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Together these two volumes lay bare the wide-ranging scope of KGB activities overseas, while showing how this enormous intelligence-gathering effort on the part of the Soviet regime was frequently rendered valueless by a combination of poor analysis and the inability of successive Soviet leaders, and indeed the whole of the ruling Politburo, to cope with information that did not conform to their ideological expectations. In many ways the real importance of The Mitrokhin Archive lies in its stark demonstration of the ultimate ineffectiveness of the long and aggressive Soviet intelligence struggle against capitalism and in support of communism, rather than in the tantalising details of its influence over individuals, parties or governments in countries across the globe. That such a professional (mostly), well-funded and active (always) intelligence service should work so hard, for so long, yet be rewarded by so little ideological success is in itself an instructive and cautionary tale.
The first volume of The Mitrokhin Archive, published in 1999, covered KGB activities in Europe and the West, including major campaigns mounted against the ‘Main Adversary’, the USA, and the recruitment and handling of the ‘Magnificent Five’ British agents (Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Blunt and Cairncross), as well as much fascinating detail on how the Soviets spied on their Eastern satellites, persecuting potential dissidents, in an attempt, ultimately vain, to maintain their tight control. The second volume now published, The KGB and the World, fills in the story for the rest of the globe — from Afghanistan to Algeria, Chile to China, Pakistan to Peru — a transcontinental effort that shows yet again the persistence and range of KGB active measures. Many of the stories of blackmail, coercion and insidious influence seem almost exotic to the 21st- century reader, invoking the once-familiar but now fading flavour of Cold War espionage that has been superseded by a different style of spying, equally pervasive but with stereotypes that have yet to be enshrined in our consciousness. Descriptions of charismatic Latin American revolutionaries (even of Castro, super-survivor), or of Soviet hopes for the creation of a ‘revolutionary democracy’ in Egypt by encouraging Gamal Abdel Nasser to follow the non-capitalist path, have an almost nostalgic resonance.
Behind the stories, however, is an unbroken thread to many contemporary issues: US difficulty in understanding the nature and extent of Third World hostility to what was and is perceived as their ‘imperialism’; the revolutionary power that can be inspired by exploitation, humiliation, oppression and poverty; even, on a more practical level, the problems posed by inadequate linguistic ability in intelligence communities (the KGB’s campaign in the late 1960s to persuade the regime of General Yahya Khan that the Chinese were stirring up rebellion in East Pakistan was badly undermined when a lack of Bengali-speakers meant that inflammatory material had to be published in English). Readers of The Mitrokhin Archive II in intelligence services across the globe, searching perhaps for embarrassing references to their predecessors’ activities, may find much that is familiar and even instructive in the context of their current efforts.
Media coverage of both volumes of The Mitrokhin Archive has tended, inevitably, to centre on individuals, whether the spies or the spied on. Volume I led to a flurry of interest in the ‘Granny Spy’, Melita Norwood; volume II has inspired articles in particular on Soviet intelligence’s successful penetration of India in the 1970s, and the extent to which the Prime Minister, Mrs Gandhi, was aware that her wing of the Congress Party was funded by cash provided (in suitcases) by the KGB. There are many such interesting and provocative stories in The Mitrokhin Archive, most of which serve to confirm or flesh out existing assumptions or knowledge. Some individuals, governments or parties may have been implicated to a greater or lesser extent than previously thought. But in the end the question that this extraordinary material provokes is: what difference did it all make? Why did the KGB, whose active measures are set out here in fascinating detail, so often lose the game? These are not new questions: a whole bibliography of Cold War politics and espionage addresses them. The Mitrokhin Archive volumes, how- ever, are, one might say, the horse’s mouth, and as such fundamental to our understanding of the history of the Cold War.
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