DOCUMENT No. 3

Report by the Chairman of the Committee for State Security of the Armenian Socialist Soviet Republic A. Yuzbashyan, 14 March 1979

[Source: Armenian National Archives. Translated by Svetlana Savranskaya.]

Top secret Copy No. 1

REPORT

(presented at the session of the Bureau of the CC CP of Armenia on 6 March 1979)

Under the influence of the most aggressive forces of imperialism, the foreign policy course of the United States government and its allies clearly exhibits a tendency toward returning to a policy "from the position of strength” and to the "cold war." The current leadership of the PRC [People's Republic of China], who unleashed undisguised aggression against socialist Vietnam in February of this year, has practically merged with the forces of imperialism in its anti-Soviet aspirations. Therefore there clearly exists an attempt by our enemies to create a united anti-Communist front.

In the implementation of the aggressive course against the countries of the socialist commonwealth, and mainly against the Soviet Union, an important role is given to the special services and the anti-Soviet foreign centers, the subversive activity of which has acquired a global character.

One would like to especially emphasize the fact that the enemy, without giving up its final strategic goals, has adjusted its tactics [and] focused on conducting ideological subversion which has as its goal "exploding" socialism from within. A powerful, multi-branch apparatus has been put in service for ideological subversion. And the imperialist countries long ago raised this line of subversive activity to the level of state policy.

By acting in skillful and diverse ways, and by actively using specific features of different regions of the USSR all the channels through which people travel in and out [of the Soviet Union], and the mass media, the enemy often achieves his dirty goals. Under the influence of hostile Western propaganda, negatively inclined individuals inside the country, including those in the Armenian SSR [Soviet Socialist Republic], still commit anti-state, and anti-Soviet crimes.

Notwithstanding the absence of a social base in the country for anti-Soviet activity there are certain marginalized individuals who choose the criminal way [of life]. This kind of person also exists in our republic.

Protecting Soviet society from the overtures of the reactionary imperialist forces is the main task of the organs of state security, which they successfully fulfill under the unwavering control and daily leadership of our Party.

All the people, the widest strata of our society, take part in fulfilling that noble task. And it is precisely in this connection that we should consider the CC CPSU Resolution of 23

May 1977, "About Raising the Vigilance of the Soviet People.”

Even taking into account the obvious exceptional character of this crime, it appears that the case of the “Bombers,” which was presented today to the Bureau of the CC CP of Armenia bears clear traces of all these processes and phenomena, so to speak, of the external and internal order, which were mentioned above.

Brief summary of the case:

During the evening of 8 January, in various public places in the city of Moscow, criminal elements carried out explosions of hand-made bombs, resulting in human casualties, destruction and damage to state property. The explosions occurred in the metro train, in grocery store No. 15, and next to the window of grocery store No. 5. As a result of the explosions, 7 people were killed, and 37 people were injured to varying degrees.

At the end of October 1977, criminals were preparing to detonate new explosives, this time at the Kursky Railway Terminal. However, the measures for ensuring safety in public places, undertaken jointly by the organs of the KGB and MVD, scared the criminals, and they fled hurriedly leaving behind a bag with the explosives.

As a result of the additional measures which were undertaken the operative group of the Armenian SSR KGB, working in coordination with the USSR KGB, succeeded in capturing the criminals at the beginning of November 1977. They turned out to be: S[tepan] S. Zatikyan, head of the group, born in 1946 in Yerevan, and resident of Yerevan, nonaffiliated, married, did not complete higher education; A. V. Stepanyan, born 1947 in Yerevan, resident of Yerevan, with a secondary education; Z. M. Bagdasaryan, born 1954 in the village of Kanachut in the Artashatsky region, and resident of Kanachut, with a secondary education.

From 16 to 24 January 1979, the Collegium for Criminal Offenses of the USSR Supreme Soviet held an open trial session to consider the criminal case charging S. S. Zatikyan and his two accomplices with anti-Soviet activities and committing a subversive act.

During the course of the trial the information received earlier by the KGB organs was fully confirmed with regard to the fact that Zatikyan, having served a four-year sentence for anti-Soviet activities, did not disarm ideologically, and, moreover, chose the road of extremist methods of struggle against the Soviet state. After being indoctrinated in a hostile spirit, he involved his accomplices in the preparation and implementation of the subversive acts.

In the course of the investigation and trial in this case, a large amount of material and other evidence was collected. Approximately 750 victims and witnesses were questioned, 140 expert tests were made, and over 100 searches were conducted; persuasive evidence was collected in the residences of the criminals, linking them to the explosions.

