Counter-Intelligence in a Command Economy
Mark Harrison*
Department of Economics and CAGE, University of Warwick
Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham
Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University
Inga Zaksauskienė**
Faculty of History, Vilnius University
Abstract
We provide the first thick description of the counter-intelligence function
in a command economy of the Soviet type. Based on documentation from
Soviet Lithuania, the paper considers the KGB (secret police) as a market
regulator, commissioned to prevent the disclosure of secret government
business and forestall the disruption of government plans. Where market
regulation in open societies is commonly intended to improve market
transparency, competition, and fair treatment of consumers and
employees, KGB regulation was designed to enforce secrecy, monopoly,
and discrimination. As usual, regulation could give rise to perverse
incentives with unintended consequences. In the Soviet context, most
important of these may have been adverse selection in the market for
talent. There is no evidence of regulatory capture. Nor is there evidence
that the KGB was interested in costs of regulation or in mitigating
negative consequences.
Keywords: communism, command economy, discrimination, information,
loyalty, regulation, security, surveillance, Soviet Union.
JEL Codes: N44, P21.
* Mail: Department of Economics, University of Warwick, Coventry
CV4 7AL, United Kingdom. Email: [email protected].
** Mail: Universiteto g. 7, LT-01513 Vilnius, Lithuania. Email:
[email protected].
First draft: 26 April 2013. This version: 15 June 2014.
ii
Counter-Intelligence in a Command Economy
Acknowledgements
Previous versions of this paper were presented to the Warwick
conference on the Economic History of Coercion and State Formation,
University of Warwick, 31 March and 1 April 2014; the Yale Program in
Economic History Conference on Russian, Soviet, and Post-Soviet
Economic History: New Frontiers, Yale University, 1 and 2 November
2013, the Hoover Institution workshop on totalitarian regimes, 22 July to
2 August 2013, the Berliner Forschungskolloquium zur
Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 5 June 2013, and the Uppsala Centre for Russian
and Eurasian Studies conference “What Have We Learned from the Soviet
Archives?” Uppsala, 10 and 11 May 2013. The authors thank Arvydas
Anušauskas, Sascha O. Becker, Gregory S. Crawford, Michael Ellman, Paul
R. Gregory, Stefan Hedlund, Martin Kragh, Sergei Kudriashov, Naomi
Lamoreaux, Peter Law, Andrei Markevich, Steven Nafziger, Leonid
Polishchuk, Meelis Saueauk, Robert Service, David Shearer, Peter
Solomon, Nikolaus Wolf, Amy Zegart, and Sergei Zhuravlev for advice and
comments; Dimitri Migrow for assistance; the University of Warwick’s
Centre on Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy, Vilnius
University’s Faculty of History, and the Hoover Institution for research
support; the Hoover Institution for its generous hospitality and support of
the annual Hoover Institution Workshop on Totalitarian Regimes; and the
staff of the Hoover Archive for their expertise and boundless patience.
Counter-Intelligence in a Command Economy
counter-intelligence. The agencies of the state that are assigned
special competence in the sphere of struggle with the intelligence
agencies of other states and the disruptive activities of the
organizations and persons that they exploit. C[ounter-intelligence] is
one of the instruments of the state’s political power (Nikitchenko
1972: 142).
Introduction
Our goal is to describe the role of the secret police in the Soviet economy.
Its role is entirely missing from the standard textbooks and other
generally accepted accounts of the Soviet-type economy. Typical of these
is the verdict of the late Alec Nove (1961: 98) on the secret police as an
agency for “inspection and control”:
Nothing needs to be said about them in the present context, despite
their importance in Soviet life.
And in a footnote:
Large Soviet enterprises possessed, and probably still possess, a
“secret department” staffed by secret police, which organized a
network of informers. However, they were more likely to be roused by
a disrespectful remark about Stalin than by, say, the overspending of
the wage fund.
This suggests a question: If state security was in fact widely and deeply
embedded in the Soviet economy’s enterprises and facilities, yet had no
serious functions, then what was it all for?
The answer, we will show, is a great deal. Domestic security
considerations were systematically represented in the command
economy’s working arrangements. Using archival records and other
sources, we will describe the KGB (Committee of State Security or secret
police) as a market regulator. Although it aspired to do so, the
government did not have the capacity to allocate every resource from the
centre, and delegated detailed allocation to internal and external markets
where buyers met sellers, agreed prices, made contracts, and fulfilled
them more or less subject to regulation from above (Zaleski 1980: 490-2;
Gregory and Harrison 2005: 743-749). The economic literature on
regulation in market economies tends to focus on the benefits to
consumers and employees from limiting market power and enforcing
First draft: 26 April 2013. This version: 15 June 2014.
2
transparency. In a command economy, in contrast, everything was the
other way around, so the KGB served the ruling party, not the citizen, with
the purpose of enforcing secrecy, monopoly, and discrimination.
The paper is organized as follows. A first section considers the
relevant literatures and our contribution, which is in two fields:
regulation, and command economies. Second, we provide some
background in terms of the nature of Soviet rule, the Soviet conception of
counter-intelligence, and the organization and resources of the KGB. In
the third section we describe the structure and conduct of KGB counterintelligence in the economy, based on evidence from Soviet Lithuania in
the 1960s. Within this section we consider secrecy and management
selection, the uses of personnel records and surveillance, and the
investigation of events and intervention in them. On that basis we address
the question of the regulatory burden of the KGB. Concluding, we ask
what would have happened to the command system if the KGB had not
existed.
1. Literature and contribution
Our paper contributes to two literatures: on regulation in market
economies, and on the working arrangements of command economies.
1.1. On regulation
In market economies, government regulation is often proposed as the
solution to market problems. Consumers can lose from anti-competitive
practices and hidden information (Pigou 1932); and also when legal
contract enforcement is costly (Shleifer 2010). Employees can suffer
unfair redistribution from employer discrimination, whether preferencebased or statistical (Becker 1957; Phelps 1972; Arrow 1973). Under these
circumstances, regulation can protect citizens by limiting market power,
assuring market transparency, and ruling out unfair discrimination.
These are the benefits that market regulation is supposed to secure,
but then problems come thick and fast. A first problem is that regulation
comes at a cost. Given costs as well as benefits, the solution suggested by
economic theory is to regulate up to a point where the excess of
regulatory benefits over burdens is maximized (Viscusi, Vernon, and
Harrington 2005: 9; Helm 2006: 177). The beneficiaries of regulation,
however, are not necessarily the same citizens that will bear the costs.
Costs are direct and indirect. Directly, the regulator consumes resources
that must be met by taxpayers. Indirectly, regulated firms pass on
compliance costs in higher prices to consumers or lower wages to
employees. The chances that the political equilibrium will coincide with
the social welfare optimum are slim.
3
More generally, the theory of public choice reminds us that regulation
is inevitably political. A further problem is then that the regulator might
be captured by producer lobbies (Pigou 1932; Stigler 1971). In OECD
much product market regulation has been anti-competitive (Crafts 2006;
Frontier Economics 2012). But even de-regulation can be done so as to
inhibit competition (Armstrong and Sappington 2006).
A final problem is fundamental in the present setting: because
regulation is political, it can serve many objectives. Governments may use
regulation to serve goals, among them some that may conflict with
consumer welfare and may never be articulated. Because regulation has a
political aspect, Dieter Helm (2006: 171) has written, “Economics can
illustrate the costs and benefits of intervention, but not the desirability.”
1.2. On command economies
In that context we turn to the literature on command economies of the
Soviet type. In the dominant tradition of this literature, the Soviet Union
has been portrayed as a developmental state that provided public goods
and pursued economic growth (e.g. Allen 2003; Davies, Harrison, and
Wheatcroft 1994; Dobb 1948; Ellman 198); Gerschenkron 1966; Gregory
and Stuart 1985; Hanson 2003; Hunter and Szyrmer 1992; Munting 1982;
Nove 1961, 1969, 1977; Spulber 1964; Wilber 1969; Zaleski 1971, 1980).
The fact that it did so under a political monopoly has been become more
salient in recent reinterpretations (Olson 1993; Wintrobe 1998; Gregory
and Harrison 2005).
As Kontorovich and Wein (2009) have noted, the fact that the Soviet
command economy was used to support a mass army and thermonuclear
weapons was completely incidental to most textbook stories. Yet postSoviet research in the archives has shown that external security
considerations were decisive in critical moments such as decisions to
force the pace of industrialization, collectivize agriculture, and resettle,
imprison, or execute millions of ordinary people (e.g. Schneider 1994;
Khlevniuk 1995; Simonov 1996; Barber and Harrison 2000; Samuelson
2000; Stone 2000; Ken 2002; Harrison 2008, 2014).
If external security was more important than Western economists
once recognized, what about internal security? The latter topic does not
appear in the chapter headings or subject indexes of any textbooks on the
Soviet economy or other command economies, their economic history and
development, or comparative economic systems (in addition to those
already listed see Brus 1986; Campbell 1966; Eatwell, Milgate, and
Newman 1987; Jasny 1961; Kaser 1970; Kornai 1980, 1992; Millar 1981;
Rutland 1985; Schwartz 1968; Wilczynski 1970). It is missing from the
numerous essays published by the United States Joint Economic
Committee (1976, 1979, 1982, 1987) in periodic collections on the Soviet
4
economy that were intended to inform U.S. policy makers. Nor does it
feature in the only readable, entertaining, and otherwise highly accurate
novel ever written in English about the Soviet economic system (Spufford
2010).
Of course such accounts do often report that the security agencies
existed by making reference to their contingent role in periodic mass
repressions, the use of detainees for forced labour, the elimination of
particular economists and statisticians, and so forth. It is their role in the
system that is missing.
Our contribution is to describe the KGB as one of the command
economy’s market regulators. Markets persisted within the command
system because, despite its aspiration to order the allocation of resources
in minute detail from above, the government lacked the information and
coordination capacity to do so. The command economy had many market
regulators; these planned contracts, fixed prices, wages, quality
standards, and employment conditions, collected statistics, audited
accounts, and evaluated outcomes (Gregory 1992). One of these market
regulators was the KGB, which supervised the economy’s key facilities
and their employees and intervened so as to forestall threats to the
security of the regime and suppress disruption of its plans.
2. Background
We provide relevant background by describing what is known today
about the system of Soviet rule, the Soviet concept of counter-intelligence,
and the organization and resources available to the Soviet counterintelligence agency – the KGB and especially its second administration.
2.1. On Soviet rule
Our primary evidence base is documentation held on microfilm at the
Hoover Institution, California.1 The Hoover Archive holds a million pages
of risk assessments, action plans, case files, reports, audits, bulletins,
correspondence, and transcripts of interviews and meetings from 1940 to
the 1980s. This evidence has been available only since Lithuania gained
independence and established control over the records of the KGB units
See the Lietuvos SSR Valstybės Saugumo Komitetas (KGB) Selected
Records collection of the Hoover Archive, described at
http://www.hoover.org/library-and-archives/collections/easteurope/featured-collections/lietuvos-ssr (accessed 14 May 2014). The
originals of these records are to be found in the Lithuanian Special
Archives (Lietuvos ypatingasis archyvas) in Vilnius, described at
http://www.archyvai.lt/en/archives/specialarchives.html (accessed 14
May 2014).
