meeting of the Collegium of the Committee of State Security of the Council of Ministers of the USSR.

THE CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE OF STATE SECURITY

ANDROPOV

[Source: TsKhSD f. 89, op. 5, d. 3, ll. 1-14. Translated by Vladislav Zubok who thanks Ray Garthoff for his kind assistance.]

Andropov's Report to Brezhnev on the KGB in 1967

by Raymond L. Garthoff

Although, with a few exceptions, the archives of the KGB remain closed, a number of KGB reports in the files of the Communist Party are now available. Among the most revealing are several annual reports sent by the head of the KGB to the paramount Soviet leader, the Secretary of the Central Committee of the USSR Communist Party. The report covering the year 1960, although the text is not available, has been read and reported on in the Bulletin. (See the discussion of that report, together with other contemporary KGB reports, in Vladimir Zubok, "Spy vs. Spy: The KGB vs. the CIA, 1960-62," CWIHP Bulletin 4 (Fall 1994), pp. 22-33.) The annual KGB reports covering 1985, 1986, 1988 and 1989 are now also available and have been summarized and analyzed elsewhere. (See Raymond L. Garthoff, "The KGB Reports to Gorbachev," Intelligence and National Security 11:2 (April 1996), pp. 224-244.)

The report on the work of the KGB in 1967 is the only other such report now available. It is presented below in full translation. It was submitted by Iurii Andropov, his first annual report since becoming chairman of the KGB, to General Secretary Leonid I. Brezhnev, on 8 May 1968. Brezhnev, in turn, had the report circulated to members of the Politburo. (Gorbachev, incidentally, did not circulate the reports he received twenty years later.) The reports on 1967 (and 1960) were more detailed than the later reports on 1985-89. In all cases, the sensitivity of the information is reflected not only in the highest classification and single-copy distribution, but also in the fact that virtually all of the specific details on numbers of recruitments, agents, hostile penetrations, and the like had been left blank in the typed version of the report and subsequently filled in by hand, so that even the KGB typist would not see them.

I will not summarize the contents since the full text is provided, but it may be useful to note some of the key

disclosures and their implications. Perhaps first of all, although not surprising, is the explicit reaffirmation at the outset that the KGB was working on the basis of Communist Party guidance and direction. In addition to routine references to the most recent Party Congress and Central Committee plenum, for 1967 this included the creation in accordance with a Central Committee decree of 17 June 1967, of a new special directorate with local branches to counter more actively "ideological diversions of the enemy," in practice, to suppress dissidence. This infamous Fifth Directorate carried on the struggle against ideological and political nonconformity until it was abolished under Gorbachev in 1989.

A substantial portion of the report deals with the concerns and activities of the KGB with respect to the situation inside the country. This no doubt reflected the concern of the political leadership as well, and of course is a reminder that the major part of the KGB was devoted to ensuring internal security. One reference in the report indirectly indicates that the total number of KGB "agents" within the USSR in 1967 was 167,000 people. The total number of KGB staff officers, in foreign intelligence and counterintelligence as well as internal security, was evidently about 57,000—judging by a reference that the KGB was then 4,000 officers short, representing seven percent of the total authorized complement.

Incidentally, this report (and the others we have seen) pays a great deal of attention to statistics, rather than to qualitative assessments. Perhaps that is understandable in an annual accountability report (as indeed they were called in the 1980s). But it also reveals something of the Soviet mindset. For example, learning that the KGB had sent nearly 5,000 "informational reports" to the Central Committee (and similar numbers of reports to departments of the Central Committee, to the Foreign Ministry, to the Defense Ministry, and to the General Staff) is less interesting and important than knowing what they had learned. (Having seen a number of these KGB "informational reports," I can attest that they varied greatly in quality, competence, and value-and many look as though they were designed to meet and beat quantitative quotas.)

There are several interesting sidelights on foreign policy. The West, and in particular the United States, was of course "the main enemy." (Incidentally, Western analysts frequently state that the United States was identified as "the main enemy"; sometimes it was, but the term was also applied to the West as a whole, as in this report which refers specifically to "the USA and other countries of the main enemy.") Western efforts at subversion were taken for granted and the KGB report indicates that enough real or apparent cases were found to warrant that assumption, although it was clearly much exaggerated in scope and as an element in Western policy.

