Andrei Soldatov: Nostalgia for Soviet Spies
[Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan are security analysts with Agentura.ru. This comment appeared in EJ.ru.]
The Russian spy scandal has focused attention on whether the use of “illegals,” undercover agents with no diplomatic immunity, makes any sense in the 21st century. Comparisons to Soviet-era illegals who were quite successful during the Cold War are not valid. The Cold War was a war of ideologies, and the moral corruption of the enemy was the chief objective.
But today, the value of illegals is negligible. It is obvious that 11 — or even 1,011 — Russian illegals in search of “hidden information” from open sources could never harm U.S. interests or undermine its “moral fiber.”
The spy flap is evidence of a serious crisis within Russia’s intelligence. The Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, is unique for two reasons: It has its own academy, and it uses illegal agents. Both the CIA and MI6 only have training courses, and neither has attempted to send U.S. or British citizens to Russia disguised as local citizens.
The golden days of Russian espionage were during the era of Comintern, the international Communist organization active from 1919 to 1943. In those times, the Soviet Union used Western Communists and their loyalists as spies, but they were eliminated in the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s, forcing the intelligence service to create a special school to train former peasants to work in an unfamiliar environment.
The KGB’s biggest successes of the late Cold War era were the recruitment of Aldrich Ames, who directed the CIA’s analysis section covering Soviet intelligence operations, and Robert Hanssen, who worked in the counterintelligence unit of the FBI. They were both recruited by Viktor Cherkashin, a KGB agent with diplomatic cover at the Soviet Embassy — not by illegals.
But it looks like the Foreign Intelligence Service cannot give up on old ways...
Read entire article at Moscow Times
The Russian spy scandal has focused attention on whether the use of “illegals,” undercover agents with no diplomatic immunity, makes any sense in the 21st century. Comparisons to Soviet-era illegals who were quite successful during the Cold War are not valid. The Cold War was a war of ideologies, and the moral corruption of the enemy was the chief objective.
But today, the value of illegals is negligible. It is obvious that 11 — or even 1,011 — Russian illegals in search of “hidden information” from open sources could never harm U.S. interests or undermine its “moral fiber.”
The spy flap is evidence of a serious crisis within Russia’s intelligence. The Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, is unique for two reasons: It has its own academy, and it uses illegal agents. Both the CIA and MI6 only have training courses, and neither has attempted to send U.S. or British citizens to Russia disguised as local citizens.
The golden days of Russian espionage were during the era of Comintern, the international Communist organization active from 1919 to 1943. In those times, the Soviet Union used Western Communists and their loyalists as spies, but they were eliminated in the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s, forcing the intelligence service to create a special school to train former peasants to work in an unfamiliar environment.
The KGB’s biggest successes of the late Cold War era were the recruitment of Aldrich Ames, who directed the CIA’s analysis section covering Soviet intelligence operations, and Robert Hanssen, who worked in the counterintelligence unit of the FBI. They were both recruited by Viktor Cherkashin, a KGB agent with diplomatic cover at the Soviet Embassy — not by illegals.
But it looks like the Foreign Intelligence Service cannot give up on old ways...