1
5
that operated on its territory. It is supplemented by a secondary literature
contributed by Lithuanian historians on the KGB in the system of Soviet
rule.2
At the time we describe it, Lithuania was a mostly agrarian country of
approximately 3 million people. Four out of five were of local ethnicity
and the remainder Russian. Lithuanian ethnicity remained strongly
rooted in the Catholic Church and in memories of national independence.
Lithuania was an independent state from 1918 to 1940, a province within
the Russian Empire before then, and afterwards a republic within the
Soviet Union. Without interruption from 1939 to 1953 the territory of
Lithuania saw wave after wave of violence associated with border
changes, occupations, insurgencies, killings, and deportations (Reklaitis
2007; Statiev 2010; Weiner and Rahi-Tamm 2012). After 1953 Lithuania
became relatively peaceful again.
As a territory of the Soviet Union, Lithuania retained an importance
beyond its size after Stalin’s death for several reasons: its strategic
location on the Western border, the residents’ memories of national
independence, the presence among them of former political detainees
from prison and internal exile in significant numbers, and the settlement
of large emigrant communities in Western Europe, the United States, and
Israel to which residents retained links. When we study Soviet rule in
Lithuania, therefore, we should ask whether what we see is a microcosm
of Soviet rule in general, or a special case of colonial rule at the periphery.
As Lithuanian historians have shown (Streikus 2004; Okuličiūtė 2006,
2007; Grybkauskas 2007a,b, 2010; Anušauskas 2008; Burinskaitė 2011),
Moscow saw particular security risks in Soviet Lithuania. This is easily
evidenced from internal KGB documents. One such is a status report of 31
January 1966. It lists Lithuania’s strategic location, the deployment of
nuclear weapons (military facilities “of special importance”) on its
territory, the presence of important industrial and scientific facilities, the
barely-suppressed memory of a free and independent Lithuania, the
existence of a large nationalist emigration in Western Europe and North
America, and increasing correspondence and direct contact through
tourism between Lithuanians and foreigners, many with past family ties.3
Anušauskas (1998, 2003, 2008); Burinskaitė (2006a, 2006b, 2007,
2008, 2009); Grybkauskas (2007a, 2007b, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011);
Juodis (2009); Okuličiūtė (2006, 2007); Rahi-Tamm, Jansons, and Kaasik
(2010); Streikus (2004); Tannberg (2010).
2
Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/644, 1-22 (Spravka. From: Nachal’nik 2
upravlaniia KGB pri SM Litovskoi SSR polkovnik Obukauskas. Date: 5
January 1966).
3
6
The report provides some measures such as the number of people
maintaining correspondence with relatives abroad: 430,000 (or one in
seven of the resident population). There are 12,000 citizens claiming
German ethnicity. The number “returning to the republic” (i.e. freed from
imprisonment and exile to distant provinces after the death of Stalin) is
given as 20,000, including 8,179 formerly active nationalists and proGerman collaborators, of whom 784 remain under surveillance. Also
under current surveillance are 132 “former agents” of the imperialist
powers.
While some security risks (such as the lingering presence of members
of the prewar generation) could be expected to diminish over time, others
appeared to grow inexorably. Increasing numbers were permitted to
travel between Soviet Lithuania and the “capitalist and developing
countries” on business or for tourism (Anušauskas 2008: 71). Still, the
annual total never exceeded 20,000, so by modern standards Lithuania
was extraordinarily isolated.4
While some of Lithuania’s risks were specific, Moscow’s template for
managing risks on the periphery was completely general. This template
(described by Gregory 2009; Shearer 2009; Hagenloh 2009) was first
tried and tested in Russia, Ukraine, and Central Asia between 1917
and1939. It was extended to new Soviet borderlands between 1939
and1953 (Reklaitis 2007; Tannberg 2010; Statiev 2010; Weiner and RahiTamm 2012), and to Hungary, Poland, and East Germany from 1945 to
1956 (Applebaum 2012). This template was effective partly because it
was unsophisticated and did not require adaptation to cultural
differences: register the population and establish an agent network to
keep watch over it, seize all public and most private records and make
them secret, eliminate former elites, establish a state monopoly of
housing, productive capital, and services, and control or suppress schools,
the media, and all civic and cultural organizations.
A test of the “colonial rule” hypothesis can be based on evidence of the
access of persons of local ethnicity to power. At the summit of Soviet
politics, it is clear, ethnicity was a factor and remained so to the end of
Soviet rule. A common practice in the non-Russian republics, for example,
was to appoint a Russian as the second party secretary (on Lithuania see
Grybkauskas 2010, 2013). Was there discrimination in KGB recruitment?
In 2011 Lithuania received more than one million visitors from
European Union countries (so not counting those from Russia), as
reported in Vakarų ekspresas, 29 June 2012, at
http://www.ve.lt/naujienos/ekonomika/ekonomikosnaujienos/uzsienieciai-pernai-lietuvoje-keliavo-daugiau-768088/
(accessed 10 September 2013).
4
7
Figure 1 presents available evidence on the ethnicity of KGB employees in
the Baltic. We define the “nationality gap” as the shortfall in the shares of
local nationals in the KGB compared with their shares in the resident
populations. In Estonia and Latvia in 1953, when armed resistance to
Soviet rule was ending, the gap was very large: between 40 and 50
percent. But direct discrimination was not required to get this outcome.
Regardless of their nationality and residence, KGB officers had to be party
members; they could not have remained on occupied territory during
World War II, and could not be closely related to emigrants or armed
resisters to Soviet rule. In the Baltic region this automatically restricted
the security service’s local recruitment to a small pool.
Time passed, and the significance of the war and postwar insurgency
should have receded. Did the ethnic imbalance in the KGB persist? Our
evidence suggests convergence in both Latvia and Lithuania. In Latvia,
where the proportion of resident Russians was high, the local nationals’
share in KGB personnel converged rapidly to their share in the resident
population. Convergence went more slowly in more homogeneous
Lithuania. In the1970s the gap remained large in the counter-intelligence
administration’s first department (foreigners and nuclear weapons) and
third department (the economy), and relatively small in the fifth
department (ideology and young people). By the 1980s the overall gap
was down to 5 percentage points. In this dimension, therefore, there was
assimilation.
To summarize, while the evidence base of the paper pertains to
Lithuania, and many Lithuanians considered themselves to be in a state of
colonial subjugation, the message of our paper is not about colonial rule.
It is about the working arrangements of Soviet rule in general. When the
KGB responded to events in Lithuania, its actions followed the same
pattern that was established everywhere under Soviet rule, including in
Russia itself.
Given the great quantity of documentation now available, we focus on
a limited period, the 1960s and early 1970s. These years are of particular
interest as a time in which Soviet rule began to grapple with new
questions of politics and economics. The political question was: How to
rule? Stalinist violence had been replaced by a softer, more paternal
authoritarianism. The Western borderlands, however, were a point of
entry into the Soviet Union for new ideas, including new models of
socialism both real (in China, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia) and
imagined (in Western Europe, stimulated by the rise of the New Left). A
new generation was growing up in the Soviet Union, full of curiosity and
intent on exploring new cultural varieties.
The pressing economic question of the time was: How to grow? The
Soviet Union saw new critiques of overcentralized authority and
8
proposals to delegate it from Moscow to the regions, and from ministers
to firms and managers (Schroeder 1979; Kontorovich 1988; Markevich
and Zhuravskaya 2011; Kibita 2013). Associated with this were attempts
to withdraw food subsidies, leading to destabilizing and occasionally
bloody confrontations (Baron 2001, thinly fictionalized by Spufford
2010).
2.2. On counter-intelligence
A standard KGB source from our period (Nikitchenko 1972: 142) defines
counter-intelligence as:
The agencies of the state that are assigned special competence in the
sphere of struggle with the intelligence agencies of other states and
the disruptive activities of the organizations and persons that they
exploit.
The documented principles of Soviet Lithuania KGB activity show that
the KGB saw the threat posed by “the intelligence agencies of other states”
as having two elements: spying and “disruption.” Seen in these terms, the
mission of KGB counter-intelligence was then preventive: to eliminate
spies and suppress disruption.
As far as spying is concerned, the sphere of information classified as
secret (described by Harrison 2013) was much larger in the Soviet Union
than in most states, and virtually any information-gathering that went
outside a narrow range of authorized channels of enquiry could be called
into question.
Despite this, the KGB of Soviet Lithuania caught few spies. As
Lithuania KGB Colonel Juozas Obukauskas noted (in 1968):
“Since 1958 we have not identified any cases of the undercover
placement of hostile agents on the territory of the republic.”5
A wider goal of the adversary, however, was considered to be to
establish direct or indirect influence over people that were hostile or
confused with the aim of achieving ideological, political, or economic
disruption. This extension was important because, even if few hostile
agents were caught, evidence that they might be present was easily found
Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/663, 62 (Doklad, no date). See also Hoover/LYA,
K-1/3/664, 14-23 (Spravka: o zadachakh operativnogo sostava 3 otdela 2
Upravleniia KGB pri SM Litovskoi SSR po uluchsheniiu
kontrrazvedyvatel’noi raboty na obsluzhivaemykh ob”ektakh. From:
Nachal’nik 2 otdeleniia 3 otdela 2 upravleniia KGB pri Sovete Ministrov
Lit. SSR podpolkovnik Matulionis. Date: 24 April 1968).
5
9
in frequent signals that the KGB received concerning events and persons
that might be classed as disruptive.
When the KGB received signals of potentially hostile activity, it
evaluated them using an implicitly statistical methodology of detection.
This methodology was rooted in the early history of the Soviet internal
security police, until 1934 the OGPU (as described by Shearer 2009: 124126, 130-133, 159-161). From May 1931, the OGPU centre required local
departments to submit two streams of reports. Ordinary reports were
produced monthly on the basis of summative statistics of activity.
Extraordinary reports took the form of event-based narratives. Local
officials asked the centre why it required both. Shearer continues:
The two types of reporting were necessary, explained an OGPU official
patiently. These reports functioned together to not just to report
crime, criminals, and police informant activities, but to build a
‘normal’ profile of a region, and then to identify crimes that ‘fall
outside the ordinary pattern’.
Only this comparison would enable police officials:
To identify and isolate, immediately and easily, any out of the ordinary
activities, and the social types associated with those activities.
Here can be seen a statistical concept of prevention that would allow
predictive evaluation by throwing up the implicit probability that a
person or an event represented a security threat. This concept of threat
perception strongly reflects the “dictator’s dilemma” (Wintrobe 2000: 2039): as the ruler’s power increases, so does the care with which the
subject hides inner feelings of disaffection that might lead to hostile
thought and action. When disloyalty is openly expressed, the dictator’s
position is already critical. To detect disaffection in time to prevent its
translation into active resistance, the dictator must watch for indirect
signals, however noisy they might be, and act on them regardless of the
cost in terms of false alarms.
When this concept was put into practice, we will see, the result was
the profiling of persons and the screening of events. Persons were
profiled on the basis that disloyal people as a group have shared
characteristics. These shared characteristics could then identify a person
that might be disloyal, allowing the KGB to intervene to isolate the person
or change their behaviour. The identifying characteristics could be
markers of past political weakness or guilt, based on historical records, or
they could be signals of current alienation or hostility, derived from
surveillance.
10
Events could be screened in the same spirit. This was a command
economy, vulnerable to disruption by any event not previously authorized
by a directive or plan. The mission of KGB operatives was to watch out for
“processes that are essentially anomalous, that is, incorrect, deviating
from the general rule of processes and phenomena.” 6 In Vilnius in 1968,
as in Moscow in 1931, it was events that “fall outside the ordinary
pattern” that could signal the presence of the enemy. Once identified,
abnormal events could be investigated, leading to clarification of those
responsible and their motives and connections.
