Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

Andropov also expanded the KGB legal representation in Prague. In addition to the KGB liaison office, headed by M. G. Kotov, which had been operating in the headquarters of the StB (its Czechoslovak equivalent) for the past twenty years, Andropov secretly established an undeclared KGB residency, headed by V. V. Surzhaninov, which began work in the Soviet embassy on April 26. 39The deputy head of FCD Directorate S, G. F. Borzov, and another senior Line N officer, V. K. Umnov, were sent to the residency to co-ordinate the work of the illegals. 40The main task both of the residency’s Line PR and of the KGB liaison with the StB was to identify reliable, pro-Soviet members of the CPCz to form a quisling government after a Soviet invasion. At the top of their list the KGB put four hardline members of the CPCz Presidium—Alois Indra, Jozef Lenárt, Drahomir Kolder and Vasil Bil’ak—and a former minister of the interior, Rudolf Barák, who had been dismissed and imprisoned in 1962, officially for embezzlement of Party funds but in reality for using the StB to collect an incriminating dossier on Novotný. 41

KGB officers in Prague had little difficulty in arranging meetings with Indra, Lenárt, Kolder and Bil’ak, who were regular visitors to the Soviet embassy. It was considered too risky, however, to approach Barák directly after his release from prison early in May. Instead, the KGB residency used a female illegal, Galina Leonidovna Linitskaya (codenamed ALLA), operating with a Swiss passport in the name of Maria Werner, to make the first approach to Barák. For some years the vivacious ALLA had specialized in making contact with Western visitors to the Soviet Union who were of interest to the KGB. Her KGB file primly complains that she was “too sexually stimulated” and, despite having a daughter, “not a family person” (not a criticism which appears in the files of male illegals). ALLA had first met Barák in 1961, when he was minister of the interior, and succeeded in renewing contact with him soon after his release from prison. At ALLA’s request, Barák agreed to a meeting with B. S. Ivanov of the KGB residency. 42

Indra, Lenárt, Kolder and Bil’ak were all to prove stalwarts of the neo-Stalinist regime which later presided over the destruction of “Socialism with a human face.” Barák, however, proved far less useful than the Prague residency had hoped, partly because of resentment—even by some pro-Soviet members of the CPCz leadership—at his brutality as minister of the interior when he had been in charge of the StB. He was not fully rehabilitated until 1975, seven years after his release from prison. 43

THE KGB ILLEGALS deployed in Czechoslovakia had two main tasks: to penetrate the allegedly counter-revolutionary groups springing up during the Prague Spring in order to report on their subversive intentions; and to implement a series of active measures designed to discredit them. The main task of penetration was entrusted to YEFRAT, GURYEV, YEVDOKIMOV, GROMOV and SADKO. 44Their chief targets were what the Centre saw as the main sources of subversive ideas:

• the Union of Writers (in particular its chairman, Eduard Goldst Åcker, and vice-chairman, Jan Procházka, and the celebrated authors Pavel Kohout and Milan Kundera);

• radical journals which had escaped Communist control such as the Union of Writers’ Literární Listy and the Socialist Party’s Svobodne slovo, as well as the increasingly unorthodox Communist Party newspaper, Rudé právo;

• leading reformists in television and radio (in particular Jiří Pelikán, the director-general of Czechoslovak television);

• Charles University, especially its philosophy department, which took the lead in pressing for a new law protecting academic freedom, and leading student activists such as Lubomír Holeček and Jiří Måller;

• K-231, a club of former political prisoners who had been jailed under the notorious Article 231 of the Czechoslovak criminal code;

• KAN, the club of non-Party activists, formed in early April to give those who were not Party members the opportunity to participate in public life and share in the building of “a new political system—hitherto never realized in history—democratic socialism;”

• and the Socialist and People’s Parties, struggling to recover the independent existence they had lost after the Communist coup in 1948. 45

One of the defining moments of the Prague Spring, which epitomized the new climate of political freedom and the near-collapse of official censorship, was the May Day procession through the capital, seen on television throughout the country. Instead of the usual tedious display of sycophantic admiration for the Party leadership and platitudinous slogans celebrating friendship with the Soviet Union, there was a spontaneous celebration of popular support for the reform movement combined with irreverent messages for Moscow such as the banners proclaiming “With the Soviet Union for ever—but not a day longer!” and “Long live the USSR—but at its own expense!” Dubček remembered the day “with deep emotion,” “truly touched” by the support for him from the former political prisoners of K-231 and the non-Party activists of KAN. For Moscow, however, the day was an outrageous counter-revolutionary provocation which demonstrated that the Czechoslovak one-party state was in mortal danger. 46

The danger was all the greater because, in the Centre’s view, the StB was becoming increasingly unreliable. Probably Moscow’s leading bête noire in Oldřich Černík’s government, which took power in April, was the interior minister, Josef Pavel, who was responsible for the StB. Ironically, the KGB placed much of the blame for Pavel’s appointment on Lubomír Štrougal, who later turned against the reformists and played a prominent part in the return to pro-Soviet orthodoxy. According to a report in the KGB files, Štrougal came into Černík’s office soon after his appointment as prime minister and, fearing that the office was bugged, asked him to come for a stroll by the river Vltava, which runs through the center of Prague. During their walk Štrougal urged Černík to give Pavel the interior ministry. Because Pavel had spent some years in prison during the early 1950s, Štrougal argued that he could be relied upon to ensure that the police and the StB did not abuse their powers. Čerík allegedly agreed with his arguments. 47In late April, soon after becoming Interior Minister, Pavel announced that both the ministry and the StB were henceforth to be under government—not Party—control, and that a series of senior officials were to be sacked. Among them was the pro-Soviet head of the StB, Josef Houska, who was dismissed in June. Some weeks before he left, he handed the KGB photocopies of a series of StB personnel files. 48

On May 10 Aleksei Kosygin, the Soviet prime minister, sent Čerík, his Czech counterpart, an outraged letter complaining, among other things, that “agents and saboteurs” disguised as Western tourists had been able to penetrate Czechoslovakia because of poor border security. 49What Kosygin predictably failed to mention, however, was that the most active agents and all the saboteurs with Western passports were KGB illegals. On the very day he sent his letter, GROMOV (Vasili Antonovich Gordievsky) and GURYEV (Valentin Aleksandrovich Gutin), both posing as West Germans, were attempting to kidnap two of the most eloquent tribunes of the Prague Spring. 50GROMOV had recent experience in kidnapping. Only a month earlier he had been decorated for an assignment in Sweden, which involved exfiltrating another illegal, FAUST, who was considered by the Centre to have developed a persecution syndrome. Once back in the Soviet Union, FAUST had been sent to a psychiatric hospital for a year, then released and sacked from the KGB. 51