A Saga of Soviet Treachery: Decoding Mitrokhin Archives

By Jagath Jayaprakash

History is the statistics of yesterday, and it is also the beacon and lesson for the future. Therefore, the study of history is critical. A community that learns lessons from history can only lead humankind to a bright future. Many chapters in history are uncomfortable and shocking, but an honest history student cannot avoid them. Such a type of annal is the atrocities committed by the Soviet Union during the seventy years of communist autocracy. The world is going through decades of tremor when the story of the atrocities committed against humanity by the countries under communist rule comes out one by one. Among them are documents released by Vasili Mitrokhin, a top KGB official. This book is part of such a history that reveals the shocking details of espionage done by KGB India.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jagath Jayaprakash
• Release date: Feb 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215885659

Jagath Jayaprakash

Jagath Jayaprakash is an Academic Administrator by profession and an avid writer by intellectual pursuit. In addition, he publishes Op-Ed Articles on Political history, National security, Cyber warfare, and International relations in Malayalam and English for major media outlets like as Manorama Online, Janmabhumi, Indus Scrolls, Organiser, Kesari, and a host of other prominent news websites.

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Jagath Jayaprakash

A Saga of Soviet treachery: Decoding Mitrokhin Archives

Copyright © 2022 by Jagath Jayaprakash

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

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In Russia, we only had two TV channels. Channel One was propaganda. Channel Two consisted of a KGB officer telling you: Turn back at once to Channel One.

Yakov Smirnoff

Contents

Foreword

Preface

1. Rise of Soviet Russia

2. The KGB Controlled Asia

3. KGB in India

4. Fall of the Congress and Soviet Union

Picture Index

About the Author

Foreword

History is the statistics of yesterday, and it is also the beacon and lesson for the future. Therefore, the study of history is very important. A community that learns lessons from history can only lead humankind to a bright future. Many chapters in history are uncomfortable and shocking, but an honest history student cannot avoid them. Such a type of annal is there is the history of the Soviet Union during the seventy years of communist autocracy. The world is going through decades of tremor when the story of the atrocities committed against humanity by the countries under communist rule comes out one by one. Among them are documents released by Vasili Mitrokhin, a top KGB official. This book is part of such a history that reveals the shocking details of espionage done by KGB India.

Jagath Jayaprakash

27/06/2022

Preface

On April 9, 1992, a 70-year-old man in dirty clothes reached Riga, the capital of Latvia (newly independent Baltic state of former Soviet Russia), by overnight train from Moscow as predetermined.

1/Riga

The older man then went to the office of the new British embassy in Riga. Subsequently, he met with a British secret intelligence service (SIS, MI6) agent. His name is Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin, former Senior Archivist, First Chief Foreign Intelligence/KGB Directorate (former Soviet Russian secret service organization). The SIS officer then verifies his passport and takes his photograph.

2 /Vasili Mitrokhin

Mitrokhin’s first visit to the British Embassy took place a month ago. When he arrived, he bought a suitcase with wheels in his hand. He still wears the same kind of dirty clothes. Before leaving Moscow, he wore dirty clothes to avoid attracting as much attention as possible from the Russian border guards. He had a prejudice against the British. Because there was a refugee’s body language, US embassy officials failed to understand Mitrokhin’s importance. He was told to go back. Mitrokhin then went to the British Embassy. Upon arriving, he asked to speak to a person in the Embassy. He tells the story of his arrival to a well-spoken Russian embassy official who unexpectedly met him in the reception area. He then shows some official KGB secret documents that he had in his possession. They read some of the notes and quickly learned the scope of the shocking documents and learned about it in detail. Since there is no intelligence centre at the embassy, they asked him to return a month later to meet with representatives from the London headquarters of the SIS. At the word of that officer, he returned to Russia.

3/Baltic States

Later on April 9, Mitrokhin brought 2,000 archive pages of Russian Intelligence from his collection during a meeting with SIS officials.

Under his supervision, the entire foreign intelligence repository was shifted by transferring documents almost every day, from KGB office Lubyanka in the centre of Moscow city to the newly built KGB headquarters in Yazenovo, near the Outer Ring Road, between 1972 and 1982.

He told the unusual story of how handwritten notes were smuggled out of the office. After that, Mitrokhin hid on the floor of his family home for years. Mitrokhin carried secret documents until he retired from the KGB in 1984. SIS officials learned that Mitrokhin had even access to the rarest archives of the KGB’s foreign intelligence unit. The real identities and other heroic legends of the KGB’s Elite Corps, which were kept secret overseas, emerged from those documents.

After meeting with SIS officials several times in the Baltic, Mitrokhin went on a secret visit to the UK and discussed the plans for his defection. One autumn, November 7, 1992, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, SIS shipped Mitrokhin and his family from Russia to the UK in a covert mission along with six large containers filled with secret documents.

British officials, researched in the Mitrokhin archives, were shocked by its authenticity. In the CIA’s eyes, they were the most trusted and valuable intelligence documents in the world. According to the British Intelligence Agency and other Western intelligence agencies, the documents provided the most authenticated counter-intelligence evidence. SVR (a Russian intelligence agency formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union) chief publicly declared that there had been no secret leak. Once in the German weekly, an article was published about the incident. It said, The names of more than a thousand spies and other authentic information were leaked to the outside world through Mitrokhin documents. Then S V R chief responded, Absolutely absurd, he said, but later found out that the truth was beyond that. The shocking details of the KGB-led spying and other destructive activities they spearheaded became known worldwide. While many have conveniently remained silent about the KGB’s espionage, the actions taken by the CIA were viewed with the same critical intelligence by the same people. The group performed a one-sided narration. Let us compare this narrative to the clapping of a single hand. Oxford University’s ‘Politics of the World; is a world-renowned history book; nowhere does it describe the activities of the KGB, but there is a lengthy account of the CIA’s activities. The surprising fact is that the KGB played a greater role in Soviet policy toward the third world than the CIA’s role in formulating America’s policy for the Third world. Unlike the CIA, KGB believed that the Third World could help them win the Cold War.