The search for the hidden hand of the enemy at work could be
frustrating. Typical culprits were as you might expect: natural causes,
negligence, or private malice without political significance. It was hard to
find a case where sinister forces were truly at work. A KGB department
chief lamented one year: 7
In 1966 in the facilities of the republic no serious hostile
manifestations or ChP [chrezvychainye proizshestviya, emergency
situations] have been identified.
Most likely the KGB shared the existential anxiety that afflicts other
public organizations with a preventive commission: How do you know
you’ve averted something that hasn’t happened yet? When do you know
you’ve done enough? And how do you justify the resources you have?
The words quoted are from Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/664, 14-23 (Spravka
o zadachakh operativnogo sostava 3 otdela 2 Upravleniia KGB pri SM
Litovskoi SSR po uluchsheniiu kontrrazvedyvatel’noi raboty na
obsluzhivaemykh ob”ektakh. From: Nachal’nik 2 otdeleniia 3 otdela 2
upravleniia KGB pri Sovete Ministrov Lit. SSR podpolkovnik Matulionis.
Date: 24 April 1968).
6
Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/654, 1-9 (Spravka. From: Nachal’nik 3 otdela 2
upr KGB pri TSM Lit SSR polkovnik Sudzilovskii. Date: 20 January 1967).
The general experience recalls a parallel in the Federal investigations of
“sabotage” (FBI Classification 98) in the United States in the eras of World
War II, the Korean war, and the Vietnam war (described by Haines and
Langbart 1993: 97): “In almost all cases … no wilful acts of sabotage were
discovered. Upon investigation the Bureau usually found most of the
cases revolved around labor disputes and attempts to organize unions in
plants, disgruntled workers, juveniles, and greedy entrepreneurs who
sought extra profits by providing the government with defective war
materials.”
7
11
2.3. On KGB resources
The main resources available to the Lithuania KGB were its salaried
workforce and largely unpaid agent network. As far as employees are
concerned, Figure 2 shows that throughout the 1960s the KGB had a static
complement, numbering fewer than 1,200 officers, other ranks, and
civilians. Around 140 of these were specially tasked with counterintelligence under the KGB second administration (including the KGB fifth
department for “ideology,” hived off from the second administration in
1967). But in practice most of those engaged under other departments
(which included the technical apparatus responsible for interception and
surveillance) and local departments were probably working to support
counter-intelligence activities most of the time.
The primacy of counter-intelligence is very clear from evidence on the
size and composition of the informer network, shown in Figure 3.
Informers fell into two categories, agents (whose relationship with the
KGB was formalized by signed agreements and codenames) and “trusted
persons” (who had not signed anything and were known by initials).
Virtually all informers were supervised directly by the second
administration or indirectly through the local departments.8 The number
of informer was much greater than the number of salaried KGB staff and,
unlike the latter (which was static) it grew rapidly through the 1960s.
One resource that does not enter into Figures 2 or 3 is the small
numbers (between 8 and 10 throughout the 1960s and 1970s) of
supernumerary operatives (vneshtatnye operativnye sotrudniki), usually
officers of the KGB and Soviet Army reserves, that the KGB placed in the
secure facilities that it supervised. As described by Nikitchenko et al.
(1972: 55), their role was to coordinate the agent network, enforce the
regime of secrecy, assist with surveillance and interventions, and so on.
There were ten supernumeraries in 1964/65 (LYA, K-41/1/644, 97-105
(Spravka o rabote 3-go Otdela 2-ogo Upravlenii pri Sovete Ministrov
Litovskoi SSR v obsluzhyvaemykh objektakh. From: Nachal’nik 3 otdela 2
upravleniia Komiteta Gosbezopasnosti pri Sovete Ministrov Litovskoi SSR
polkovnik Sudzilovskii. Date: 31 January 1966)); 8 in 1971 (LYA, K41/1/688, 147-154 (Spravka o rabote vneshtatnykh sotrudnikov KGB pri
Sovete Ministrov Litovskoi SSR. From: Nachal’nik 2 upravleniia Komiteta
Gosbezopasnosti pri Sovete Ministrov Litovskoi SSR polkovnik Naras.
Date: 19 April, 1971)); and 9 in 1979 (LYA, K-41/1/755, 138a-148
(Spravka o rabote 3-go Otdela 2-ogo Upravlenii pri Sovete Ministrov
Litovskoi SSR. From: Nachal’nik 3 otdela 2 upravleniia Komiteta
Gosbezopasnosti pri Sovete Ministrov Litovskoi SSR polkovnik
Grishechkin. Date: 10 February 1979). Published as “KGB slaptieji
archyvai 1954-1991 m. Vilnius, 2011).
8
12
The small number of KGB career operatives may surprise, but it
should not. The KGB was a core element of the system of power, both as a
channel of information and as an instrument of unlimited power. A large
KGB could have threatened the personal authority of the Soviet Union’s
rulers. From Stalin’s time, Soviet rulers knew the value of keeping such
organizations small and close, with a tight rein on budgets and personnel
(e.g. Belova and Gregory 2002; Gregory 2009).
Table 1 puts KGB resources around 1970 in perspective. Soviet
Lithuania had approximately four KGB officers and informers per
thousand residents. The table offers two comparators, the Soviet Union in
the mid-thirties and East Germany just before the collapse of the Berlin
wall. Lithuania’s figure is more than the three per thousand found in the
Soviet Union in the 1930s, but much less than the 17 per thousand East
Germans in the last year of that society’s existence.
By implication, surveillance personnel were a scarce resource. Figure
4 considers density relative to the working population. If KGB assets were
spread smoothly, the result would have been 8 per thousand in every
workplace. In fact, the KGB economized by concentrating informers on
focal points such as schools, colleges, research institutes, and secure
facilities – in short, wherever educated young people were likely to
gather. By implication, many backwaters were left unobserved. With that
allocation, a relatively small complement was enough to keep Soviet
society quiet for most of the time. “Most of the time” may not have been
good enough in the long run, but even the Stasi could not hold down East
Germany forever.
Like most organizations with a preventive mission, the KGB made
little or no attempt to measure the efficiency with which it used its assets.
Occasionally we find measures of activity or case-load. As Table 2 shows,
data were reported from time to time through the 1960s on a few such
measures: verified alerts, cases (and persons) under investigation, and
persons prosecuted. The numbers do not support an image of information
channels crowded with signals and vigilant officers worn out by heavy
case loads. In the later sixties, as the dissident movement got under way
across the country, the average officer of the Lithuania KGB was having to
deal with a couple of signals during the year and was faced with perhaps
one investigation. Prosecutions per officer were trivially low. In the
course of a year only one in four agents and trusted persons was
providing an alert that turned out to have operational content. Where the
change in case load indicators over time is known, they were falling.
13
3. The KGB as a market regulator
The KGB was embedded in the economy through the second (counterintelligence) administration’s third department. According to a document
of January 1966 the third department (26 operatives) was responsible for
work on the railways and air transport, important industrial facilities,
research institutes, and civil defence organizations. It also regulated the
regime of secrecy; it gave or refused clearance for access to classified
documents and employments, and it supervised foreigners when they
were visiting economic facilities.9 The third department is therefore at the
focus of interest in the economy.
3.1. The world of the third department
The third department’s objectives are summed up in a plan of work dated
March 1968.10 These included deploying informers to carry out
surveillance at secure facilities with particular focus on employees with
access to government secrets; building the agent network in the transport
sector; preparing for events such as visits and exhibitions; raising
vigilance among the workers over security and suspicious behaviour (this
meant delivering interminable lectures on “the struggle with the
adversary’s ideological diversions”). Finally, the third department was
responsible for delivering endless lectures and interminable discussions
in the workplace on the need for political vigilance in the protection of
state secrets.11
Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/644, 39-47 (Spravka o 2-om Upravlenii KGB pri
Sovete Ministrov Litovskoi SSR. From: Nachal’nik 2 upravleniia Komiteta
Gosbezopasnosti pri Sovete Ministrov Litovskoi SSR polkovnik
Obukauskas. Date: 31 January 1966). Other departments of the second
administration at the time were the first (41 operatives), responsible for
foreigners and nuclear weapons; the second (47 operatives), responsible
for anti-Soviet organizations, the Catholic Church, intellectuals, and young
people, and the fourth (18 operatives), responsible for penetrating hostile
agencies and networks. As a result of a nationwide initiative, in 1967 the
second administration’s second department was reorganized as the KGB
fifth department for ideology.
9
Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/664, 1-13 (Plan agenturno-operativnoi raboty
3 otdela 2-go Upravleniia KGB pri SM Litovskoi SSR ma 1968 god. From:
Nachal’nik 3 otdela 2 upravleniia KGB pri Sovete Ministrov Litovskoi SSR
podpolkovnik Akimov. Date: 4 March 1968).
10
Interminable lectures: Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/656, 87 (Tezisy
vystupleniia: O sostoianii agenturno-operativnoi raboty po usileniiu
rezhima sekretnosti na ob”ektakh promyshlennosti, svjazi i transporta, po
11
14
The raison d’être of the third department in Lithuania deserves brief
attention. Grybkauskas (2009) has pointed out that, while a number of
facilities were located in the republic that were engaged indirectly in
defence work, as a relatively agrarian border province Soviet Lithuania
did not have any of the specialized final producers of military equipment
that would normally qualify the KGB to establish a third department in
Vilnius. In their absence, the local KGB justified the existence of a third
department with reference to the presence of approximately 2,000
politically unreliable persons in the industrial workforce.12 As détente set
in, KGB reports consistently detected heightened activity on the part of
hostile forces and among foreign specialists. The implication Grybkauskas
draws is that the local KGB was protecting its resources.
The personnel of the third department were probably a cut above that
of the average KGB officer and informer. In 1977 three quarters of third
department officers had college degrees and all had experience of
secondary schooling (Grybkauskas 2009: 100). This compares very
favourably with the wider Lithuanian workforce, less than half of whom
had higher and secondary experience (including incomplete) according to
the 1970 census only a few years before (TsSU 1972: 594).
A similar judgement can be made of the third department’s informer
network of an earlier year, 1968, when it comprised 239 agents and
trusted persons. The typical informer was an engineer, with higher
education, aged 25 to 50 years and with 5 to 15 years’ experience as an
informer. Nearly were clear of any markers arousing suspicion. Most had
no foreign language (all but 25), and no relatives abroad (all but 16), and
most lacked compromising evidence concerning themselves or close
relatives (all but 13). Only five had been recruited under pressure (“by
means of compromising evidence”).13
What did it mean to be a secure facility under KGB surveillance? As
Burinskaitė (2007: 101) describes it, the territory of a closed facility was
screened from regular traffic and secured by controlled access.
obespecheniiu sekretnosti i bezopasnosti sledovaniia po zheleznoi doroge
special’nykh voinskih transportov. Date: 24 February 1966); K-1/3/668,
4-13 (Plan agenturno-operativnykh meropriiatij po promyshlennym
ob”ektam na 1-e polugodie 1969 goda. From: nachal’nik 3 otdeleniia
Kaunasskogo gorotdela KGB pri SM LSSR major Truhachev. Date: 12
February 1969); K-1/3/668, 179 (Spravka o rezul’tatakh raboty 3-go
otdeleniia za 1969 god. From: Nachal’nik 3 otd-ia Kaunasskogo gorotdela
KGB pri SM Lit. SSR – maior Trukhachev. Date: 9 December 1969). 179.
