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October 12, 2006

Soviet-Era Intelligence & Ideology

Part I: Describing the Role of Ideology in Soviet Agent Recruitment

 

 

This blog will be departing from the usual this weekend as it publishes a two-part essay on Soviet-era intelligence.

 

The first part will cover the role of ideology in the recruitment of soviet agents juxtaposed against the ideological climate of the evolving Soviet empire and its satellites across the globe. The second part will deal with how and to what degree the Soviet Union used intelligence-gathering methods and counterintelligence to maintain viability for the State as well as to project that viability before its adversaries.

 

This is an adapted form of an academic work I previously published this year. The scope is deliberately narrow to focus on a few key aspects of a much broader discussion on the sundry aspects of Soviet intelligence, and culls information largely from Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin’s first joint effort, The Sword and the Shield, following a theme of recent posts on this blog (though information was also gathered elsewhere and directly cited, where possible).

 

 

 

 

The Role of Ideology in the Soviet State and its satellites was a vital role, and key to the recruitment of agents, at least early on.  Though perhaps cynically adhered to by those at the pinnacle of Soviet power – who knew enough also to see the failure of communist ideology – it was rigorously enforced among the rank and file, especially within the intelligence community.

 

Stalin’s death-purges certainly are arguably good evidence of such ideological strictness pressed upon the Soviet intelligence minions. At the same time though, it cannot be avoided the fact that many loyal and ideologically “pure” agents were murdered not for heresy but as the direct result of the paranoia of power. So the extent to which ideology here plays too is not without inquiring minds.

 

At the very top of this mountain of Soviet power, ideology at the helm of state could well have been of secondary importance.  An interesting snippet from former KGB director and at the time, Soviet leader Andropov admitted as much during the Polish crisis, “This is a struggle for power. If Walesa and his fascist confederates came to power, they would start to put Communists in prison, to shoot them and subject them to every kind of persecution. In such an event, Party activists, Chekists … and military leaders would be most under threat” (Andrew & Mitrokhin, p. 519). While Andropov was speaking specifically of the Polish matter, it cannot escape thought that this comes out of a broader way of viewing things. To some extent he was right: the criminal atrocities of communists in many places lead to their imprisonment and execution in states which aggressively were able to throw off their cruel masters, e.g. Ceausescu’s Romania. And such a response by the people would not be unjustified in China or North Korea today, which is part of a longstanding and rather large reason these types of despots grow increasingly paranoid and seek to expand their power to oppress, to know, and to control.

 

While power was most likely the ultimate driver among Soviet leaders, communist ideology was both the narrow gateway by which power could be achieved and justified and a powerful psychological raison d’etat. As such, it was the premier hoop – pardon the pun – by which those in KGB and elsewhere made it to the top. It's interesting to note that those who wished to downplay the Soviet threat during the Cold War often attempted to portray the Soviet Union as just another benign regime of power-mongers, and they were partly correct; however, the use of communist ideology, as history now shows conclusively, metasticised the tumor, making the whole something far more than the sum of its parts. Communist ideology was in effect, the catalyst in much the same way Radical Islam also is in various places around the world. This new religion of radical atheism, came complete with a new piety (set of mores and rituals), its leading and subordinate doctrines, its hot, cold, and lukewarm parishioners, and a call to martyrdom under its own holy insignia: the hammer and sickle. There would be no afterlife, but the lower practitioners were told that to sacrifice all for the Party was Heaven; to offer hope of utopia to their progeny, Nirvana. Heaven however was something entirely different for the chief among the pious – it was tangible and exultant luxury here and now, special food stores and textile goods; wine, women, song, and the absolute power over the life and death of any man – even those working faithfully abroad for the cause d’effete. Even the Great Illegals and some among the “Magnificent Five” were not above suspicion of treachery and a firing squad. But this placed the Soviet leadership unquestionably in charge. Without Marx, how could they have done so well? 

 

Indeed, loyalty to a specific communist dogma was more important as proof of piety among subordinate people and states – and the KGB, than of any real meaning except perhaps to sycophantic followers either of the in some respects naïve Western sort, such as Kim Philby and similar recruits or such as those at the bottom of the fish tank – the kind of followers who never had a chance of amounting to anything except maybe within the confines of the most backwater of Third World puppet states (e.g. Ethiopia or possibly Nicaragua – though Ortega may have been more his own man than Mengistu Haile Mariam).