One foreign policy matter of particular concern to the KGB was the hostile activity of the People's Republic of China, the "anti-Soviet splitting activity" of which clearly referred to the then ongoing struggle within the fractured

world communist movement. The KGB also reported that in 1967 it had almost tripled its borderguard posts on the Chinese frontier. While several references were made to routine cooperation and exchanges of information with Warsaw Pact allies, it was noted that KGB cooperation with the security services of Romania was extremely limited.

The statistics on KGB interception and decoding of foreign communications is quite interesting. Although in this report the countries whose systems were compromised are not identified, the statement that the KGB was reading communications in 152 ciphers of 72 capitalist countries, and in 1967 had decoded in all 188,400 telegrams, shows the wide scale of this activity. So, too, do the reports of microphone plants at 36 installations and the stealing of 7 Western codes (as well as, apparently, "breaking" four others).

During the year, the KGB recruited in all 218 foreigners, of whom 64 were believed to have potential for operational work against the United States. In addition, in targeting possible penetration of Western intelligence services they had recruited 47 foreigners, including 8 diplomats. In attempting to neutralize and control enemy and emigre penetration of the USSR, KGB counterintelligence was conducting nine "operational games," as they called them, involving infiltration of such channels, intended for subversive or intelligence penetration of the Soviet Union. (The report says that of these 9 operational games, 4 involved U.S. intelligence, 8 the Russian emigre organization NTS, and 2 Ukrainian nationalist emigres. Although there could have been an overlap, as U.S. intelligence did have ties to the NTS, more likely the person writing in the numbers by hand made a mistake and wrote "8" instead of "3" for the NTS; if that was the case, the numbers total nine.)

The KGB also reported on the successes of its counterintelligence in unmasking Soviet traitors who were found to have passed secret information to the enemy, naming three cases and referring to others in various categories (34 tried for "treason and attempted treason," three attempting to sneak out of the country, and one for espionage). Nonetheless, despite all its statistics on successes, in an admission of shortcomings toward the conclusion of the report, it was said that despite "possessing data on the presence of an enemy agent network (agentura) inside the USSR" KGB counterintelligence had "failed to achieve during the period under review any substantial results in unmasking these agents." Moreover, "the struggle with the enemy's ideological subversion is still not sufficiently capable and effective," in part because of "weak development of agent networks of the KGB organs in those layers of the population which might provide a good breeding ground for acts of ideological subversion." And this notwithstanding 167,000 KGB agents!

Similarly, in its foreign intelligence work the KGB had "not yet established the necessary agent access in

government, military, intelligence and ideological centers of the enemy," and as a result could not "obtain information on the enemy's plans and designs" or influence the development of events in crisis situations to the advantage of the Soviet Union or to exploit contradictions in the enemy camp.

The report, then, while reviewing in some statistical detail the accomplishments of the KGB in its foreign intelligence, counterintelligence and internal security functions, still had to acknowledge considerable shortcomings. We do not have subsequent annual reports by Andropov over his long incumbency as chairman of the KGB for comparison, but it seems likely that they too would have described the large-scale efforts, and cited extensive accomplishments, but would still have had to acknowledge incomplete success.

The report on the work of the KGB in 1967 in any case provides a window not only into the Soviet security and intelligence services, but more broadly into the Soviet political world of that day. The flavor and general impression that the report provides can, of course, best be appreciated by reading the full text.

Raymond Garthoff is a retired senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of many books on the Cold War.

Annual Report of the KGB to Leonid Brezhnev on its Operations for 1967

by Amy Knight

This document, submitted to Brezhnev in May 1968 by KGB Chairman Iurii Andropov, is one of five annual KGB reports now available from the former Central Committee archives, the others being reports for the years 1985, 1986, 1988 and 1989. As Raymond Garthoff pointed out in his analysis of the four reports for the 1980s, these materials provide unique insights into the activities of the KGB at home and abroad, as well as new perspectives on its relationship to the party leadership."

1967 was a key year for the KGB, in large part because of the appointment of Andropov to the chairmanship in May. Widely considered to be a "party man” because of his years of service in the Central Committee Secretariat overseeing relations with socialist states, Andropov was made a candidate member of the Politburo in June 1967. His expertise in foreign affairs (he had served as ambassador to Hungary in the 1950s before moving to the Central Committee) and the fact that he was not linked to any faction or coalition within the party leadership conferred a new legitimacy and professionalism upon the KGB.