12 Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/664, 154-167 (Spravka. From: Nachal’nik 3
otdela 2 upravleniia KGB pri SM Litovskoi SSR – podpolkovnik Akimov.
Date: 19 November 1968).
13 Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/670, 92-94 (1968).
15
Employees’ workplace conversations were monitored and their contacts
with visitors were restricted. Foreign visitors were excluded altogether
or, if admitted, were shown equipment and products designed to mislead,
while secret activities were temporarily suspended. 14
What kind of facilities were secure? In 1968 there were 107 (listed in
the Data Appendix). Detailed consideration places them in five distinct
categories:
 Economic regulators (3 facilities) were Lithuania’s planning
commission, branch of the USSR state bank, and statistical
administration.
 Science-based facilities (34 facilities) provided R&D services or
electronic products.
 Location-based activities (26 facilities) involved civil defence and
border security (including ports and airports) and topographical
activities involving maps and aerial photograps.
 Network utilities (37 facilities) supplied power, gas, and water, and
railway, highway, mail, and cable and wireless services.
 Heavy industry plants (7 facilities) were such as shipyards and
fertilizer factories.
These facilities were distributed among the nine largest urban
districts of Lithuania as shown in Figure 6. In a centralized society where
cities, industries, and political power had common origins, it is not
surprising to see the prominence of the capital city. Vilnius had a
monopoly of the economic regulators, for example. More generally, the
distribution of facilities (in 1972) can be compared with the distribution
of the urban population (in the 1970 census). As noted in the figure, three
other concentrations stand out: science based facilities in Lithuania’s
capital city Vilnius, location based activities in Lithuania’s seaport
Klaipėda, and network utilities in Šiauliai, a staging post for missile troops
headquartered in the town and deployed in the neighbouring woodlands.
Employment statistics place the “secure facilities” and trends affecting
them in context. As Figure 5 suggested, the secure facilities accounted for
less than one tenth of the Lithuanian public sector(i.e. non-farm)
workforce, but its growth rate (10 percent annually) was much above that
of the public sector as a whole (6 percent annually). Employment at the
“specially important” defence subcontractors was growing particularly
Such visits could be made only by decision of the USSR Council of
Ministers, after consultation with the KGB and armed forces General Staff.
Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/670, 29-30 (Vypiska iz instruktsii o poriadke
primeneniia Pravil prozhivaniia inostrantsev i lits bez grazhdanstva v
SSSR. Date: 28 February 1969).
14
16
fast (more than 12 per cent annually). Security clearances at the “specially
important” facilities were also growing at 10 percent annually. The only
slow-growing segment of the secret sphere was the KGB-regulated nonindustrial facilities (such as railways).
What did the third department actually do? The security of the Soviet
system of rule relied on a capacity to block unauthorized channels for
information and action of any kind. The KGB administered interlocking
mechanisms that upheld this capacity, including enforcement of the
secrecy of government business, selection and clearance of personnel
based on records and surveillance for access to secret business, and
continuous KGB surveillance of persons and events for signs of risks to
security leading to investigation and intervention. We describe those
systems before asking: if they did not exist, then what?
3.2. Secrecy and selection
We begin with secrecy. A regime of secrecy governed official
documentation, based on “conspirative norms” (Harrison 2013). Every
Soviet organization of significance received secret plans and other
instructions from higher authority through a secure channel, maintained
by its first or “secret” department. This, not watching out for “a
disrespectful remark about Stalin,” was the “secret” department’s primary
function. In turn, the first department was staffed by party members and
supervised directly by the KGB third department. Thus, the KGB was
responsible for enforcing the regime of secrecy throughout government
and party offices and economic facilities.
When KGB third department officers came visiting, they began by
inspecting the first department and checking the conditions of storage
and handling of secret correspondence to ensure that they complied with
instructions (which themselves were secret). In turn the instructions
were designed to assure the security of the secret document at every
stage of its life course from creation through transmission, storage, and
eventual destruction. Assuring the security of government information
was interpreted not only that the contents of any secret document should
be concealed from those not authorized to know them, but that the
existence of any secret should also be concealed. In other words, the
regime of secrecy was itself secret.
Because government business was secret by default, no one could
exercise management authority in the Soviet economy without access to
secret documentation. This access required KGB third department
clearance (described by Grybkauskas 2006, 2007a). In effect there was a
corner of the Soviet labour market where cleared personnel were
supplied and demanded – and supply fell persistently short.
17
The overall number of clearances in Soviet Lithuania is known only for
particular years and sectors. We know that in 1979 (according to
Grybkauskas 2007a: 80) 14,000 personnel had clearance for the highest
grade of classification, “top secret (special file).” This was around 1
percent of the public-sector workforce.15 Those cleared at lower levels
were presumably more numerous. We know also (from Figure 4) that in
the elite facilities of “special importance” around one quarter of the
workforce was cleared for access to paperwork classified at any level, but
this proportion was presumably above the average.
On the evidence of Figure 4 the number of positions requiring access
to secrets was growing rapidly. Combined with the normal turnover of
employees, this implied a significant demand for new clearances. In 1973
the third department issued a total of 4,257 clearances (Grybkauskas
2007a: 84). Sometimes clearance was refused, blocking a person’s further
career. Denial of clearance was equivalent to a career block, with the
complication that the person dismissed or refused promotion could not
be informed of the true reason. The average refusal rate in Soviet
Lithuania in 1973 was 7 percent (Grybkauskas 2006: 84). Reasons for
refusal are considered below.
The clearance system faced the KGB with two main problems, both of
which arose from below. One was the growing demand for clearances,
which strained KGB resources; the other was that refusals caused
problems for managers, who were reluctant to enforce them.
Rising demand for cleared personnel (discussed by Grybkauskas
2008: 36) was propelled by a mix of real growth and inflation. Real
growth arose from the disproportionate expansion of the economy’s
secret sphere over time. Why the secret sphere grew so rapidly is not
considered here. It may have reflected policy, but it may also have
resulted spontaneously from the supply privileges of the secure facilities,
which enabled them to expand at the expense of their environment.
Alongside real growth was a kind of grade inflation, based on several
distinct processes. Security classifications were arbitrary to some extent,
and caution led to over-classification, so that new lines of work were
classified while old lines were not declassified, and so on. There were
growing numbers of requests for clearance from facilities that were not
secure but had links with secure facilities that they could not develop
without clearance to visit. Finally, high turnover among cleared
employees generated a large flow of new clearance applications, along
with a spreading circle of newly cleared persons that were inexperienced
In 1979 the Lithuanian public sector employed 1,435,000 “workers
and staff” (TsSU 1980: 390).
15
18
in handling classified information. 16 The inflation was countered by
periodic reviews that cut back the number of posts requiring clearance:
for example, by 30 percent in industry and science across the republic in
1963, as confirmed in Figure 4.17
In the market for cleared personnel, it seems that supply always fell
short of demand. The evidence of shortage is that the KGB kept
discovering persons without clearance in chains of secret
correspondence. When they were identified, managers resisted
instructions to exclude them and sought to avoid compliance by means of
delay and negotiation.
Full compliance with the clearance system was an impossible goal.
Managers regularly nominated completely unsuitable people for
clearance: an alcoholic who repeatedly lost secret documents in his
charge, a one-time Christian Democrat jailed for anti-Soviet resistance,
and close relatives of emigrants and resisters.18 The clearance process
was evidently time consuming, and sometimes took so long that
employees were admitted to secret correspondence before being cleared.
When a candidate was eventually refused clearance, the director’s first
headache was to explain the decision to the employee without mentioning
the KGB veto; refusal had to be justified on some other basis, such as poor
Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/654, 112-13 (Spravka: o merakh po usileniiu
rezhima sekretnosti na predpriiatiiakh i v uzhrezhdeniiakh g. Kaunasa.
To: Nachal’nik 3 otdeleniia Kaunasskogo gorotdela KGB pri SM LSSR –
maior Trukhachev. Date: 12 October 1967).
16
Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/654, 122 (From: Predsedatel’ Komiteta
Gosbezopasnosti pri Sovete Ministrov Litovskoi SSR polkovnik
Petkiavichius. To: Zamestiteliu nachal’nika 2 glavnogo upravleniia
Komiteta Gospezopasnosti pri SM Soiuza SSR polkovniku tovarishchu
Gorbatenko A.M. Date: oktiabr’ 1967).
17
Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/654, 105-120 (Spravka: o merakh po usileniiu
rezhima sekretnosti na predpriiatiiakh i v uzhrezhdeniiakh g. Kaunasa.
To: Nachal’nik 3 otdeleniia Kaunasskogo gorotdela KGB pri SM LSSR –
maior Trukhachev. Date: 12 October 1967).
18
19
conduct or performance.19 When clearance was refused, managers not
infrequently ignored the outcome. 20
According to Grybkauskas (2008: 37-39), the KGB had limited capacity
to manage managers that worked around the system “for the good of the
cause” or to discipline passive resistance. Directors appeared to survive
conflicts with KGB officers without suffering lasting career damage,
implying that it was worse to fail in the plan than to fail in security.
Grybkauskas quotes the Elfa electrical engineering factory director on
how he got around the KGB supervisor, known as the “guardian angel.” On
several occasions the latter instructed the director to remove politically
unreliable employees from their duties. The director was reluctant to
comply, given the difficulty of replacing them. He successfully exploited
the turnover of KGB supervisors to delay action continuously, in one case
for almost twenty years. More than anything else, this marks a dramatic
change in the political atmosphere since Stalin’s time, when no one could
save the manager that ignored the NKVD.
To summarize, you could work around the KGB. Where to
procrastinate would once have been to write your own suicide note, it
was now feasible. At the same time it cannot have been costless; to play
games with state security surely still took time, patience, and nerve, if not
more. Notably, while the KGB could be put off, there is no evidence that it
could be bought. There are no cases on file of corrupt side-payments or
other forms of regulatory capture.
3.3. Records and surveillance
The KGB’s person-level information was accumulated from records and
surveillance. Records provided historical evidence, while surveillance
Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/654, 101-104 (From: Nachal’nik Shiauliaiskogo
gorotdela KGB pri Sovete Ministrov Lit. SSR podpolkovnik ZHilinskas. To:
Zam. nachal’nika 3 otdela 2 upravleniia KGB pri SM Litovskoi SSR
starshemu leitenantu tovarishchu Morkunasu. Date: 16 September 1967).
19
Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/664, 24-24 (Zapiska : po “VCh” iz g. Kaunasa.
From: Zam gorotdela KGB pri SM Litovskoi SSR po gorodu Kaunasu –
podpolkovnik Snakin. To: Nachal’niku 2 upravleniia KGB pri Sovete
Ministrov Litovskoi SSR polkovniku tov. Narasu A.I. No date.); K-1/3/664,
29-36 (From: Predsedatel’ Komiteta Gosbezopasnosti pri Sovete
Ministrov Litovskoi SSR IU. Petkiavichius. To: TSentral’nyi Komitet
Kommunisticheskoi Partii Litvy. Date: 7 May 1968). Hoover/LYA, K1/3/670, 45-49 (From: nachal’nik SHiauliaiskogo gorotdela KGB pri SM
Litovskoi SSR – polkovnik ZHilinskas. To: Zam predsedatelia Komiteta
Gosbezopasnosti pri SM Litovskoi SSR polkovniku – tov. Aleksandrovu
M.N. Date: 30 January 1969).
