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

88. Sudoplatovs, Special Tasks, pp. 32, 58. On its foundation in 1926, the Administration for Special Tasks had been intended chiefly to prepare for and execute sabotage operations behind enemy lines in time of war. On post-war “special tasks,” see chapters 22-3.

89. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 439, n. 37.

90. k-4,198,206; the Kutepov operation is referred to in these files as “the liquidation of G.”

91. k-4,199.

92. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 166-8.

Chapter Three The Great Illegals

1. vol. 7, ch. 9.

2. vol. 6, ch. 12.

3. In 1930 there was no legal residency in the United States and only one illegal residency, staffed by four OGPU officers and four illegal agents. Much of the Centre’s interest in the USA at this stage lay in the possibilities for operations against Germany and Japan offered by its large communities of expatriate Germans and Japanese. vol. 6, ch. 8, part 1.

4. vol. 7, ch. 9. The aim in 1930, never completely fulfilled, was to establish several illegal residencies in every major target country. By contrast, no country in the 1930s contained more than one legal residency.

5. vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 4.

6. vol. 7, ch. 9.

7. The most recent and best-documented biography of Sorge is Whymant, Stalin’s Spy. Though a Fourth Department (later GRU) illegal, Sorge was still being cited by the KGB in talks with Western Communist leaders during the 1970s as representing the kind of illegal it wished to recruit.

8. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 46-50. See the forthcoming study of Tsarist diplomacy by Barbara Emerson, the first historian to gain full access to the dossiers secrets of decrypts in the archives of the Tsarist foreign ministry.

9. See above, chapter 2.

10. As with many other inter-war operations, the record of Bystroletov’s foreign intelligence missions is incomplete. The main documents seen by Mitrokhin were a post-war memoir written by Bystroletov, some contemporary correspondence on his operations exchanged between the Center and residencies, and the 26-volume file on one of his leading agents, Ernest Holloway Oldham (ARNO). Though Bystroletov’s memoir is colorfully written, some—but not all—of the main events recorded in it can be corroborated from other sources. The SVR has given partial access to its records on Bystroletov for the writing of two books co-authored by the former KGB officer Oleg Tsarev (now an SVR consultant) and Western historians: Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions; and West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels.

11. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, pp. 19-21. The account of Bystroletov’s career in the 1997 SVR official history also omits much that is of importance about it, including the identities of his main British agents. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, ch. 22.

12. vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 16. The file noted by Mitrokhin identifies LAROCHE, in Cyrillic transliteration, as Eliana Aucouturier, born 1898. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, says simply that Bystroletov “successfully cultivated a secretary at the French embassy who had access to secret correspondence and ciphers of the French foreign ministry” (p. 19), but does not give the secretary’s name or codename, or refer to her seduction.

13. vol. 7, ch. 9.

14. The accounts of Bystroletov’s career published by the SVR in 1995 and 1997, as well as the material supplied by the SVR for two books co-authored by the former KGB officer Oleg Tsarev and Western historians, do not mention that Bystroletov was not an OGPU/NKVD officer. Mitrokhin discovered, on examining Bystroletov’s records, that he was simply an agent (vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 38). Even when fully rehabilitated in 1956, after spending sixteen years in prison from 1938 to 1954 as an innocent victim of the Stalinist terror, Bystroletov was denied a KGB pension on the grounds that he had never held officer rank. Since the SVR now portrays him as one of the main pre-war heroes of Soviet foreign intelligence, it is evidently embarrassed to admit his lowly status.

15. Though based in Berlin, Bazarov’s residency operated against a number of countries, including—from 1929—Britain. Other illegals in the residency included Teodor Maly and D. A. Poslendy, vol. 7, ch. 1.

16. vol. 7, ch. 9, paras. 24-30. De Ry later also came to the attention of the French Deuxième Bureau as “un trafiquant de codes” with access to Italian ciphers (Paillole, Notre espion chez Hitler, p. 223).

17. vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 26. Though not present at this first encounter with ROSSI, Bystroletov was given details of it by the Paris residency in order to help track him down.