The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB

Even listening to musical programs gave young people a distorted idea of Soviet reality, and led to incidents of a treasonable nature. Infatuation with trendy Western popular music, musical groups and performers falling under their influence leads to the possibility of these young people embarking on a hostile path. Such infatuation has a negative influence on the interests of society, inflames vain ambitions and unjustified demands, and can encourage the emergence of informal [not officially approved] groups with a treasonable tendency.¹⁵

Michael Jackson and Pink Floyd, amongst others, were thus identified as potential threats to the Soviet system. The fact that the Communist one-party states felt so threatened by Western pop stars confirmed their status as symbols of youthful rebellion. Even in Albania, after the collapse in 1992 of the last and most isolated Communist regime in Europe (isolated even from Moscow), the elegant tree-lined Bulevard in the center of Tirana was full of young people wearing Michael Jackson (or “Miel Jaksen”) T-shirts. The decapitated statue of Stalin was inscribed, in large red characters, with the words “Pink Floyd.”¹⁶

All points of contact between Soviet citizens and Westerners were regarded by the Centre as potential causes of ideological contagion. Foreign residencies had Line SK officers whose chief duty was to prevent such contamination in the local Soviet colony, which invariably contained large numbers of KGB agents and co-optees. In the mid-1970s 15 percent of Soviet employees in New York were fully recruited agents.¹⁷ It has long been known that Soviet groups traveling abroad were always carefully shepherded by KGB officers. What has not usually been appreciated, however, is the large proportion of agents and co-optees in each group (frequently over 15 percent) who monitored the behavior of their fellow travelers. When the Soviet State Academic Symphony Orchestra gave concerts in the FRG, Italy and Austria in October and November 1974, for example, two KGB officers, Pavel Vasilyevich Sobolev and Pyotr Trubagard, posed as members of the orchestra staff. The 122 members of the orchestra also included no less than eight agents and eleven co-optees. In the course of the tour “compromising materials” were obtained on thirtyfive members of the orchestra, including evidence of “alcohol abuse,” “speculation” (probably mostly involving attempts to purchase Western consumer goods), and—in the case of the Jewish musicians—“friendly” correspondence with individuals in Israel. Further “compromising” information was obtained on the musicians’ families, such as the fact that the wife of one of the violinists (identified by name in Mitrokhin’s notes) exchanged birthday greetings with acquaintances in France.¹⁸ The Moscow Chamber Orchestra also traveled to the West in October 1974 under the supervision of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sizov of the KGB. Of the thirty members of the orchestra, three were agents and five co-optees. The “compromising information” gathered by the eight informers on the other twenty-two which most concerned the KGB was evidence that some of them corresponded with foreign acquaintances.¹⁹