KGB Summary of Soviet Intelligence

KGB

Summary of Soviet Intelligence Operations

The world watched in wonder as the former mighty Soviet empire collapsed in the early 1990s, and the ugly face of the Iron Curtain was finally erased from the European continent. One of the more interesting mechanisms by which the Soviet Union managed to survive as long as it did was the KGB, the infamous Russian spy agency that was officially dissolved in 1991, but has since managed to reformulate itself into yet another intelligence-gathering organization. The KGB's activities prior to the Cold War, though, also contributed to the successful outcome of World War II as well as the Soviet Union's subsequent efforts to "bury the West" in years to come. To determine what transpired pre-Cold War, this paper provides a review of the peer-reviewed and scholarly literature concerning the early history of Russia's intelligence service prior to the beginning of the Cold War, the major features of Soviet internal counterintelligence operations, and the major strengths and weaknesses of Soviet counterintelligence during this period. A discussion of the major features of Russian foreign intelligence operations against the United States during this period is followed by an evaluation of the degree of success of these early operations and the reasons for such success. A summary of the research and salient findings are presented in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Early History of Russia's Intelligence Service Pre-Cold War. Although the Komitet Gosurdarstvennoy Besopasnosti, or "Committee of State Security" (hereinafter "KGB") was officially deactivated on October 24, 1991, the organization was immediately reorganized into another intelligence-gathering permutation of its former incarnation. The KGB had a long and colorful history during its existence, with the first contacts of the Soviet intelligence gathering agency with comparable foreign entities dating back to the 1930s when the NKVD (an early predecessor of the KGB) was concerned that Japanese incursions into the Soviet Far East would create and strengthen security establishments in Outer Mongolia and Tuva, two Asiatic countries bordering the U.S.S.R. (Tuva was subsequently incorporated into the Soviet Union but Mongolia remained a communist territory in the region, maintaining formal independence).

In their book, the Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, Andrew and Mitrokhin (1999) report that, "The KGB traced its origins to the foundation on December 20, 1917, six weeks after the Bolshevik Revolution, of the Cheka, the first Soviet security and intelligence agency." Today, many people in the West may not appreciate the lengthy history of the KGB, but the agency had been around for awhile even before the outbreak of World War II. According to Andrew and Mitrokhin, "The term KGB is used both generally to denote the Soviet State Security organization throughout its history since its foundation as the Cheka in 1917 and, more specifically, to refer to State Security after 1954 when it took its final name." In this regard, Ebon (1994) notes that even the term "Cheka" was also an acronym: "The heirs of Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin's All-Russian Extraordinary Committee for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage, or Cheka for short. Devoted Russian secret police officers used to proudly call themselves 'Chekists.'" in addition, as Andrew and Mitrokhin note, "The KGB also adopted the Cheka symbols of the sword and the shield: the shield to defend the revolution, the sword to smite its foes." According to Andrew and Mitrokhin, in 1922, the Soviet Ministry of State Security (or the MGB, the predecessor to the future KGB) and Soviet military intelligence (GRU) were temporarily combined in the Committee of Information. Furthermore, in the paranoid environment that characterized this period in the Soviet Union's history, some of the priorities that emerged included Stalin's initiatives to "conduct witch-hunts throughout the Soviet Bloc against mostly imaginary Titoist and Zionist conspiracies."

Major Features of Soviet Internal Counterintelligence Operations. As Andrew and Mitrokhin point out, "The history of its domestic operations was something of an embarrassment even to its own historians. During the late 1930s the KGB (then known as the NKVD) had been the chief instrument of Stalin's Great Terror, the greatest peacetime persecution in European history." Some of the major features that characterized the internal counterintelligence operations in the Soviet Union included 1) a profound sense of paranoia and fear (both real and imagined) that began at the very top of the Soviet leadership and was communicated to the lowest of the low, 2) a sense of urgency and purpose; 3) a perceived threat from the West, even during their alliance; 4) internal rivalries and competition between intelligence-gathering organizations; 5) the need to maintain strict control and oversight over agents as well as intelligence; and, 6) an emphasis on recruiting and training.

Major Strengths and Weaknesses of Soviet Counterintelligence Pre-Cold War. On the one hand, Soviet counterintelligence activities pre-Cold War were effective in achieving the goal of instilling a "culture of fear" throughout the country that helped Stalin remain in power as long as he did, but on the other hand, this same "culture of fear" contributed to enormous paranoia that contributed to a lack of initiative even within the organizations responsible for the conduct of such operations. For instance, Andrew and Mitrokhin report that, "Though 'special tasks' only began to dominate NKVD foreign operations in 1937, the problem of 'enemies of the people' abroad had loomed steadily larger in Stalin's mind since the early 1930s as he became increasingly obsessed with the opposition to him inside the Soviet Union." Given the enormity of the adverse circumstances faced by Stalin during and after World War II, it is not surprising that he would become "brittle minded" and see enemies everywhere he looked. After all, when everyone is out to get you, being paranoid is just good sense. In this regard, these authors note that, "During the early 1930s Stalin lost whatever capacity he had once possessed to distinguish personal opponents from 'enemies of the people.'"

Major Features of Russian Foreign Intelligence Operations against the U.S. Although an ally of the United States during the Second World War, it became increasingly clear even before the outcome of the war was assured that the two emerging superpowers would become ideological foes in the future. According to Andrew and Mitrokhin, "Throughout the Cold War the United States was the main target for KGB active measures as well as for intelligence collection. Most were at the non-violent end of the active measures spectrum - 'influence operations' designed to discredit the Main Adversary." "At the end of the Second World War, the Centre faced what it feared was impending disaster in intelligence operations against its wartime allies." These fears were based on a series of defections by several agents who significantly comprised the Soviet's operations in North America.