This did not mean, however, that Andropov would attempt to reform the KGB in a liberal direction. By 1967 Brezhnev had consolidated much of his power as party leader and was able to implement his program of reStalinization without obstacles. A harsh crackdown on dissent and curbs on cultural freedom at home were accompanied by an increasingly aggressive and antiWestern foreign policy, all of which were implemented effectively by Andropov in 1967.

The report reveals that, just a month after Andropov became KGB chairman, a new directorate, the Fifth Directorate, was created within the KGB, with divisions and departments in the KGB's local branches. This Directorate, charged with struggling against "ideological subversion," carried out a ruthless campaign of repression against political, ethnic and religious dissent for the next twenty years. The statistics presented in this document confirm that the KGB was devoting significant resources to suppressing any manifestations of discontent within the Soviet system. In 1967 the KGB not only arrested and charged 96 citizens with anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, it also searched 2,293 persons and shadowed 6,747. In addition, over 12,000 individuals were subjected to socalled prophylactic treatment, which means the KGB called them in for a "chat" and threatened them with severe sanctions if they manifested any anti-Soviet tendencies.

Because the Soviet regime considered internal security problems to be inspired by foreign subversion, a crackdown domestically usually went hand in hand with increased suspicion of and hostility toward the West. The document claims that in 1967 the KGB identified over 270 foreigners in Russia with links to western intelligence services and uncovered 22 double agents. The KGB also carried out an active program of foreign intelligencegathering, strengthening its agent network in the United States and other enemy countries by recruiting 218 foreigners, 64 of whom possessed “operational capacities for work against the USA." The KGB also obtained the codes of seven capitalist countries and had intercepted coded messages from 2,002 radio transmitters from 115 countries. On the basis of its intelligence-gathering abroad, the KGB sent over 4,000 informational reports to the party's Central Committee and several thousand reports to various ministries.

In addition to providing the party leadership with information about the KGB's accomplishments, the 1967 report also contains the requisite "self-criticism." There were, it seems, three arrests without sufficient justification, and several Soviet citizens did not return from abroad, which was considered treason. The biggest problem, according to the report, was in recruitment. The KGB's officer corps fell significantly short of the required numbers, and greater attention was required, it seems, to attract and train qualified personnel.

The 1967 annual report offers concrete evidence, often in terms of numbers, that the KGB was engaged in a

massive program of intelligence collection and "active measures" abroad, along with a rigorous campaign against internal dissent. As the report suggests, the party leadership, which had the ultimate authority over the KGB, was the inspiration for these policies.

Amy Knight is Senior Research Analyst at the Library of Congress and Professorial Lecturer in Russian History and Politics at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Washington, DC. She is the author of The KGB: Police and Politics in the Soviet Union and Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant (Princeton).

1 See Raymond L. Garthoff, "The KGB Reports to Gorbachev," Intelligence and National Security 11:2 (April 1996), pp. 224-244.

Memorandum from the KGB Regarding the Planning of a Demonstration in Memory of John Lennon

20 December 1980. Confidential. To the Central Committee.

The KGB has learned that in many of Moscow's establishments of higher education ([Moscow State] University, Institute of History and Archives, Radiotechnical Institute...) anonymous posters have appeared calling for all interested persons to take part on 21 December at 11:00, on the esplanade of the university, in a demonstration organized in memory of the English singer, John Lennon, composer and founder of the "Beatles." The tragic disappearance [murder] of the singer was announced in a number of major newspapers (Komsomolskaia Pravda, Sovetskaia Rossiia. Moskovskii Komsomolets), as well as on major television broadcasts.

The KGB has taken the necessary measures to identify the instigators of this gathering and is in control of the situation. The management of the cited establishments is cooperating in the prevention of all participation by their students in this unauthorized meeting Communicated for informational purposes only. Iu. V. Andropov

KGB Chairman

[Source: TsKhSD, f.5, op.77, d.994, 1.164 obtained by Gael Moullec and translated by Christa Sheehan Matthew.]

A NKVD/NKGB Report to Stalin: A Glimpse into Soviet Intelligence in the United States in the 1940s

by Vladimir Pozniakov

The Soviet intelligence community, comprising the NKVD/NKGB First Chief Directorate (FCD), the Fourth Department of the Red Army General Staff (later called the GRU), the Communist International's Division of International Communications (DIC), and the Intelligence Department of the People's Commissariat of the Navy, had built a number of formidable networks abroad by the outset of World War Two. Working separately and coordinated by I.V. Stalin himself, they were severely decimated during the Great Terror2 but still managed to supply the Soviet political leadership with all kinds of information to counter the Axis.3 The majority of these networks, aside from notable exceptions such as the Sorge ring in Tokyo, Rote Kapelle centered on Germany4 and the Sandor Rado group in Switzerland,5 survived the war. A November 1944 joint report sent to Stalin by L.P. Beria and V.N. Merkulov gives a clear indication of the scale of NKVD/NKGB activities abroad, particularly in the United States.