20
20
added new signals. The informational content covered both actions and
circumstances. The combined stock of records and new signals was called
“compromising evidence” (kompromat). Compromising evidence was the
basis on which the KGB exercised statistical discrimination in clearing
personnel for sensitive employment and at other gateways such as
applications for foreign travel.21
More detailed insights into loyalty and discrimination are available
from a small person-level database. In December 1972 the KGB of
Panevėžys (1970 population 73,000) sent Vilnius details of 176 persons
against whom their files held kompromat. Listed separately were 6
persons cleared for access to “top secret” documentation (and therefore
holding senior positions) in spite of the evidence held; 10 persons refused
clearance because of the evidence held, but still occupying the senior
positions for which clearance had been sought; 96 persons refused
permission to travel abroad because of the evidence held; and 79 persons
occupying senior positions in spite of the evidence held. (The numbers
sum to 191 but there was some double-counting, so 15 people were listed
twice.) With a few gaps the lists provide each person’s full name (and so
gender and ethnicity), year of birth, level of education, party or Komsomol
membership, occupational status and/or position, and a brief description
of the compromising evidence in each case.
The dataset is surely not the population of all those in KGB files, even
in a small market town. It would not be a random or representative
sample. The people in it were chosen because they held relatively
important positions or because they had applied to travel abroad; neither
makes a typical citizen. Still the sample is suggestive of what the KGB saw
as ground for suspicion.
We categorize the reported signals along two dimensions: historical
versus contemporaneous, and circumstantial versus voluntary action.
Table 3 shows that the 176 people between them were the subject of 321
signals. Just over half the signals (167) could be classified as historical
and involuntary, that is, the evidence reflected circumstances of the
distant past over which the subject had never had any control, such as
conditions into which they were born or that were created by the action
of others. The next largest categories related to contemporaneous
circumstances (65) and voluntary actions that belonged to the historical
past (55). Only one tenth (34) concerned voluntary actions that were
current or recent. But since these 34 signals were associated with 34
Ledeneva (2006: 58-90) describes post-Soviet uses of kompromat,
attributing the term to “1930s secret police jargon.”
21
21
distinct persons, they also represented one fifth of the 176 people in the
sample. Some examples illustrate the realities behind the numbers.
Historical/circumstantial evidence (167 signals). The subject was
perhaps born into a family of the pre-Soviet urban or rural elite, or was
liable to resettlement under Soviet occupation in their own right or as a
family member, or a family member collaborated with the German
occupation or resisted the Soviet occupation, or fled the country after the
war, or a family member was sentenced for “state crimes.”
The KGB’s focus on past repression was well founded. Working from a
survey of Soviet war refugees in Europe and America, Inkeles and Bauer
(1959, 265-280), created a measure of their respondents’ underlying (as
opposed to superficial) hostility to the Soviet system and looked for
determinants in their life histories. They found that the single most
important factor in this hostility was “experience of arrest by the secret
police of oneself or a family member.”
Contemporaneous/circumstantial evidence (65 signals). The
subject might be currently in correspondence with a relative abroad (who
in turn might be but was not necessarily linked to anti-Soviet activity), or
had a family member at home who was known to grumble about the
regime, or was employed at or lived near a secure facility. Having a
relative abroad created a Catch-22. You want to travel to Germany
because your brother is there. But the fact that your brother is there will
be held against you as kompromat. Thus, the reason that you want
something becomes the grounds on which it will be denied.
Historical/voluntary hostile action (55 signals). The subject might
once have collaborated personally with the German occupation or
resisted the Soviet occupation, or had been sentenced for “state crimes” in
their own right. Of course many of those that supported German
occupation acted under some degree of coercion; equally, it’s debatable to
what extent voluntary action was required for a conviction under Stalinist
laws on counter-revolutionary crimes. Still, rightly or wrongly, many
Lithuanians did have pro-German sympathies in wartime or chose to
resist Soviet rule so this classification seems more reasonable than the
alternative.
Contemporaneous/voluntary hostile action (34 signals). Finally,
the subject was found to be doing something in the present or recent past
that violated Soviet norms of behaviour or demonstrated disaffection.
Most common were religious observance and the expression of openly
anti-Soviet views; also included were unauthorized contacts with
foreigners or foreign representatives.
Further analysis shows that the sample is made up of two quite
different groups of people (for more detail see Appendix Table A-3).
Those employed in management positions, whether cleared or uncleared,
22
were typically young, male, and well educated. A minority had party or
Komsomol membership; few had relatives abroad. In comparison, those
refused permission to travel were ten years older on average, much more
likely to be female, with much less education, and very unlikely to be
party members. On the whole those refused travel did not generally have
worse histories than the managers, but they were less discreet: the
frequency of a signal of contemporaneous/voluntary hostile action was
29 percent, compared with close to zero among the managers.
We learn more by merging the entire sample and re-sorting it on the
criterion of contemporaneous/voluntary hostile action. In other words,
what were the average characteristics of those that showed a bad attitude
in the present, by comparison with those that lived under the shadow of a
suspicious past or other factors they could not control?
Table 4 shows results. We see that those engaging in current or recent
actions that the regime considered hostile were two years older and with
two years less of education. They were substantially more likely to be
female and to have relatives abroad. On all measures they were less likely
to carry historical markers of disloyalty. This is a product of selection,
rather than of the age difference, which has the “wrong” sign. (Other
things being equal, one would expect older citizens, with more experience
of life in independent Lithuania, to have worse, not better histories.) Two
differences are suggestive, however. One is that those engaged in current
hostile activity were much more likely to have relatives abroad. Another
is that they were somewhat more likely to be party or Komsomol
members.
Beyond a few sums, the KGB did not do data analysis. What might
more detailed analysis have given them? Most likely, what they knew
already from direct experience: People whose families were expropriated
or penalized in the past often harbour grievances in their hearts. Those
that carry the stigma of hostile social origins or associations have mostly
learned to keep their mouths shut, but some of the others have not. Party
membership can be a cover for disloyalty. Some of those that have won a
party card against the odds think it gives them a license to say what they
like.
3.4. Investigation and intervention
Events, like people, could be profiled and categorized. A significant duty of
the third department was to identify events that were abnormal, and
therefore emergencies or “ChP” (chrezvychainye proizshestviya) for
investigation. For such events were, by definition, deviations from the
plan decreed by the party. Here more than anywhere, we see that the life
of the KGB officer was just one damn thing after another. Emergencies
23
were numerous and frequent. In the fields, a hayrick burned.22 A train was
late; a wagon was derailed. In the factory, equipment was damaged,
materials were lost or contaminated, employees suffered injury or
death.23 Whose hand was at work? Was it the hand of the foreign
adversary, or of some unnoticed person under the adversary’s influence?
Every event had to be logged and considered. Every mystery had to be
clarified.
Unsolved cases were like toothache; they lingered, could not be
ignored, and were often hard to clear. Perhaps in the New Year of 1966
Lithuania KGB chief Randakevičius could find reason to celebrate: 24
Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/627, 251-255 (Spravka From: Zam.
predsedatelia Komiteta Gosbezopasnosti pri Sovete Ministrov Litovskoi
SSR IU. Petkiavichus. To: Zaveduiushchemu administrativnym otdelom
TSK KP Litvy tov. Kairialis A.K. Date: ianvar’ 1964). Hoover/LYA, K1/3/637, 37-40 (Spravka: ob uchastii KGB pri SM Litovskoi SSR v
rassledovanii prichin pozharov v respublike. From: Zam nachal’nika
sledotdela KGB pri SM Litovskoi SSR – podpolkovnik IAnkevichius, zam
nach 2 otdela 2 upr KGB pri SM Litovskoi SSR – podpolkovnik
Kardanovskii. No date.).
22
Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/668, 61-62 (: Dopolnenie k spetssoobshcheniiu
776 ot 15 maia 1969 g. From: Nachal’nik Mazheikskogo RO KGB pri SM
Litovskoi SSR podpolkovnik K. Sarpalius. To: Nachal’niku 3 otdela 2
upravleniia KGB pri SM Litovskoi SSR kapitanu tov. Morkunasu E.B. Date:
21 May 1969); 74-75 (Spetssoobshchenie From: Nachal’nik Mazheikskogo
RO KGB pri SM Litovskoi SSR podpolkovnik K. Sarpalius. To: Nachal’niku 3
otdela 2 upravleniia KGB pri SM Litovskoi SSR kapitanu tov. Morkunasu
E.B. Date: 15 May 1969); 80-82 (From: Nachal’nik Utenskogo RO KGB pri
SM Lit SSR podpolkovnik S. Tikhomirov. To: Nachal’niku 3 otdela 2
upravleniia KGB pri SM Litovskoi SSR kapitanu tov. Morkunasu E.B. Date:
22 May 1969); 116-119 (Dokladnaia zapiska: Ob imevshikh mesto
proishestviiakh na Akmianskom tsementnom zavode za 2 polugodie 1968
i 1969 god. From: Nachal’nik Mazheikskogo RO KGB pri SM Litovskoi SSR
podpolkovnik K. Sarpalius. To: Nachal’niku 3 otdela 2 upravleniia KGB pri
SM Litovskoi SSR kapitanu tov. Morkunasu E.B., sekretariu Akmianskogo
RK KP Litvy tov. Vengalisu V.P. Date: 9 September 1969); 120-124
(Spravka. From: Nachal’nik otd-ia 3 otdela Komiteta gosbezopasnosti pri
Sovete Ministrov Litovskoi SSR maior Kazakov. No date.); 128-128 (From:
Nachal’nik Kedainskogo RO KGB pri SM LSSR podpolkovnik V.Lesitskas.
To: nachal’niku 2 upravleniia KGB pri Sovete Ministrov Litovskoi SSR
polkovniku tovarishchu Narasu A.I. Date: 9 December 1968).
23
Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/643, 1-16 (Otchet : Ob agenturno-operativnoi i
sledstvennoi rabote KGB pri Sovete Ministrov Litovskoi SSR za 1965 god.
From: Predsedatel’ Komiteta Gosbezopasnosti pri Sovete Ministrov
Litovskoi SSR general-maior A Randakiavichius. To: Komitet
24
24
Much attention has been given to work on cases of unsolved ChP. This
was to implement the USSR KGB Collegium’s decision of 27 February
1965. As a result, clarity has been achieved and measures adopted in
seven cases of unsolved crime.
A different kind of ChP was industrial conflict. In these cases human
agency was always at work. Large-scale strikes were exceptionally rare;
temporary hold-ups, go-slows, and walk-outs at the shop level may have
been more frequent (and poorly distinguished from supply breakdowns).
A brickworks in Šiauliai district suffered a strike in February 1968, as a
result of which three shifts, 150 person-days, and 7,500 rubles of output
were lost. The KGB reported the proximate cause of the strike as a fall in
output leading to the non-payment of bonuses for January. The fall in
output was in turn traced to … well, everything that was wrong with the
Soviet economy: “fuel shortage, supply of frozen materials to the
workshop, poor labour organization, lack of showers where workers
could wash at the end of the shift, tardy provision of supplementary
dinners, and the insensitive and abrasive attitude of the combine
management to the workers.”25 (No surprises there.)
