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

19. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, p. 64; Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. 82-5; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 266-7; Tarrant, The Red Orchestra, chs. 17-19.

20. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 286.

21. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, p. 64.

22. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, p. 154. Some of the intelligence warnings of the preparations for BARBAROSSA are printed as appendices to Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3.

23. The report and Stalin’s comment on it were published in Izvestia of the Central Committee of the CPSU (April 1990). Cf. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 86.

24. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 275, 282. Prange et al., Target Tokyo, chs. 42-7.

25. JIC(41)218(Final), CAB 81/102, PRO. On Churchill’s warnings to Stalin, see Gorodetsky, Stafford Cripps’ Mission to Moscow 1940-42, chs. 2-4. Exactly which JIC reports reached Stalin, and in what form, cannot be determined at present. But, given both the volume of highly classified intelligence from London and the numerous JIC assessments which contradicted Churchill’s belief that Hitler was planning an invasion of Russia, Stalin must surely have been aware of the JIC view. The files noted by Mitrokhin show that Stalin had access to at least some of the telegrams exchanged between the Foreign Office and the British ambassador in Moscow, Sir Stafford Cripps. vol. 7, ch. 2, para. 10.

26. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 274.

27. vol. 7, ch. 2, para. 11.

28. Whaley, Codeword Barbarossa, pp. 223-4, 241-3. An important new study by Gabriel Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia, was published just as this volume was going to press. It performs a valuable service by demolishing the main conspiracy theories (in particular those surrounding Hess’s flight to Britain and Stalin’s alleged preparations for an attack on Germany) which have confused some recent interpretations of the background of operation BARBAROSSA. Though there are some gaps in his analysis of Soviet intelligence, Professor Gorodetsky also adds much interesting detail from newly accessible Russian archives. His portrait of Stalin as “rational and level-headed” is, however, difficult to reconcile with, inter alia, Stalin’s obsessive pursuit of Trotsky and his foreign supporters. Grand Delusion is, none the less, a major work.

29. Vaksberg, The Prosecutor and the Prey, p. 220.

30. One of the files noted by Mitrokhin records that Zarubin had been appointed deputy director of INO in 1937 (vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2). Over the next two years, three successive heads of INO were liquidated, and Zarubin only just escaped a similar fate. It is not clear precisely what position he held in the Center at the beginning of 1941.

31. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2. On December 18, 1940 Hitler had ordered the completion of preparations for BARBAROSSA by May 15, 1941.

32. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

33. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, p. 154.

34. See below, chapter 7.

35. Interview with Shebarshin, Daily Telegraph (December 1, 1992). Even in the year before the abortive coup of August 1991, both the public rhetoric and inner convictions of the KGB leadership were influenced by crude anti-Western conspiracy theories. Andrew and Gordievsky (eds.), Instructions from the Center, pp. 218-22. Andrew and Gordievsky (eds.), More Instructions from the Center, pp. 125-8.

36. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 249-50, 281-3. Kahn, “Soviet Comint in the Cold War,” pp. 11-13. PURPLE had been introduced in 1939. Soviet codebreakers had also broken the earlier and less complex Japanese RED cipher. On the breaking of PURPLE by US military cryptanalysts, see Kahn, “Pearl Harbor and the Inadequacy of Cryptanalysis.” Mitrokhin did not have access to the archives of the KGB Sixteenth Directorate, which—together with those of the GRU—contain the main SIGINT files of the Great Patriotic War.

37. Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad, p. 329; Overy, Russia’s War, p. 118.

38. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 282.

39. On recruitment to Bletchley Park, see Hinsley and Stripp (eds.), Codebreakers; Andrew, “F. H. Hinsley and the Cambridge Moles”; Smith, Station X.

40. See below, pp. 156, 159. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 312-13.