Moscow

The State Defense Committee

To: Comrade Stalin I.V.

During the period of the Patriotic War employees of the 1st (intelligence) directorate, NKVD/NKGB undertook substantial work in organizing intelligence networks abroad and in obtaining political, economic, technical and military information.

During this period 566 officers have been sent abroad for illegal work, 1,240 agents and informers have been recruited, 41,718 various items including many documents have been obtained by intelligence. Out of 1,167 documents obtained by technical intelligence, 616 have been used by our country's industries!

Attaching herewith a draft for a USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium decree, we request that the most distinguished employees of the 1st (intelligence) directorate, NKVD/NKGB, USSR, mostly those who have served and do serve abroad, be decorated with orders of the Soviet Union.

Appendix: according to attached text.

called "award list"-is still classified and can not be reproduced here. It contains names of officers who in the opinion of Beria and Merkulov deserved medals for "successful realization of tasks safeguarding state security during the period of the Patriotic War" in ways that might interest an international audience. 6 The list reflects the growing importance of Soviet intelligence activities in the United States from the pre-war to wartime to the post-war period.7

Before the war, the United States was at the periphery of Soviet intelligence's main interests, especially regarding military intelligence. In late May 1934, in setting the tasks for Soviet military intelligence (then called the Fourth Directorate of the Red Army), the Politburo made a decision to focus intelligence activities primarily on Europe and the Far East. The decision of the Politburo read: "The center of gravity of military intelligence's work is to be transferred to Poland, Germany, Finland, Romania, England, Japan, Manchuria and China. Any studies of other states' armed forces are to be undertaken by legal means by official military representatives [military attaches], visitors and trainees, examiners of military equipment, etc."8 Thus, the principal efforts of the NKVD/NKGB New York and Washington rezidenturas [intelligence mission] as well as those of the GRU and DIC were focused on the collection of economic, scientific and industrial information.9 At least four out of the eight officers mentioned in the appendix were occupied with such matters, with heavy emphasis on information related to radio and electronic equipment, weapons, military aircraft construction, shipbuilding, chemical technology, 10

etc.

World War Two brought a dramatic rise in the United States' standing in Soviet political, and especially military, priorities, including a number of important mission 11 changes for Soviet intelligence in America. According to A. Feklisov's memoirs, these tasks were stated by Stalin to Vasilii Zarubin as follows: “...to watch Churchill and Roosevelt and to learn whether they are going to reach a separate peace agreement with Hitler and then go to war against the Soviet Union together; to obtain Hitler's plans of war against the USSR which the Allies might possess; to learn any secret goals and plans of the Allies related to the war; to find out when exactly the Allies are going to open the second front in Europe; to obtain information on the newest secret military equipment designed and produced in the USA, England and Canada." According to the instruction received by the FCD rezident in the United States, Stalin had also requested any information related to the "Allies' secret plans on postwar global settlement."12

The broader spectrum of tasks facing Soviet intelligence in the US required additional personnel, both Soviet and local. The pre-war staff of the NKGB and GRU rezidenturas was rather modest. For example, in the New York consulate and in Amtorg there were only 13 intelligence officers, most of them well known to the FBI.13 Also, because the USSR and the US had become wartime

allies, both branches of Soviet intelligence had to limit their usage of the clandestine structures of the American Communist Party (CPUSA).14 The usage of local Communists was also limited by two other reasons: many of them were well known to the FBI, while many others were drafted after Pearl Harbor by the US Army and Navy 15 or interned, as had happened to a number of CPUSA members of Japanese extraction on the West Coast. 16

The lack of trained personnel in 1941 and early 1942 was soon supplemented by the growing flow of Soviet military and civilian specialists coming to the United States to work in the Soviet Purchasing Commission (SPC) and other agencies that mushroomed after the USSR became a part of the Lend-Lease program. According to Feklisov, by 1944 the staff of Amtorg and the SPC in New York City alone reached some 2,500, with an equal number of officials, engineers and other specialists serving at the SPC branch in Washington, DC.17 The majority of these people worked directly or indirectly either for the GRU or NKVD.18 Also, the limitations imposed on the usage of the CPUSA membership did not mean that Soviet intelligence ceased recruiting both Americans and nonAmericans in America. 19 And though the actual number of agents and informers recruited by Soviet intelligence officers in the United States will probably never be known, according to British estimates, out of 1,200 cryptonyms that "littered the traffic" of the New York/Moscow and Washington/Moscow channels of the FCD and GRU communications, "more than 800 were assessed as recruited Soviet agents."20