Of more interest is a dispute at a parts factory in Ukmergė district. In
February 1969 the management decided to compensate for overspending
the wage fund by cutting piece rates. The workers went on strike and a
shift was lost. The Ukmergė KGB rushed to the scene. Captain of state
security Ivanov held talks and listened to all sides. The managers’
decision, Ivanov concluded, was correct, but it should have been
introduced more gradually and after more consultation. He issued advice:
the managers must improve communication, and the workers must
return to work.26
So, it seems, the KGB was in the business of industrial conciliation! It
seems also that Alec Nove was half right: the KGB was not interested in
“overspending of the wage fund” – but it was interested in the result of
overspending the wage fund, if the result was disruption and conflict.
Notably, Ivanov’s intervention had a real security payoff: One of the
strike leaders, he discovered, was previously sentenced to 20 years’
Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti pri Sovete Ministrov Soiuza SSR. Date: 7
January 1966).
Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/664, 155 (Spravka. From: Nachal’nik 3 otdela 2
upravleniia KGB pri SM Litovskoi SSR – podpolkovnik Akimov. Date: 19
November 1968).
25
Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/668, 26-27 (Spetssoobshchenie : From:
Nachal’nik Ukmergskogo raionnogo otdeleniia KGB pri SM Lit SSR
podpolkovnik Gal’vidis. To: Tov. Obukauskasu Iu.S. Date: 5 March 1969).
26
25
forced labour for treason, and another had a conviction for
embezzlement. The latter would be prosecuted for violent behaviour
(“hooliganism”).
3.5. The regulatory burden
While distributing benefits to the regime, KGB regulation was costly.
Costs were both direct and indirect. Based on the records of the regulator,
we can show only the direct costs. The KGB was a small organization,
employing one per thousand of the Soviet Lithuanian workforce, so the
direct costs of KGB regulation were small.
Indirect costs were probably much greater. While the KGB was small,
related research (Harrison 2013) has suggested that costs to the KGB
itself of adhering to its own standards of secrecy were very large. If the
facilities that the KGB regulated faced similar costs, then indirect burdens
on the economy would be similarly substantial. But only the records of
the regulated facilities and organizations can reveal the scale of indirect
costs and their trends over time.
To add a necessary complication, the literature on regulation in
market economies recognizes that the regulator is likely to know less than
the firm that is being regulated. The result may be unintended
consequences. When regulation fails to recognize the ignorance of the
regulator, firms can be incentivized to raise costs, dilute quality, or fail to
invest in necessary infrastructure. Analysis of the differences in
information held by firms and regulators suggests how to design efficient
regulatory policies in the presence of this asymmetry (Armstrong and
Sappington 2007).
Transferring these ideas to the Soviet context we might think of KGB
regulation of personnel selection as a mechanism that changed the
incentives of both firms and employees. The KGB administration of
security clearance impeded the capacity of firms to select and promote
qualified personnel. In order to avoid difficulties and delays, firms would
have had an incentive to promote personnel on known loyalty before
known competence.
This would be bad enough if loyalty and incompetence were
orthogonally distributed. It would be worse if they were correlated.
Egorov and Sonin (2011) have considered the loyalty-competence tradeoff under a dictator who values competence, but fears the challenge of
enemies and betrayal by his nearest supporters, and fears them more, the
more competent they are. For this reason, Egorov and Sonin write,
“loyalty and incompetence are two sides of the same token.”
It seems highly likely that KGB regulation of the market for managers
did long-term damage to the supply side of the Soviet economy. It turned
the personal acquisition of skills and qualifications into a highly uncertain
26
investment, because no one could be sure that some marker for disloyalty
would not then be found in their past and used to deny promotion. To
avoid the risk of exposure of dubious personal or family histories,
employees would have had incentives to avoid acquiring the skills and
competences that would put them in line for promotion. KGB control of
promotion made a quiet life in a low-skill, low-wage environment
preferable to seeking distinction and risking the scrutiny that would
inevitably follow.
An implication is that human capital accumulation in the Soviet
society suffered from adverse selection. The Polish economist
Włodzimerz Brus (1975: 200) came to the same conclusion from personal
experience, describing the tendency to “negative selection” of personnel
under communism for “servility and conformity.”27
There is no evidence, however, that the KGB was even slightly
interested in the economic costs or unintended consequences of its
counter-intelligence role. Here was something no one needed to know.
4. Conclusions
Why should economists and historians pay attention to the KGB in the
Soviet economy? A short answer is that the KGB paid much attention to
the economy. Why and how it did so and with what results are questions
that were hard to answer until now, and have rarely (if ever) been posed.
The counter-intelligence function of the KGB was embedded in the
Soviet economy through the officers and agent network of the second
administration’s third department. Through its third department, the KGB
became a regulator of the command system.
Like a market regulator in an open society, the KGB had preventive
and protective functions. There the similarity ends. Whereas marketeconomy regulators might be expected to aim to protect the citizen and
prevent harm to social welfare, the KGB’s mission was to protect the
regime by preventing the leakage of government business and hostile
disruption of the planned economy. Where a market regulator might
work to reduce unfair treatment and information asymmetries, the KGB
acted to enforce secrecy and political and social discrimination.
The KGB carried out its preventive mission by profiling persons and
screening events for markers of hostile influence or disloyalty. Here its
measurable objectives were to prevent disloyal persons from gaining
Misallocation is relative. The 1960s was not a great decade for
American management selection and performance either, as suggested by
Halberstam (1987) and Johnson (1991).
27
27
access to government business and to suppress their influence over
events.
An intuitive test of the significance of an organization is to infer what
might have happened if it did not exist. Open societies are continually
“disrupted” because competent citizens who might be critical of the
existing order intrude into government business so that its business is
leaked, triggering demands for public accountability. Independently of the
government, people join together in markets to change the status quo by
means of disruptive innovations, or to resist or change the course of
corporate plans and government policies. In the command economy any
of these was classified as disruptive behaviour that ought to be
suppressed. It was the specialized task of the KGB to suppress them.
Put that way, our question has a clear answer. Without an
organization committed to the counter-intelligence function as the KGB
defined it, the Soviet state would have been unprotected against
disruptive, disloyal citizens. Its plans would have been continually thrown
off course by unauthorized initiatives. Its business would have become
known to the citizens. Unofficial representatives would have demanded
explanations and even a say.
In order to prevent the disintegration of the command hierarchy of
Soviet society, KGB counter-intelligence imposed clear but as yet
unmeasured regulatory burdens on the Soviet economy. It is not clear
which of these burdens was most important, but an obvious candidate is
the sweeping exclusion of talented but potentially disloyal citizens from
positions of management and leadership.
To the extent that previous scholarship has ignored the counterintelligence function, it has also neglected the burdens associated with it.
KGB records give us ample evidence that the burdens existed, but do not
tell us how large they were. Research in the records of the enterprises and
organizations that were regulated by the KGB may shed further light.
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Figures
Figure 1. Baltic KGB employees, 1953 to 1984 (selected years): the local
nationality gap
Source: Appendix table A-1.
Notes: The “nationality gap” is the percent share of local nationals in the
KGB workforce, less their percent share in the resident population in the
1959 census.
In the Soviet Union, national identity (e.g. Russian, Estonian) was selfdeclared for purposes of acquiring personal identity papers and in
national censuses. We suppose that the Estonian and Latvian KGB figures
were based on self-declaration. For Lithuania the KGB figures are based
on the ethnic identification of family names given in holiday rosters and
circulation lists found in KGB files.
For Estonia and Latvia, the data points span the entire Republican
KGB. For Lithuania, they are based on much smaller KGB subunits
(specific departments of the second administration), and are therefore
more susceptible to the law of small numbers.
Figure 2. Lithuania KGB employees, 1961 to 1971 (selected years)
Source: Anušauskas (2008: 43). The original data are reported for
alternate years, 1961 to 1971.
Note: There were 36 local departments in 1961, falling to 28 in 1967.
"Other" departments were the fifth, seventh, operational-technical, and
investigative departments, the information and analysis subdivision, and
the secretariat.
Figure 3. The Lithuania KGB informer network, 1961 to 1971 (selected
years)
Source: Anušauskas (2008: 88, 94). The original data are reported for
alternate years, 1961 to 1971.
Figure 4. The Lithuania KGB informer network: density in selected facilities
and years
Sources and notes: Informers are the sum of agents and trusted persons.
The density of informers in educational facilities is compiled from figures
given in Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/630, 64-78 (Spravka: Ob operativnoi
obstanovke na nekotorykh ob”ektakh, obsluzhivaemykh 2 otdeleniem s
otdela 2 upravleniia KGB pri SM Lit. SSR. From Nachal’nik 2 otdela 2
upravleniia KGB pri SM Lit. SSR – podpolkovik Naras. Date: April 1963).
For KNIIRIT see Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/668, 120-124 (Spravka. From:
Nachal’nik otd-ja 3 otdela Komiteta gosbezopasnosti pri Sovete Ministrov
Litovskoi SSR major Kazakov. Date: October 1969). For the Baltija
shipyard see Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/711, 93-103 (spravka po
sudostroitel'nomu zavodu "Baltiia". From operupolnomochennyi 1 otd-ia
okgb st. leitenant V.Kulikov, nachal'nik 1 otdeleniia OKGB pri SM LSSR po
gor klaipede i LMB kapitan K.Petrikas. Date: 20 May 1974). The Baltija
shipyard was “known” to be a target for foreign espionage. Hoover/LYA,
K-1/3/711, 104-104 (From nachal'nik 2 upravleniia KGB pri Sovete
Ministrov LSSR polkovnik A. Naras. To nachal'nik otdela KGB pri SM Lit.
SSR po gor. Klaipede i litovskomu morskomu basseinu podpolkovniku
tov. Basenko A.Ia. Date: 7 March 1974). Amongst the working population,
numbers for 1969 and 1971 shown in Figures 2 and 3 are compared with
the working population from TsSU (1972: 601).
Figure 5. Employment in Soviet Lithuania, 1960 to 1971 (selected years), in
facilities regulated by the KGB second administration and in the public
sector as a whole
5.6% p.a.
10.1% p.a.
3.5% p.a.
12.7% p.a.
10.0% p.a.
Source: Data for regulated facilities are from Anušauskas (2008: 71); the
original data are reported for alternate years, 1961 to 1971. For the
public sector, see TsSU (1961: 638; 1972: 601).
Notes: Annual average growth rates are based on first and last years of
each series. Regulated non-industrial facilities are in transport,
communication, and trade facilities and fisheries. Clearances are for
“secret” correspondence and above.
Figure 6. KGB-regulated facilities in Soviet Lithuania, June 1968, by city and
type
Source: The 107 regulated facilities are listed in Appendix Table A-2.
Notes: Cities are ranked from left to right in declining order of resident
populations according to the All-Union Census of Population of the USSR
for 1970, available from Demoscope Weekly at
http://demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/ussr70_reg2.php (accessed 22 May
2013). Based on the same data we find four concentrations of facilities,
where a concentration is defined as at least two facilities within a given
group, where the number of facilities of that group was at least twice the
number predicted by the town’s share of the urban population. These
were (1) economic regulators and (2) science based facilities in
Lithuania’s capital city Vilnius (3) location based activities in Klaipėda (4)
network utilities in Šiauliai.
