The leaders of the revolution all spent time abroad under aliases as they plotted against Tsarist Russia. A man in London known as Dr. Richter was later Lenin. Similarly, Trotsky and Stalin also lived at home and abroad for decades under assumed names. Deception was an inherent part of the movement. “Konspiratsiya” was in their blood. After the successful conclusion of the civil war, Lenin put the Cheka in charge of spies in foreign countries.
Felix Dzerzhinsky tasked Meer Trilisser with foreign operations known as INO. By the end of the 1920s, “Trilisser had built the foundation of a unique espionage program that would endure in one form or another for a century.” His most successful agent was Dmitry Bystrolyotov, who throughout the twenties and thirties adopted numerous identities and spied on the French, Germans, and British with ease and charm. He was particularly adept at bedding young women with access to classified material. Upon his return to Moscow, he was an obvious target for Stalin’s purge, as he was a sophisticated Russian who had spent years abroad. He was fortunate to be sent to the Gulag and to survive. “Soviet intelligence would never fully recover from the destructive impulse of the Stalinist system to punish its brightest servants.”
In the late 30s, the Center, now known as the NKVD, turned to recruiting young ideologues for the long term. They also took up wet work and assassinated Trotsky in Mexico in 1939. Innumerable illegals told Moscow that Hitler would attack in June 1941. It took Stalin days after the attack began to believe it was happening. During the first three years of the war, the NKVD sent 190 illegals to foreign countries and 15,000 operatives behind German lines. They killed eighty-seven high-ranking Nazis, including the Gauleiter of Minsk.
The advent of the Cold War led to the creation of the CIA and heightened sensitivity at the FBI, thus requiring the USSR to adjust its foreign activities. They began to pursue placing long-term illegals overseas, which required extensive planning and training. For example, Yuri Linov was identified as a possible illegal because he had done well in high school English. Five years of university studying English and German were followed by years of KGB training. He lived in Kyiv for a while before going to East Germany. Yuri was sent back to Moscow after Berlin for more training. Provided with an Austrian passport, he was assigned to Vienna, then Dublin and Prague. Yuri was next sent to Israel, where he was arrested, tried, and sent to prison. He was exchanged a year later and went home to Moscow, but his career was essentially over in his late thirties in the mid-1970s. He continued to work for the KGB in Kyiv, but never again in a sensitive role.
Intense surveillance by both countries meant that legals were incapable of spying in America or the USSR. Both sides turned to third countries, and the Soviets continued to hope for illegal success. A Czech couple, renamed Rudi and Inge, with West German passports, moved to Canada, where they succeeded and became naturalized Canadians. In 1968, the Center ordered them to move to the US. After a few years, Rudi told his sixteen-year-old son the truth. Peter agreed to work for the USSR and went off to McGill in Canada for university. The FBI eventually confronted Rudi, and he worked as a double for a few years. He and the family went into the witness protection program. He didn’t really accomplish much in his time in the West, but the FBI knew that one good recruitment by an illegal could have a vastly different outcome.
In 1984, a Siberian couple who had just married and graduated from Tomsk State University were recruited and brought to Moscow. The two young ideologues were Elena and Andrei. They were coming into their own as the Soviet Union collapsed. Gorbachev’s reforms were followed by the Wall coming down and the end of the USSR in 1991. By then, Elena and Andrei were comfortably in Canada when they realized they were on their own. They had funded themselves by building a delivery business and had two sons. Andrei received an economics degree and moved the family to Paris for graduate school. Upon a return to America, Andrei attended the Kennedy School at Harvard and landed a consulting job in Boston. They stayed in touch with Moscow and were now reporting to the new SVR. By 2000, the FBI was on to them thanks to a Russian they had turned. Every action they took for the next decade was closely monitored. In 2010, after the US double agent in Moscow fled to the West, the FBI arrested* the five illegal couples they were following. They were quickly swapped, honored in Moscow, and provided with good jobs. Andrei and Elena's boys lost their Canadian and American citizenship and have lived most of their lives in Asia with a Russian passport. “Moscow pivoted to a new kind of illegal, adapted for the digital world. Instead of simply watching and analyzing American political life, these new illegals would be tasked with influencing it.”
The Internet Research Agency is in a nondescript four-story building in St. Petersburg. Its mission is to use false social media posts to subvert elections in the West, particularly the US. They interfered in the 2016 presidential election, although “measuring the real-life impact of these illegal trolls is difficult.” It is known that 120 false Facebook accounts posted eighty thousand times, reaching 29 million Americans and reposted to another 97 million. Two years later, the US indicted thirteen Russians. The SVR has continued to pursue assassinations around the world, including at least one the FBI stymied in the US.
At all points in time over the last century, it does not appear as if the illegals accomplished very much. Nonetheless, the Russians (particularly their KGB president) remain attached to the allure and romance of it all and are believed to still be trying.
*The 2010 arrests inspired the TV show “The Americans.” I’m not quite sure what led to the 1991 BBC production of “Sleepers.”
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