This gave [the investigation] the opportunity fully to reveal Zatikyan's and his accomplices' roles in the crimes. they prepared and committed, even during the preliminary investigation. In particular, Zatikyan stated during the pre

liminary investigation the following: "I did not testify against my own will, I told the truth that I built the explosive devices ... that my actions ... represent just one method of struggle against the regime that exists in the Soviet Union." Later,

One should also note that Zatikyan admired the Dashnaks [Armenian Revolutionary Federation, an ultra-nationalist movement whose territorial ambitions include the Karabakh region and those parts of "Greater Armenia" cur

ever, his accomplices gave extensive testimony about the circumstances of preparing and carrying out the new subversive acts. Zatikyan was fully implicated by his accomplices and other witnesses, by the conclusions of the experts, as the main ideological and practical organizer of the subversive acts and the main actor in building the explosive devices.

Taking into account the exceptional danger and the grave consequences of the crimes committed by him, the court sentenced Zatikyan and his accomplices to the ultimate measure of punishment—the death sentence. The verdict was received with approval by the numerous representatives of the Soviet public who were present in the courtroom, including representatives from our republic. By the way, one of the jurors and all three defense lawyers were also from our republic. The sentence was carried out.

Using the Zatikyan case as an example it would be instructive to trace how he came to his evil design and who and what helped him in that..

Brief background:

Over the last 12 years, the Armenian KGB has uncovered and liquidated more than 20 illegal anti-Soviet nationalist groups created under the influence of hostile Western propaganda. Altogether, about 1,400 people were engaged in anti-Soviet activities in some form or another.

In accordance with the Party's principles, the organs of state security have given and continue to give preference to preventive and prophylactic measures, and consider arrest an extreme measure only. Those arrested represented only 4.3% of the individuals who were proven to have engaged in anti-Soviet activities. Zatikyan was one of them—he was a member of one of the anti-Soviet nationalist groups, which pompously named itself NUP (National United Party). It was created by the unaffiliated artist Khachatryan Aikaz, born in 1918 (in 1978 he was sentenced to 1.5 years of prison for a common crime), who, upon learning about Zatikyan's role in the explosions in Moscow, called himself his "spiritual father."

In 1968, Zatikyan was arrested and sentenced, as was already mentioned, to four years in prison. At his arrest, they confiscated a document written by Zatikyan-"Terror and Terrorists"—in which he made an effort to justify the methods of extremism and means of struggle against the Soviet state.

During his stay at the correctional labor colony, and then in prison (where he was transferred because he systematically violated the regime, and negatively influenced other inmates, who chose the road of improvement), Zatikyan not only did not change his ways, but, on the contrary, nursed thoughts about even more extreme methods of hostile activity.

course of the investigation, and during his trial, he called the Dashnaks a "sacred party."

One of Zatikyan's accomplices-Stepanyan-participated in an anti-Soviet nationalist gathering. For that, in 1974, he was served an official warning in accordance with the Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet of 25 December 1972. However, that official warning did not bring Stepanyan to his senses, did not stop him from committing the crime.

The USSR KGB gave a positive assessment to the investigative and trial measures undertaken by the organs of state security of the USSR. The Armenian KGB also took an active part in that work.

However, all this took place after the first series of explosions had occurred in Moscow. And the second series of explosions had already been prepared. There should have been no explosions at all. In any case, after the explosions, the criminals should have been quickly discovered and arrested. However, that did not happen. We realize that we have obviously made some mistakes here. The republican KGB drew the following lessons from the "Bombers" case. One can name the following reasons [as those] that contributed to the emergence of the "Bombers:"

In addition to that, there is some concern about persons who are not involved in productive labor, as well as such aliens to our social regime [who practice] phenomena such as bribery, theft of socialist property, petty crime, and vicious systematic libel against honest Soviet people in the form of anonymous letters and statements.

All this not only darkens the general moral and political climate in the republic, but also represents potential fertile grounds for marginalized elements, who then slide toward anti-Soviet activities.

Foreign Armenian colonies represent a special concern for us. Let us dwell on just one question out of the whole system of issues related to this situation. The processes and developments occurring in the colonies, taking into account their various connections with the republic, influence the situation here. The enemy, primarily the United States, actively works with the foreign Armenian colonies—they use

all means to encourage persons of Armenian nationality to move and establish permanent residency in their country. Today already 600,000 Armenians reside in the United States.