Tables
Table 1. The density of informer networks: selected regions and years
Soviet
Soviet
East
Union Lithuania Germany
(1935)
(1970)
(1991)
Resident population, millions
159.2
3.1
15.9
State security staff and informers:
Thousands
500
12.0
270
Per thousand residents
3.1
3.8
17.0
Sources: Populations, for the Soviet Union, the average of figures for 1
January 1935 and 1936 from Andreev, Darskii, and Khar’kova (1993:
118); Soviet Lithuania, the census figure for 15 January 1970 from TsSU
(1970: 10); East Germany, the mid-1991 figure from The Conference
Board Total Economy Database January 2013, at http://www.conferenceboard.org/data/economydatabase/ (accessed 9 June 2013).
State security employees and informers, for the Soviet Union, Shearer
(2009: 136); for Soviet Lithuania, totals of employees, agents, and trusted
persons averaged over 1969 and 1971 from Figures 2 and 3; for East
Germany, Bruce (2012: 10).
Table 2. Soviet Lithuania KGB case-load indicators, 1960s (annual average)
1961 to 1965 1967 to 1971
Total:
Alerts of operational significance
…
2,531
Cases under investigation
1,592
1,183
Persons under investigation
1,601
1,213
Persons prosecuted
40
35
Per 100 employees:
Alerts of operational significance
…
211
Cases under investigation
135
99
Persons under investigation
135
101
Persons prosecuted
3.4
2.9
Per 100 informers:
Alerts of operational significance
…
25
Cases under investigation
24
12
Persons under investigation
24
12
Persons prosecuted
0.6
0.3
Source: Totals (first four rows) are calculated from Anušauskas (2008:
71). Other figures are normalized by employees and informers (agents,
and trusted persons) as shown in Figures 2 and 3. The original data are
reported for alternate years, 1961 to 1971.
Table 3. Kompromat in two dimensions: Panevėžys, December 1972
Circumstances
Voluntary
evidence hostile action
Total
Historical
167
55
222
Contemporaneous
65
34
99
Total
232
89
321
Source: As Appendix Table A-3. Units of measurement are items of
compromising evidence (kompromat) held by the KGB and distributed
over the 176 persons covered in the source.
Table 4. Kompromat and the compromised: Panevėžys, December 1972
Contemporaneous hostile action?
No
Yes
Difference
Total
142
34
…
Personal data
Prob. Russian
Prob. Female
Average age in 1944
Average years education
Prob. Party or Komsomol
1%
39%
19.7
10.1
6%
0%
47%
21.9
8.3
15%
-1%
8%
2.11
-1.81 **
8% *
Employment status
Prob. Employed
Prob. WC/Supervisor | Employed
Prob. Retired
Prob. Housewife
86%
77%
10%
4%
79%
59%
15%
6%
-7%
-17% **
4%
2%
Nature of compromising evidence
Prob. Historical circumstances:
Personal
18%
12%
-7%
Of family member
7%
3%
-4%
Prob. Liable to resettlement:
Personally
6%
3%
-3%
As family member
19%
6%
-13% **
Of family members
8%
3%
-5%
Prob. Historical action:
Personally
15%
9%
-6%
By family member
35%
15%
-20% **
Prob. Sentenced:
Personally
21%
3%
-18% **
Family member
13%
9%
-5%
Prob. Current circumstances:
Personally
6%
12%
6%
Family member abroad
24%
44%
20% ***
Prob. Current action:
By family member
1%
6%
4% *
Source: As Appendix Table A-3. “WC” = white collar. Significance: * p < 0.1,
** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01. Significant differences are shown for information,
but do not merit literal interpretation because of selection: no one
entered the sample without having been chosen for it by circumstance or
voluntary action, historic or contemporaneous.
Data appendix
The data appendix is not for publication, but will be made available to the
public at http://warwick.ac.uk/markharrison/data/.
Table A-1. KGBs and census populations: per cent of local nationality
KGB employees
Census populations
Estonia
1953a
25
…
1959b
…
74.6
Latvia
1953c
17.5
…
d
1956
44
…
1958d
55
…
b
1959
…
62.0
Lithuania, second administration
1957e
53
…
1959b
…
79.3
1968f
39 (first dept)
…
1969g
23 (third dept)
…
h
1969
44 (first dept)
…
1970j
44 (first dept)
80.1
1971k
53 (first dept)
…
1973m
77 (fifth dept)
…
n
1979
…
80.0
1984e
75
…
Note: For Lithuania all figures are for the KGB second administration only
and for particular departments shown. We base ethnic identification on
family names in holiday rosters and circulation lists. The KGB did not
have unified personnel records; each administration had its own card
index.
Sources:
a Estimate provided by Meelis Saueauk (personal correspondence, 29
April 2013). According to Tannberg (2010: 000) the same figure for
employees of the Estonia MVD (including both state security and militia at
that time) was 32 per cent.
b TsSU (1961, pp. 18-20).
c Rahi-Tamm, Jansons, and Kaasik (2010: 000).
d Persak and Kamiński (2010: 162-163).
e Anušauskas (2008: 87).
f Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/659, 237-239 (Grafik otpuskov sotrudnikov 1-go
otdela 2 upravleniia KGB pri Sovete Ministrov Litovskoi SSR na 1968 g.
From first department chief Lt-Col Kardanovskii. 3 January 1968).
First draft: 26 April 2013. This version: 30 May 2014.
2
Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/670, 17 (Grafik otpuskov operativnogo sostava
3 otdela 2-go upravleniia KGB pri SM Lit. SSR na 1969 g. From third
department chief Capt. Markūnas. 15 January 1969.
h Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/683, 102-104 (Grafik otpuskov sotrudnikov 1
otdela 2 Upravleniia KGB pri Sovete Ministrov Lit. SSR na 1970 god. From
first department chief Lt-Col A. Kardanovskii. Date: 30 December 1969).
j Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/673, 24 (Spisok sotrudnikov 1 otdela 2
upravleniia KGB pri SM LSSR oznakomlennykh s prikazami, ukazaniiami
KGB pri SM Soiuza SSR i KGB pri Sovete Ministrov Lit. SSR ot 13.02.70 g.).
For an identical list see also Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/683, 105-106 (Grafik
otpuskov sotrudnikov 1 otdela 2 Upravleniia KGB pri Sovete Ministrov
Litovskoi SSR na 1969 god. From first department chief Lt-Col A.
Kardanovskii. Date: 27 January 1969). For 1970 census data see TsSU
(1972: 594).
k Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/683, 100-101 (Grafik otpuskov sotrudnikov 1
otdela 2 Upravleniia KGB pri Sovete Ministrov Litovskoi SSR na 1971 god.
From first department deputy chief Lt-Col A. Domarkas. Date: 15 January
1971).
m Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/699, 157 (Spisok sotrudnikov 5 otdela KGB pri
SM Lit. SSR oznakomlennykh s prikazami KGB pri SM Lit. SSR za 1973 g.).
n TsSU (1982: 36).
g
3
Table A-2. Facilities regulated by the Lithuania KGB second administration,
June 1968
Facility
Fundholder
Key
Vilnius
Planning Commission [Gosplan]
LSSR CM
E
State Bank [Gosbank]
LSSR CM
E
Min. of Communications
LSSR CM
N
Min. of Land Amelioration and Water
LSSR CM
L
Conservation (including the
Institute of Water Conservation)
Min. of Automobile Transport and
LSSR CM
N
Roads
Chief Admin. of Power and
LSSR CM
N
Electrification
Chief Admin. of Material and Technical LSSR CM
N
Supply
Admin. of Geology
LSSR CM
L
Lithuanian Admin. of Civil Aviation
USSR Min. of Civil
N
Aviation
Admin. of Land Reorganization
LSSR Min. of Agriculture
L
Vilnius District Admin. of Gas Pipelines USSR Min. of Gas
N
Industry
Central Statistical Admin.
LSSR CM
E
Research Institute of Electrography
USSR Min. of Radio
S
(mailbox G-4602). Does research
Industry
and experimental design work on
manufacture of display equipment,
computer output devices, and
document copiers.
Research Institute of Radar
USSR Min. of Radio
S
Instruments (mailbox R-6856).
Industry
Develops new models of radar
instruments.
Vilnius branch of the All-Union
USSR Min. of
S
Research Institute of
Electrotechnical Industry
Electrowelding Equipment
Republican Design Institute for Land
[LSSR] Min. of
L
Organization
Agriculture
Institute of Geology
LSSR CM Admin. of
L
Geology
4
Facility
Association “Sigma,” with Central
Design Bureau of Management
Systems and “Orgtekhnika”
Specialized Design Bureau.
Develops and prepares accounting
and organization equipment.
Vilnius Design Bureau (mailbox no. G4322). Does research and
experimental design work on
model integrated circuits and
special-purpose equipment
Vilnius Design Bureau of Magnetic
Recording (mailbox no. A-3593).
Develops sound recording
equipment for Ministry of Defence
contrast and also for needs of the
national economy.
Special Design Bureau of the
Accounting Equipment Factory.
Develops discrete choice
equipment [schetno-reshaiushchie
ustroistva]
Experimental Research Institute for
metal Cutting machine tools.
Develops and improves
metalworking machine tools
Vilnius Radar Instrument Factory
(mailbox V-7859). Produces radar
equipment for military purposes
Lithuanian Instrumentation Factory
(mailbox A-7934). Prepares sound
recording equipment for Ministry
of Defence contrast and also for
needs of the national economy.
Radio Components Factory (mailbox
no. A-7528). Produces
transformers for the defence
industry and also transformers and
deflection systems for television
sets
Vilnius Electrowelding Equipment
Factory (mailbox G-4823)
Fundholder
USSR Min. of Instrument
Building, Means of
Automation, and
Management Systems
Key
S
USSR Min. of the
Electronic Industry
S
USSR Min. of the Radio
Industry
S
USSR Min. of Instrument
Building, Means of
Automation, and
Management Systems
S
USSR Min. of Machine
Tool Building and the
Instrumentation
Industry
USSR Min. of the Radio
Industry
S
USSR Min. of the Radio
Industry
S
USSR Min. of the
Electronic Industry
S
USSR Min. of the
Electrotechnical Industry
S
S
5
Facility
Vilnius Electrotechnical Factory “Elfa”
(mailbox A-7586). Produces
compact electrical motors and
magnetic recorders for needs of the
national economy
Vilnius Factory of Electrical Meters
Vilnius Factory of Numerically
Controlled Machine Tools (mailbox
no. V-2677)
Vilnius Factory of Accounting
Equipment
Machine Tool Factory “Žalgiris”
(mailbox no. V-2936)
Factory of Building and Finishing
Machinery
Machine Tool Factory “Kommunaras”
Vilnius Power Grid
Vilnius Thermal Power Central
Vilnius oil depot
DOSAAF Republican committee
Civil Defence Staff
Unified Air Detachment and Vilnius
Airport
Fundholder
USSR Min. of the
Electrotechnical Industry
Key
S
USSR Min. of Instrument
Building, Means of
Automation, and
Management Systems
USSR Min. of Machine
Tool Building and the
Instrumentation
Industry
USSR Min. of Instrument
Building, Means of
Automation, and
Management Systems
USSR Min. of Machine
Tool Building and the
Instrumentation
Industry
USSR Min. of Building
and Road Engineering
USSR Min. of Machine
Tool Building and the
Instrumentation
Industry
LSSR CM Chief Admin. of
Power and Electrification
LSSR CM Chief Admin. of
Power and Electrification
LSSR CM Chief Admin. of
Material and Technical
Supply
[USSR DOSAAF]
LSSR [CM]
USSR Min. of Civil
Aviation, Lithuanian
Admin.
