Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

One of the rare cases in which the assistance given by Western Communists in fabricating the legend of a Soviet illegal became public was that of Reino Hayhanen (codenamed VIK), who was helped to adopt the identity of the Finn Eugene Maki by the Finnish Communist Olavi Åhman (codenamed VIRTANEN). When Hayhanen defected to the FBI in 1957, Åhman and his wife were secretly taken into hiding in the Soviet Union. For almost twenty years Åhman pleaded to go back to Finland, but the Finnish Communist Party insisted that he stay in Russia for fear that his return would expose it to “anti-Communist propaganda.” In 1975 the Party leader, Ville Pessi (codenamed BARANOV), finally relented. Åhman was allowed back home and awarded a KGB pension of 200 roubles a month. 32

A number of Western Communist parties were also asked to provide various kinds of assistance to KGB illegals. In 1957 a group of undeclared members of the French Communist Party, recommended by the PCF leadership, began training as radio operators for illegal residencies. Initially the new recruits found difficulty in transcribing the coded number groups broadcast in test transmissions from the Centre. By the end of the year, however, some had successfully completed their training course. 33

The files seen by Mitrokhin give no sense that the Centre’s demands on the fraternal assistance of Western Communist parties declined in the course of the Cold War. On the contrary, the KGB’s solicitations of its “friends” appear to have been greater during the 1970s than in the previous decade. The increased deployment of experienced illegals in eastern Europe after the Prague Spring and the difficulty experienced by the FCD in finding enough suitably qualified and well-motivated Soviet replacements led it to seek renewed inspiration from the era of the Great Illegals, some of the greatest of whom—the Austrian Arnold Deutsch and the German Richard Sorge chief among them—had been Communists from other European countries. Deutsch’s career, however, still remained top secret, not least because two of his most important recruits, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross, were still at liberty in the West. Sorge, by contrast, was the best-publicized member of the Soviet intelligence pantheon. he had been posthumously declared Hero of the Soviet Union in 1964 and further honored by the first postage stamps ever issued to commemorate a spy. Sorge’s reputation as a romantic heart-throb added to his popular appeal. His was the example chosen by the Centre to inspire a new generation of non-Soviet KGB illegals. 34

The recruitment campaign began on the eve of the Twenty-fourth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU) in April 1971. The FCD took advantage of the presence in Moscow of a large number of leaders of fraternal parties in the West to ask some of them to search out a new generation of Sorges. The files noted by Mitrokhin record meetings between senior FCD officers and six different Western Communist leaders to discuss the recruitment of illegals. There may well have been many more such approaches.

Shortly before the Party congress opened, the former resident in Copenhagen, Leonid Sergeyevich Zaitsev, met Knud Jespersen, the chairman of the Danish Communist Party, at the Sovetskaya Hotel, and asked him to find “two or three” totally reliable, dedicated Communists, loyal to the Soviet Union, who could be trained to become “Danish Richard Sorges.” They should be male, between twenty and forty years of age, and preferably undeclared rather than open Party members. If married, their wives would have to meet the same conditions. Potential Danish Sorges would also need to be well educated and in a suitable occupation—such as journalist, businessman or foreign language student. According to Zaitsev, Jespersen responded enthusiastically, saying that he fully understood both the importance and the secrecy of the request, and already had one candidate in mind, whose details he would send to the current resident in Copenhagen, Anatoli Aleksandrovich Danilov. 35

Meanwhile at the Ukraina Hotel, I. P. Kisliak, a former operations officer at the Athens residency, was asking Kostas Koliannis, first secretary of the Greek Communist Party, to find “one or two” Greek Richard Sorges. Like Zaitsev, Kisliak emphasized that candidates must be “totally reliable ideologically,” but added that they also needed “charm.” 36At a subsequent meeting with Ezekias Papaioannou, general secretary of AKEL (the Cyprus Communist Party), Kisliak was slightly less demanding. Though Cypriot candidates would require high moral, political and professional qualities, they need not necessarily be “the equals of Richard Sorge.” 37

While Zaitsev and Kisliak were approaching the heads of the Danish, Greek and Cypriot Parties, Anatoli Ivanovich Lazarev, head of the FCD Illegals Directorate, was engaged in talks with Gaston Plissonnier, the second-in-command of the French Communist Party. Plissonier agreed to select two or three undeclared members of the PCF with the potential to become French Sorges and later suggested two possible candidates. He was also asked to supply the KGB with the names of poorly paid (and, by implication, corruptible) staff in the French foreign ministry whose work included photocopying classified documents. 38

One of the FCD’s approaches to a leading member of a fraternal delegation to the Twenty-fourth Party Congress took place in hospital. Geinrich Fritz of the Austrian Communist Party (KPô) Central Committee suffered an acute attack of sciatica shortly before the congress opened and was taken for treatment to the CPSU Central Committee Polyclinic at Kuntsevo. While undergoing treatment in Ward 103, he was visited by Ivan Alekseyevich Yerofeyev, deputy head of the Fourth (German and Austrian) Department, who raised the question of finding “one or two” Austrian Sorges. Fritz said that the KPô chairman, Franz Muhri, refused to become involved in intelligence matters because of his precarious position within the Party. However, Fritz agreed to find suitable candidates himself and to keep N. V. Kirilenko, head of Line PR at the Vienna residency, informed of his progress. 39

The most cautious of the Party leaders whose responses to the 1971 illegal recruiting drive were noted by Mitrokhin was the general secretary of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC), William Kashtan. Though a rigidly orthodox pro-Soviet loyalist, Kashtan “made much of the practical difficulties.” The CPC had to be particularly careful to avoid any suspicion of involvement with the KGB, he explained, because of memories of the Gouzenko affair in 1945, when the Party’s only MP, Fred Rose, and its national organizer, Sam Carr, had both been exposed as Soviet agents. Kashtan was assured that he was expected only to select reliable candidates, provide character references and suggest ways of making contact with them. The KGB would do the rest and ensure that, even in the event of “complications,” he would not become involved. Kashtan is said to have replied that this arrangement “suited him completely.” 40

During the Twenty-fourth Party Congress senior FCD officers also held discussions with at least eight leaders of Latin American Communist parties. The aim was not as yet to solicit a new generation of Latin American Sorges, but rather to identify potential agents in registry offices who could supply the documents required to support illegals’ legends. 41Within a year or so, however, the Centre was actively seeking Latin illegals to operate in North America. 42In 1975 Kryuchkov personally approached the general secretary of the Argentinian Communist Party, Alvarez Arnedo, to “seek help from our Argentinian friends in building up the illegal agent apparatus of Soviet intelligence.” According to the KGB record of the conversation, Arnedo was “wholly sympathetic.” 43During 1975 Andropov also gave personal instructions for approaches to Communist Party leaders in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon as part of a quest for Arab illegals. 44