An Armenian Bureau was created and is now functioning in the State Department, and Columbia University is planning to create an Armenian Cultural Center.

All these events unquestionably serve the same antiSoviet goals.

There are plans to increase the Armenian diaspora in the United States to one million people. This could have serious consequences for us. The best organized force in the foreign Armenian colonies is the anti-Soviet nationalist party Dashnaktsutyun. It is the most dangerous for us due to a number of circumstances (experience, knowledge of the situation, absence of language barrier, etc.).

That is why the CPSU CC resolution of 27 December 1978 about strengthening our work with the Armenians residing abroad has a great significance in trying to interfere with the efforts of the American administration to extend its influence on the foreign Armenian colony.

The KGB of the Armenian SSR reports its suggestions regarding the realization of the above-mentioned CPSU CC resolution to the Armenian CP CC separately.

Dashnak propaganda is being skillfully and inventively carried out, and it reaches its addressees more often than other kinds of propaganda. We have to give them creditthey choose topics for ideological attacks against us in a fine and clever manner.

Take for example slogans like "Great and united and independent Armenia." Or the way they threw in the so-called "land issues" (both internal and external). It is natural that the Dashnaks did not pass by Sero Khanzadyan's letter, did not miss the clearly non-scholarly polemics between Z. Buniatov and some of our scholars. They did not shy away from the case of Zatikyan and his accomplices either. In addition, every time the Dashnaks choose the most skillful and at the same time innocent forms for their propaganda (for example about the "purity" of the Armenian language, about creation of genuinely Armenian families, etc.), which represents nothing other than acts of ideological subversion.

Of course, the current situation, the growing might of the socialist forces, and, first of all, of our country, could not but affect the Dashnak strategy, but their essence, their strategic designs remained unchanged, and we should start from that assumption in our work. Naturally, we should also work against the Dashnaks—to try to limit, decrease their practical anti-Soviet activity.

It is necessary to point out that lately the enemy has been devoting more attention to the socio-political sphere in his intelligence endeavors. In our republic, they are interested in such issues as the attitude of the local people to the Russians, Azerbaijani, and other peoples of the Soviet Union, to the "land" problem (both internal and external), to Turkey, and to the United States. [They are interested in] how the genocide is taught in schools, what kind of nationalist outbursts happen in the republic, and how the nationalities issue is being resolved, and how the authorities treat the so

called dissidents, etc.

It is not hard to notice where the enemy is aiming this is not just an expression of idle interest! The enemy is trying to weaken, and if possible to undermine, the friendship of the peoples of the Soviet Union-the basis of our power.

In our republic, to some extent, the acts of ideological subversion, which are conducted now within the framework of the campaign for the so-called "defense of human rights" have made their impact. There emerged the so-called "Group of Assistance for the Helsinki Accords" (the group was dissolved, its leader-Nazaryan was sentenced to 5 years in prison at the end of 1978). There also emerged an all-Union "leader" of the so-called "Free Labor Unions❞—some Oganesyan [in our republic]. As a result of the prophylactic work, he renounced his unbecoming activity.

The actions named above did not bring success to the enemy. They are not that dangerous for our republic. The Dashnak propaganda, and everything that originates in the Armenian foreign colonies is a different issue. The Dashnaks exploit the nationalist feelings of the people, speculate on them. The Armenian KGB constantly takes that fact into account in its work.

Information in the Soviet press and on the radio about the trial and the sentence in the case of the "terrorists" caused sharp indignation against the criminal actions taken by Zatikyan and his accomplices in the entire Soviet Union, in all the strata of population of the republic. The people throughout the republic condemned those actions and approved the sentence of the USSR Supreme Soviet, emphasizing that those criminals have nothing in common with the Armenian people, which owes all its accomplishments, and its very existence in the Soviet state, to the great Russian people.

At the same time, we should not close our eyes to the fact that there are some hostile individuals with anti-Soviet and anti-Russian sentiments, who are nursing thoughts about separating Soviet Armenia from the USSR, express extremist sentiments (read excerpts).

For example, an unidentified person called the USSR KGB in Moscow after Zatikyan and his accomplices' sentence was carried out, and expressed a threat to "avenge" the sentenced.

The KGB of Armenia sees this main task as follows: to prevent and to interdict in a timely manner all extremist and other adversarial expressions on the part of the negative elements.