The first name mentioned in the appendix was that of Lieutenant Colonel Iskhak A. Akhmerov, the NKGB illegal rezident [chief of intelligence mission] in the United States during the prewar period. In 1940 he returned to Moscow for a short tenure in the American division of the 5th Department of the NKGB (the FCD since 1941) only to be sent back in 1942 to Washington, DC as the head of an illegal sub-rezidentura.21 A Volga Tartar by origin, he spoke English better than Russian and was married to an American who worked along with him in the United States both before and during the war. Throughout his second stay in the US, he ran a number of agents supplying Soviet intelligence with a large amount of extremely valuable political, military and scientifictechnical information.22

The next high ranking officer recommended for decoration with the Red Banner Medal, number five on the list, was NKGB Commissar III (roughly equal to the army rank of Major General) Gaik B. Ovakimyan,23 a veteran of Soviet intelligence in America, operating there since 1932. Working under the cover of an Amtorg official and nick-named by the Federal Bureau of Investigation "the wily Armenian," he controlled in 1933-1941 a vast network of agents scattered not only throughout the United States, but also as far afield as Mexico and Canada. His name first cropped up in the 1930s in conjunction with an

extensive industrial espionage operation tied to a certain Armand Feldman.24 He also laid the foundation for a network later used by Moscow "Center" to penetrate the American nuclear program by recruiting a number of its important agents, including Harry Gold, who was approached in 1935 through Thomas L. Black and in the late 1940s became a key member of the Klaus Fuchs-David Greenglass spy ring.25 Ovakimyan was caught redhanded by the FBI in April 1941 while contacting one of his agents who, according to the memoirs of another FCD 26 officer, Aleksandr S. Feklisov, was a plant.4 In July, Ovakimyan was exchanged for a number of Americans detained in Russia.27 He was replaced in the New York City rezidentura temporarily by his deputy Pavel P. Pastel'nyak and then by Vasilii Zarubin who headed both the NYC and Washington, DC branches of the NKGB American networks until late 1944.28

Several other names mentioned in the appendix should also be familiar: NKGB Major Stepan Z. Apresyan, who in 1944 replaced Vasilii Zarubin as the Soviet rezident in Washington, and Major Leonid R. Kvasnikov, deputy rezident in NYC and the chief of scientific and technical intelligence in the United States. Captain Semion M. Semenov is there, the other "Amtorg official" who played an important part in sci/tech intelligence and later, in 19441947, played a crucial role in Soviet atomic espionage in the United States. Lieut. Col. Grigory G. Dolbin is also listed, since 1946 the NKGB (MGB) rezident in Washington, DC. Among the younger generation of FCD officers mentioned in the appendix were Captain Alexander S. Feklisov of the NYC network, who in 1947-1949 ran Klaus Fuchs in Britain and in 1960-1964 became the KGB rezident in Washington, DC, and Senior (First) Lieut. Constantin A. Chugunov, also in the NYC FCD group.

29

Among those Americans who (in the NKGB parlance) helped Soviet spymasters were the names of several Red Star medal nominees. These included: 1) Elizabeth T. Bentley, a liaison agent assigned by her Soviet controller (along with Joseph Katz) to collect information from some of the Washington rings, 2) Harry Gold, a courier for Klaus Fuchs, and 3) George Silvermaster (an apparent NKGB typist misprint [Ed note: Or tongue-in-cheek alias]), a top official of the Department of the Treasury and one of the most successful and productive Soviet agents. By Pearl Harbor he had gathered together “a group of ten government officials working in Washington" in various 30 branches of the Roosevelt administration.3

The results appear to be impressive. Tons of "diplomatic" mail was being sent home monthly by the Soviet embassy in the US.31 Hundreds of NKGB informants provided a wide range of information, with scientifictechnical secrets in the forefront. With the release of further intelligence documents, the structure and importance of Soviet espionage efforts in the US will become clearer. For now, the available documentation can only sketch some outlines and whet the appetite.