Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

Under Gus’s leadership the American CP had picked up the dubious distinction of being the chief ideological sheepdog in the international Communist movement, barking on command when any of the other lambs threatened to stray from the fold. The Soviet leaders would contact Gus and tell him what they wanted him to say, he would say it, and then Pravda could run a story saying that embattled American Communists speaking from the heartland of world imperialism had thus-and-such to say about whatever issue was of particular concern to the Soviets at the moment. 92

Aconference of eighty-five Communist parties held in Moscow in 1960 unanimously reaffirmed loyalty to the Soviet Union as an unshakeable article of faith for Communists in both East and West:

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union has been, and remains, the universally recognized vanguard of the world Communist movement, being the most experienced and steeled contingent of the international Communist movement.

By the end of the decade, however, the CPSU leadership was outraged to find its infallibility being called into question by the emergence of what was later termed “Eurocommunism.” The Eurocommunist heresy made its first public appearance after the suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968, when a number of Western parties ventured some, mostly timid, criticisms of the Soviet invasion. The leadership of the PCI (Partito Comunista Italiano), later the dominant force in Eurocommunism, reaffirmed “the profound, fraternal and genuine ties that unite the Italian Communist Party to the Soviet Union and the CPSU,” but denied the right of the Soviet Union to intervene militarily “in the internal life of another Communist Party or another country.” 1

“The profound, fraternal and genuine ties” which bound the PCI to the Soviet Union even after Soviet tanks had entered Prague had a secret dimension of which very few Italian Communists outside the Direzione were aware. After the Colonels’ coup in Athens in April 1967, the PCI general secretary, Luigi Longo, and other party leaders had become alarmed by the possibility of an Italian military putsch on the Greek model. In the summer of 1967, Giorgio Amendola, on behalf of the PCI Direzione, formally requested Soviet assistance in preparing the Party for survival after a coup as an illegal underground movement. Politburo decision no. P50/P of August 15 authorized the FCD to draw up a program which was intended to give the PCI its own intelligence unit with fully trained staff and a clandestine radio communications system. Details of the program were agreed in talks in Moscow between ANDREA, the head of the PCI’s illegal apparatus, and senior Central Committee officials and KGB officers. Between October 1967 and May 1968 three Italian radio operators completed a four-month KGB training course. Other Party members took courses in producing bogus identity documents, following a syllabus which devoted ninety-six hours to the production of rubber stamps and document seals, six to the art of embossing with synthetic resins, six to changing photographs on identity documents, six to making handwritten entries on documents and twelve to “theoretical discussions.” These and other secret training programs continued at least until the end of the 1970s. The PCI leadership also asked the KGB to check its headquarters for listening devices. 2

After the immediate PCI protest at the suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968, open criticism quickly subsided. Before the PCI Twelfth Congress in February 1969, both Boris Ponomarev, head of the Central Committee’s International Department, and senior KGB officers put heavy pressure on Luigi Longo and other Party leaders to tone down their comments on Cezchoslovakia in speeches to the conference. In reports to the CPSU Central Committee, Ponomarev and the KGB claimed the credit for the fact that, despite the retention of some “ambiguous phrases,” all references to “intervention” and “occupation” by the Soviet Union and its allies in the Warsaw Pact were removed. Nor was there any call by the PCI for the withdrawal of Warsaw Pact forces from Czechoslovakia. 3In a private discussion in 1970 with Nikita Ryzhov, the Soviet ambassador, Longo “particularly emphasized that for the Italian Communists friendship with the CPSU and the Soviet Union was not a formality but a real necessity for their existence.” 4

Longo also depended heavily on Soviet subsidies. He was at his most importunate when a general election was called one year ahead of schedule in May 1972. The original CPSU Politburo allocation for the election year was 5,200,000 dollars—2 million more than in 1971. After a further appeal from Longo, it provided another 500,000 dollars. Longo then wrote another begging letter, to which Brezhnev sent a personal reply, delivered by the Rome resident, Gennadi Fyodorovich Borzov (alias “Bystrov”), on April 4:

Dear Comrade Longo,

We have received your letter requesting additional assistance to meet expenses relating to the Italian Communist Party’s participation in the electoral campaign.

We well understand the difficult nature of the situation in which this campaign is taking place, and the need for the intense activity which your Party must exert in this connection in order to win the elections and resist the forces of reaction.

As you, Comrade Longo, know, we have already allocated an additional US $500,000 for the Italian Communist Party to take part in the electoral campaign, thus bringing the total [contribution] this year to US $5,700,000.

In the light of your request, we once again carefully studied all the possibilities open to us, and decided to give the Italian Communist Party further assistance to the amount of US $500,000. Unfortunately, at the present time, there is no more that we can do.

After handing the letter to Longo, Borzov reported to the Centre:

The Ambassador [Nikita Ryzhov] declared that as we had gone behind his back he intended to telegraph Comrade Brezhnev about this. Bearing in mind Ryzhov’s difficult character, and his extremely sensitive reaction to things of this kind, this particular incident has greatly exacerbated the Ambassador’s attitude towards us.

The Centre ordered Borzov to do his best to pacify the Ambassador:

Tell Ryzhov that you assumed he would be made aware in Moscow of the decision taken by the Instantsiya [CPSU leadership]. On your own behalf, ask Comrade Ryzhov to treat all this with proper understanding and not to attach exaggerated importance to what has happened; tell him that our relations with him will continue to be businesslike and that the Ambassador will be fully informed about all our contacts with our friends [the PCI]. 6

In October 1972, Borzov reported that the “friends” had handed back three 100-dollar notes which had, embarrassingly, turned out to be forgeries. 7

Until 1976 the transfer of funds to the Communist Party was a far more straightforward business in Rome than in the United States or many other parts of the world. Since leading Italian Communists regularly called at the Soviet embassy, it was thought unnecessary to resort to the clandestine rigmarole of brush contacts and dead-drops. The most dependable Soviet loyalist on the PCI Direzione, who was in regular contact with the KGB, simply selected a series of emissaries who drove to the embassy and collected the money, having first checked that their cars were not being followed. The KGB residency’s KOMETA radio-listening post simultaneously monitored the wavelengths used by Italian police and security forces in order to detect any signs of surveillance. As an additional precaution, the emissary was followed to and from the embassy by a PCI car. 8Moscow provided further financial assistance through lucrative contracts with PCI-controlled companies in business ventures ranging from Soviet oil imports to hotel construction in the Soviet Union. 9