RUSSIA

1990s

H - P

Hoagland, Jim. "Return of an Old Kremlin Survivor." Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 22-28 Jan. 1996, 29.

Op-ed piece comparing President Yeltsin's 9 January 1996 naming of "spymaster" Yevgeny Primakov as Russian foreign minister to Gorbachev's similar action in 1991. Primakov, who had run the Russian foreign intelligence agency since late 1991, has "displayed a constant and deep distrust of U.S. motives in foreign affairs."

Knight, Amy.

1. "The Empire Strikes Back: How the Never-Say-Die KGB Is Resurrecting the Old Soviet Union." Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 27 May-2 Jun. 1996, 23.

The former KGB organizations in the newly independent states around Russia have continued their ties to Moscow and remain in close contact with each other. They also share "a common belief in the necessity of keeping their empire together." The main trend is toward reintegration of the Commonwealth states, and that trend is supported by many non-Russian KGB professionals serving in the new states.

2. Spies Without Cloaks: The KGB's Successors. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. HV82272A3K59

According to Legvold, FA 75.5 (Sep.-Oct. 1996), this book provides "a detailed account of the former KGB's evolving role." This is "a formidable task," but the author "meets it ably." The Federal Counterintelligence Service "gets most of Knight's attention." In her opinion, this service remains too large, unreconstructed, and "too tempting a tool of power for politicians." Mapother, History 26.4, calls the book "interesting and informative," and notes that the author provides "a good biographical sketch" of Yevgeniy Primakov. Knight also makes clear that in the world of Commonwealth of Independent States security services, "Moscow remains the center."

For Kelley, Parameters, Autumn 1998, this "powerful, multifaceted, well-documented book" shows "the continuity of the Russian power ministries with their Soviet roots." The author "investigates the multiplicity of renamed, reorganized, and resubordinated KGB successor organizations; demonstrates how they have successfully resisted democratic control by virtue of their indispensability; and shows how Boris Yeltsin has used them to fortify his hold on power."

Korotchenko, Igor. "Special Services: GRU Steps Up Operations in Western Europe." Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press 47, no. 40 (1 Nov. 1995): 26.

Levchenko, Stanislav. "The KGB." New Counterpoint 7, no. 2 (Winter 1992): 2-7.

The author looks at the breakup of the KGB, at its successor organizations, and at the future of Russian intelligence. The article reflects Levchenko's continuing interest in Soviet "active measures," and predicts a continuation of such activities into the future.

Macdonald, Hugh. "'One Airborne Regiment in Two Hours': Deception and Self-Deception in the 1994-1996 Chechen War." Intelligencer 11, no. 1 (Jul. 2000): 25-31.

Russia "was spectacularly unsuccessful in using deception during the 1994-96 Chechen War. Neither their covert operations nor their disinformation served their needs."

New Counterpoint. Editors. "Moscow's Traditional 'Front' Organizations: How Long Will the Death Throes Last?" 7, no. 2 (Winter 1992): 7-8.

IOJ, IUS, WFTU, WPC.

Pankin, Boris. Tr., Alexei Pankin. The Last Hundred Days of the Soviet Union. New York: Tauris, 1996.

Surveillant 4.4/5 notes that Pankin became USSR Foreign Minister in August 1991. In this memoir, Pankin "provides insight into the political and diplomatic activities in the crucial last three months of Soviet life." The account includes "scores of references to KGB." Overall, however, the reader should "[a]pproach this book with caution."

Philips, Alan.

1. "Hotline Set Up for Traitors to Come in from the Cold." Telegraph (London), 5 Jun. 1997. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk]

"Kremlin spycatchers have opened a hotline in an attempt to lure Russian traitors into becoming double agents working for the motherland. Nikolai Kovalyov, director of the Federal Security Service,... appealed on television for agents who have worked with foreign intelligence services to come clean. He promised them full confidentiality and said they could keep the money they had acquired from hostile intelligence services."

2. "Spycatchers Go Softly at Kremlin." Telegraph (London), 10 Oct. 1996. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk]

President Yeltsin has pardoned a diplomat, Vladimir Makarov, "who spied for the CIA for more than a decade" after serving "only three months of a seven-year hard labour sentence.... The Kremlin used to shoot spies in the back of the head. But the director of the Federal Security Service,... Nikolai Kovalyov, has adopted a softer approach to unmask more double agents.... It is understood to be the first time that a convicted spy had been freed so early in his sentence. In the past only those who had served more than half their terms were eligible for early release under conditions of secrecy."

Popplewell, Richard. "Themes in the Rhetoric of KGB Chairmen from Andropov to Kryuchkov." Intelligence and National Security 6, no. 3 (Jul. 1991): 513-547.

"Kryuchkov is the first chairman of the KGB to court international -- particularly Western -- public opinion, using a language and personal style which are readily intelligible and immediate to the non-Communist world.... Despite the many throw-backs to the past,... the change in the rhetoric of KGB speeches from Andropov to Kryuchkov is far more striking than the continuity. Yet for all that is new in Kryuchkov's rhetoric its basic most, insistent theme remains a traditional and very powerful one: an appeal to Soviet citizens' fear of anarchy and a call to preserve law and order."

Powell, Bill. Treason: How a Russian Spy Led an American Journalist to a U.S. Double Agent. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.

According to Peake, Studies in Intelligence 47.1 (2003), this book concerns GRU Col. Vyacheslav Baranov arrested by Russian authorities in 1992 as a U.S. agent, sent to a labor camp in 1994, and paroled in 1997. Was it Ames, Hanssen, or a third mole who betrayed him? Chapman, IJI&C 17.2, finds so many strange and nonconnecting things wrong with this account that one wonders why he seems to accept it as truthful.

Pringle, Robert W. "The Heritage and Future of Russian Intelligence." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 11, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 175-184.

The failure of the reformers to win an accounting of the past means that the Russian "security and intelligence establishment [is free to] recast itself in the model of Soviet intelligence."

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