 

But the demands of the dogmatic hoop also had its drawbacks; namely the State’s inability to correctly assess information brought to its attention by its loyal foreign operatives. Wherever information seemed to contradict ideology – and more preeminently the hasty assumptions of the madman du jour – it was quickly discarded at threat to life and limb. It was ironically this twist of fate which most ably assisted the West in the counterintelligence arena, as something tantamount to kicking the ball into your own goal.

 

Ironic too that later on this genuflective feint to ideology would play a crucial role in the fall of the Eastern Bloc. In recursive refrain, Moscow began to realize it had underestimated from the time of Stalin forth just how many “divisions has the Pope” (Andrew & Mitrokhin, p. 509). It was vis-à-vis most prominently the Catholic Church that public fortitude was collected to arise against communist tyranny in spite of being infiltrated to a respectable degree by KGB and allied agencies. It was, one could say, due to the power of a competing idea which seemed to offer to fill the void of an ideology dead and believed at heart by no man of great intellect even within the Party. The fact was that devout religion offered far more than communism could ever offer, even promise or presently give to many who felt rightly that this hollow ideology was just an excuse for a new overfed and cruel government. Communism had proved in every Warsaw Pact state to be morally, spiritually, and in practice bankrupt.

 

Another part of why Soviet communism failed as a state ideology and the thing which motivated its actors – including intelligence operatives was, ironically, material – and that was apparent in every dialect. As there later remained no illusions about what communism really meant, double agents working for the Soviets became chiefly motivated by money, not utopianism, Russian agents wanted to drop charades and seek wealth and power too, and, after over a generation of grand promises, the Eastern Bloc public saw for themselves the real meaning of the Revolution: Party leaders in lavish limousines – or the Russian equivalent the Chaika (the “Seagull” was apparently believed even among Russians to be a knock-off of the American Packard) – and ordinary peasants forced to wait in line for hours to buy shoes or bread or rancid meat. In and around Kiev, Ukraine, locals were subjected to lethal radiation from Chernobyl for hours before being evacuated so their leaders could decide how to handle the embarrassment. Things weren’t that much better in the somewhat better-off East Germany either, where those faithful Party servants who qualified were placed on a several-year-long waiting list to buy one of those notably infamous (though today quite collectable) two-stroke Trabis. East German intelligence officers, as did the Polish, et al, resented the heavy-handed Soviet presence, knowing full-well that ideological brotherhood stopped at the border checkpoint: “What particularly disturbed the KGB, however, was the evidence that among many PUWP [Polish Communist Party] members, even some senior officials, the joy [of the selection Wojtyla’s election as Pope John Paul II] was genuine” (Andrew & Mitrokhin p. 510). This was borne in no small part out of the aforementioned resentment of the Kremlin's heavy hand, but was in addition no doubt attributable to Poland’s traditionally 90% Catholic populous, who like Ukrainians were deeply devout, which no doubt exacerbated the sense of disconnect with Moscow. But citizens and perhaps the leaders of the more secular East Germany also detested their occupation, making "Progress" operations undertaken directly by KGB more difficult (though easily carried on by the dutiful work of the Stasi). Though not to excuse the excesses of the Stasi, Christopher Andrew notes one East German official who bemoaned the forced cooperation, decrying later what he felt was "a gun” to his head. It's difficult however to say what the motives of such a complaint might be long after the fact. 

At the end of all of this, the role of ideology in the recruitment of Soviet – and later Russian spies though never truly and utterly paramount, continued to wane from the early days of the Chekists to the present day SVR. That Role in the Soviet State and its satellites was a vital role, but only in a strange at times superficial, at times sycophantic, at times purely cynical, but nevertheless dangerous way. Though for 70 years the pretence of ideology was to varying degrees of severity enforced, it finally seems to have given way to the stark Russian acceptance of realities for what they are. The KGB, now the SVR, may or may not be largely still communist, but the ideology of its members impedes its missions far less, most likely. In fact, the new visage of those in its employ as “Russian Mafiosi” enable the organization to gain far more traction in places around the world where greed is important but ideology isn’t or is even unattractive (Stephen Dorril, p. 773). Ideology is also less likely a key factor in recruitment across the board, though some politics most likely play a role still in advancement. And the West mustn't fool itself into thinking the Soviet Union and its policies of yore are in every form forever gone from our midst. In point of fact, recent history tells us a quite opposite reality may be unfolding in the form of Neo-Sovietism. All now may well bow with candor instead to the gods of power and control, now less modestly clad in communist piety than before, but clad they in most likelihood still are, nonetheless.

 

 

Posted by Martin at October 12, 2006 02:54 AM

Comments

Posted by: Angel at October 12, 2006 10:03 PM