In this, we are starting from the assumption that in the current conditions, only politically well-prepared Communist members of the security organs can carry out the demanding tasks of ensuring state security, of protecting Soviet society from the subversive actions of the enemy's special services, from the foreign anti-Soviet centers, and from some hostile individuals inside the country. We believe that no Communist can have any kind of neutral, or passive position in issues of ideology.

The issues of ideological and political preparation and internationalist education of the personnel have been and will remain at the center of attention of the Collegium, the Party Committee of the KGB of the republic, and the party

By Max Holland

n 20 June 1999, Russian president Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly handed US President Bill Clinton more than 80 pages of "declassified" Soviet-era documents pertaining to the shocking murder of President John F. Kennedy. In doing so, Yeltsin added yet another chapter to the already convoluted saga of Moscow's archival response to the November 1963 assassination.

There have been 10 authorized and significant disclosures in the nearly four decades since 22 November by the Soviet Union and its successor states.2 Primary information has become available via three routes: the transfer of actual documents; the release of summaries based on authorized access to documents; and the publication of books based on privileged or unusual (to say the least) access to key archival files.

This piecemeal release of documentation began within days of the assassination, in recognition of the gravity of questions about Lee Harvey Oswald's sojourn in the Soviet Union from October 1959 to May 1962.

• On 25 November 1963, Anastas Mikoyan, deputy chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers, presented an expurgated version to the US State Department of the KGB's 23 November summary report about Oswald, hurriedly compiled for the CPSU Central Committee after Oswald's arrest.3

• On 30 November 1963, Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to Washington, gave Secretary of State Dean Rusk photocopies from the embassy's consular file on the Oswalds. The documents included a letter from Oswald dated as recently as 9 November.4

• In May 1964, after a request from the presidential Commission on the assassination, chaired by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, transmitted via the State Department, the Soviet government provided additional routine documents (such as Oswald's application for an exit visa) generated during the American's 22-year stay in Moscow and Minsk, Belarus (then Belorussia).5

This May 1964 release would be the last disclosure for nearly 30 years, although US interest in Soviet records never flagged during the remaining decades of the Cold War. Most notably, in the late 1970s the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) conducted another investigation into President Kennedy's death and reopened the issue formally. Meetings were held between HSCA representatives and officials at the Soviet embassy in Washington. At one such encounter, a senior Soviet official explained that the request presented Moscow with "serious problems." If Soviet agencies answered some questions, "they might find themselves having to answer other questions and, in the final analysis, no one would be satisfied with their responses anyway."

Ultimately, the Soviet response to HSCA was that "all relevant documents concerning Oswald had already been transmitted" to the Warren Commission and that "no further documents could be made available."

The end of the Cold War opened new opportunities and so the pace of releases picked up again, although disclosure to deepen historical understanding was seldom the guiding principle. The release of Soviet-era, assassination-related documents remained highly erratic and often influenced by other considerations."

• In November 1991, ABC News "Nightline" broadcast a program devoted to summarizing information contained in Oswald's 6-volume, 4-foot thick KGB case file, then on deposit in the central KGB archives in Moscow.8 • In August 1992, Izvestiya, a Moscow newspaper, published a 5-part series based upon Oswald's KGB case file, No. 31451. The file itself was now in the possession of the Belarusian KGB (BKGB) after having become the object of a tug-of-war between Russia and Belarus. The latter claimed ownership on the grounds that the bulk of the dossier had been compiled by BKGB counterintelligence agents."

10

In 1993, Oleg Nechiporenko, a retired KGB colonel, published a memoir in which he recounted, among other things, Oswald's September 1963 visit to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, where Nechiporenko was posted at the time." Nechiporenko's account was partially based on access to archival documents from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, CPSU Central Committee, KGB BKGB, and the author reproduced parts of several documents verbatim in his text.

In 1994, Yeltsin's journal for the tumultuous period August 1991 to October 1993 was published in the West as Boris Yeltsin: The Struggle for Russia." Without much explication Yeltsin's gratuitously included (in an appendix) portions of four KGB memos to the Central Committee CPSU from 1963, all of which pertained to the assassination.

In 1995, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs turned over five KGB memoranda (a total of 17 pages) in response to a query from the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), the first official US entity to reopen the matter since the end of the Cold War.' 13 This very limited response did not even include the four KGB documents Yeltsin cited in his 1994 memoir.

• Also in 1995, Norman Mailer published a book most notable for its narrative about Oswald's years in Minsk. This portion of Mailer's book was based upon privileged access to Oswald's case file and BKGB officers who had been directly involved. Mailer quoted actual