. Mitrokhin’s notes do not provide complete statistics for the purge of security and intelligence personnel. In 1970, however, 1,092 officials were dismissed from the central apparatus of the interior ministry and 3,202 individuals deprived of Party membership (k-19,551). During 1970 more than a hundred StB agents defected to the West (k-19,559).
14. k-19,566.
15. The KGB liaison office report cited as an example of the full and frank intelligence provided by Kaska the fact that he “told us all that he knew about Indra’s behavior in connection with his visit to the GDR…” Mitrokhin’s notes give no further information on this episode (k-19,645).
16. k-19,555.
17. k-19,576.
18. Sinitsyn reported that both Kaska and Husák had wanted to make further enquiries about KGB records on individuals “whose behavior in 1968-9 gave rise to doubts”; k-19,587.
19. Indra was seen by Husák as a potential rival, and his move in 1971 from his position as Party secretary to the prestigious but not very influential post of chairman of the National Assembly was probably intended to curtail his influence within the CPCz. Renner, A History of Czechoslovakia Since 1945, pp. 111-12.
20. k-19,554.
21. Kalugin, Spymaster, pp. 157-8.
22. k-19,554. On the problems of calculating the final total of the purge of the CPCz, see Kusin, From Dubček to Charter 77, pp. 85-9.
23. k-19,554.
24. k-19,541. The probable date of the meeting was April 1972.
25. k-16,329. k-19,158. Mitrokhin’s notes do not give FYODOROV’s real identity.
26. k-19,609.
27. k-19,600.
28. k-19,601.
29. Renner, A History of Czechoslovakia since 1945, pp. 100-1.
30. k-19,603.
31. k-19,606.
32. k-19,62.
33. k-19,68.
34. k-19,62,92,643.
35. Kusin, From Dubček to Charter 77, p. 194.
36. Dubček describes his surveillance and harassment by the StB in Hope Dies Last, ch. 29.
37. t-7,272,297. Dubček makes no mention of this episode in his memoirs.
38. k-19,330.
39. k-19,75.
40. k-19,77.
41. k-19,76.
42. The KGB team sent to Czechoslovakia “to help with the investigation of the Grohman case at a higher professional level” consisted of A. A. Fabrichnikov and V. A. Pakhomov of the Second Chief Directorate, and “others from the KGB Investigation Department.” During the investigation, Bil’ak claimed that Grohman “was a close contact of Štrougal.” k-19,67. On Grohman’s subsequent trial, see: “Former Prague Minister on Spying Charge,” The Times (January 5, 1977); “Viele Mitarbeiter des BND haben Angst vor Verrat,” Die Welt (January 27, 1977).
43. k-19,77.
44. t-7,263,280,281. k-19,451.
45. Probably the KGB’s main source on Moczar’s active measures against Gierek and his bugging of much of the PUWP leadership was Szlachcic, later Polish Minister of the Interior. t-7,243.
46. For an analysis of the December 1970 protests, see Kurczewski, The Resurrect
ion of Rights in Poland, ch. 5.
47. k-19,333.
48. k-19,322.
49. Crampton, Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, pp. 359-60.
50. t-7,243.
51. The other targets of cultivation assigned to BOGUN were W. Klimczak (not identified); the economist G. Nowakowski; the writer K. Busz, described as “leader of the Kraków intelligentsia”; and S. Kozinski, a photographer with “contacts in the Party and state apparatus” (k-19,415). The contact established by BOGUN with Bardecki was later continued by the illegal FILOSOV. Like others targeted by PROGRESS operations, Bardecki cannot be blamed for speaking to Western visitors whom he had no means of identifying as KGB illegals.
52. In addition to the seven illegals used for operations in East Germany, others were based there but operated elsewhere. k-19,399,415.
53. Mitrokhin’s notes do not record the specific objectives of the illegals sent to Bulgaria.
54. Crampton, Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, pp. 354-5.
55. k-19,487.
56. k-19,455.
57. k-19,415,456.
58. Crampton, Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, pp. 350-2.
59. k-16,273; k-19,429. Mitrokhin’s notes give no details on the content of the reports.
60. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 359-60.
61. k-19,287.
62. k-19,264.
63. Crampton, Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, pp. 357-8. Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name, p. 77.
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