S
S
S
S
H
S
N
N
N
L
L
L
6
Facility
Vilnius division and lines: VilniusPorech’e-Druskininkai, VilniusStasiliai, Vilnius-Turmantas,
Vilnius-Šumskas, and LentvarisKaišiadorys
Kaunas
Kaunas Research Institute for Radar
Equipment [KNIIRIT] (mailbox no.
V-8574). Does exploratory research
on ways and means of creating new
radar equipment for Ministry of
Defence contracts and needs of the
national economy
Institute for Physical-Technical
Problems of Power Engineering.
Does development work on various
secret topics in new power
engineering, high-temperature
physics and cybernetics
Republican Institute for Design of
Water Supply “Litgiprovodkhoz”
Institute for Industrial Construction
Design “Promproekt”
Kaunas Geodesical, Cartographic, and
Land-Organization Departments.
Specialized Administration of Road
Building
Specialized Design Bureau “Vint”
(mailbox no. A-1281). Engages in
the development of screw
propellers for Ministry of Defence
contracts
Naval Engineering Factory “Piargale”
(mailbox no. A-7475). Produces
screw propellers for Ministry of
Defence contracts
Fundholder
Baltic Railway
Key
N
USSR Min. of the Radio
Industry
S
LSSR Academy of
Sciences
S
LSSR Min. of Agriculture
N
[LSSR CM State
Construction Admin.]
“Gosstroi”
Republican Design
Institute for Land
Organization [of the
LSSR Min. of Agriculture]
LSSR Min. of Road
Transport and Highways
USSR Min. of the
Shipbuilding Industry
S
USSR Min. of the
Shipbuilding Industry
L
N
S
S
7
Facility
Kaunas Radio Factory (mailbox R6856) and Specialized Design
Bureau
Artificial Textile Fibre Factory
Kaunas “Kaunas Energoremont”
[Power Repair] Enterprise
Lithuanian Office for Woodland Aerial
Photography
“Vodokanal” [Water Supply] Trust
Western Aerial-Photography
Geodesical Enterprise
“Sel’khozaerofots”emka”
Kaunas State Power station and
Petrashus State District Power
Station
Kaunas zonal base of “Glavneftesbyt”
[Oil Supply Administration]
Lithuanian Admin. Airport and Unified
Air Squadron of
Air Club and Radio Club
Kaunas communications office, secure
communications division, and city
and inter-city telephone exchanges
Radio station and facility no. 603
Fundholder
USSR Min. of the Radio
Industry
LSSR CM Admin. of the
Chemical Industry
USSR Min. of Power and
Electrification
All-Union “Lesproekt”
Association
LSSR Min. of Communal
Services
USSR Min. of Agriculture
S
N
L
N
L
LSSR CM Chief Admin. of
Power and Electrification
N
LSSR CM Chief Admin. of
Material and Technical
Supply
USSR Min. of Civil
Aviation
DOSAAF
LSSR Min. of
Communications
N
LSSR Min. of
Communications
USSR Min. of
Communications
N
Third district of the cable relay
turnpike. Maintains lines of
communication, including those
going to important secure facilities
and the international cable
Kaunas city and district civil defence
[LSSR CM]
staffs
Kaunas city railway station and lines:
Baltic Railway
Kaišiadorys-Linkaičiai, KaišiadorysKaunas, Palemonas-Gaižūnai,
Kaunas-Kybartai, Kazlų RūdaAlytus
Šiauliai
Key
S
N
L
N
N
L
N
8
Facility
Šiauliai television factory (mailbox no.
V-3822)
Electronics factory “Nuklon” (mailbox.
No. M-5621). The factory is
presently under construction. After
commissioning, the factory will
produce integrated logical circuits
for Ministry of Defence contracts
Šiauliai precision machine tools factory
Bicycle and Motor Factory “Vairus”
Oil depot
Land organization base
West-Lithuania Hydrogeological
Expedition
Power grid
State District Power Station “Rekiva”
Gas Supply Administration
Water Supply Administration
Specialized Road Building
Administration, production unit
District network, with facilities: TV
relay station, telephone exchange
[lineino-tekhnicheskii uzel], facility
no. 60, secure communication
facility [spetssviaz’], cable unit no.
33
Civil Defence Staff
Fundholder
Min. of the Radio
Industry
Min. of the Electronics
Industry
USSR Min. of Machine
Tool Building and the
Instrument Industry
USSR Min. of the
Automobile Industry
LSSR CM Chief Admin. of
Material and Technical
Supply
Republican Design
Institute for Land
Organization [of the
LSSR Min. of Agriculture]
LSSR CM Admin. of
Geology
LSSR CM Chief Admin. of
Power and Electrification
LSSR CM Chief Admin. of
Power and Electrification
LSSR Min. of Communal
Services
LSSR Min. of the
Communal Economy
LSSR Min. of Road
Transport and Highways
Min. of Communication
[LSSR CM]
Key
S
S
S
H
N
L
L
N
N
N
N
N
N
L
9
Facility
Railways of the Šiauliai division and
lines: Šiauliai-Eglaine, RadviliškisPagėgiai, Šiauliai-Lukšiai, and
Šiauliai-[illegible]
Klaipėda
Klaipėda Shipbuilding Factory “Baltija”
(mailbox no. N-5832)
Experimental Ship Repair Factory
(mailbox no. V-2677)
Workshop no. 2 (mailbox no. 109) of
the Riga Enterprise “Era”. Engages
in electrical installation work on
vessels of the fishing fleet and
Navy.
Ship Repair Factory no. 7
Klaipėda division of the State Design
Institute of the Fishing Fleet
Klaipėda trading port
Klaipėda Maritime Agency
Radio facility no. 61. Engages in
jamming radio broadcasts of
capitalist states
Klaipėda oil export entrepôt
Bases
Klaipėda Seafaring College
Coastal Weather Station
City Communications Network
Power Grid and State District Power
Station
Civil Defence Staff
DOSAAF
Klaipėda railway network and lines:
Klaipėda-Skuodas, Kretinga-Kužiai,
and Klaipėda-Pagėgiai
Fundholder
Baltic Railway
Key
N
USSR Min. of the
Shipbuilding Industry
USSR Min. of Fisheries
H
USSR Min. of the
Shipbuilding Industry
S
USSR Min. of the
Maritime Fleet
USSR Min. of Fisheries
H
USSR Min. of the
Maritime Fleet
USSR Min. of the
Maritime Fleet
LSSR Min. of
Commucations
L
LSSR CM Chief Admin. of
Material and Technical
Supply
USSR Min. of Fisheries
USSR Min. of Fisheries
USSR Min. of the
Maritime Fleet
LSSR Min. of
Commucations
LSSR CM Chief Admin. of
Power and Electrification
[LSSR CM]
[USSR DOSAAF]
Baltic Railway
S
L
L
N
N
L
L
L
N
N
L
L
N
10
Facility
Panevėžys
Ekranas Cathode Ray Tube Factory
(mailbox no. V-2963)
Automobile Compressor Factory
Precision Mechanical Factory.
Produces visual-display accounting
equipment
Panevėžys oil depot
City DOSAAF and Civil Aviation landing
strip
City and District Civil Defence Staffs
District communications network
Mažeikiai
Compressor Factory
Akmenė Cement Factory
Elektrėnai
Elektrėnai State District Power Station
Kėdainiai
Kėdainiai Chemical Combine
Jonava:
Nitrogenous Fertilizer Factory
Fundholder
Key
USSR Min. of the
Electronics Industry
USSR Min. of the
Automobile Industry
Sigma Association
S
LSSR CM Chief Admin. of
Material and Technical
Supply
[USSR DOSAAF]
N
[LSSR CM]
LSSR Min. of
Commucations
L
N
USSR Min. of Engineering
for the Light and Food
Industry and Household
Equipment
LSSR Min. of Building
Materials
S
S
S
L
H
LSSR CM Chief Admin. of
Power and Electrification
N
LSSR CM Admin. of the
Chemical Industry.
H
LSSR CM Admin. of the
H
Chemical Industry.
Source: The words in the first two columns are abstracted from
Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/664, 120-132 (Spisok uchrezhdenii, organizatsii i
predpriiatii Litovskoi SSR na kotorykh neobkhodimo provodit’
kontrrazvedyvatel’nuiu rabotu 2-m Upravleniem Komitetom
gosbezopasnosti pri SM Lit. SSR. From: Nachal’nik 2 upravleniia Komiteta
11
Gosbezopasnosti pri Sovete Ministrov Lit SSR – polkovnik Naras. Date: 18
June 1968). Text in [square brackets] is inserted. The third column is our
attribution, based on the key below.
Key:
E
H
Definition
Economic regulators
Heavy industry
facilities
L
Location-based
activities
N
Network utilities
S
Science-based
research or
production
Scope of activity
Accounting, planning, and financial services
Shipyards, fertilizer plants, and other
production without a clear research or
developmental orientation
Ports, airports, civil defence and border
security, and activities linked to resource
exploitation involving cartography and
aerial photography
Power, gas, and water supplies, railways,
highways, mail and cable services.
Research, development, testing, and
experimental facilities and electronic
products.
Abbreviations:
DOSAAF Voluntary Society for Cooperation with the Army, Air Force,
and Navy
LSSR
Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic
CM
Council of Ministers
Min.
Ministry
Admin. Administration (usually a functional or territorial subdivision
of a ministry)
12
Table A-3. Kompromat and persons compromised: Panevėžys, 1972
Persons, total
Personal data
Prob. Russian
Prob. Female
Average age 1944
Average years
education
Prob. Party or
Komsomol
Labour market status
Prob. Employed
Prob. WC/Supervisor |
Employed
Prob. Retired
Prob. Housewife
All
176
Refused
travel
96
In post
79
Cleared
6
Refused
clearance
10
1%
41%
20.2
2%
66%
24.2
0%
15%
15.7
0%
17%
10.8
0%
0%
10.6
9.6
7.5
12.5
13.3
14.2
8%
4%
10%
67%
30%
85%
71%
100%
100%
100%
73%
11%
4%
45%
21%
8%
97%
0%
0%
83%
0%
0%
100%
0%
0%
17%
33%
50%
10%
0%
17%
17%
0%
40%
30%
0%
50%
0%
50%
0%
0%
…
17%
…
20%
0%
0%
0%
20%
0%
17%
50%
10%
Nature of compromising evidence (percent of persons in column)
Prob. Historical
circumstances:
Personal
17%
14%
19%
Of family member
6%
4%
9%
Prob. Liable to
resettlement:
Personally
5%
7%
3%
As family member
16%
9%
25%
Of family members
7%
5%
9%
Prob. Historical action:
Personally
14%
14%
14%
By family member
31%
33%
29%
Prob. Sentenced:
Personally
18%
8%
29%
Average term, years
| Sentenced
12.7
12.0
12.9
Family member
13%
14%
9%
Prob. Current
circumstances:
Personally
7%
10%
3%
Family member
abroad
28%
45%
9%
Prob. Current action:
Personal
19%
29%
4%
By family member
2%
2%
1%
Source: Calculated from Hoover/LYA, K-1/3/703, 90-91 (Spisok lits,
dopushchennykh k sov. sekretnoi rabote i dokumentam s
kompromaterialami. From nachal'nik Panevezhskogo GO KGB pri Sovete
13
Ministrov Lit. SSR podpolkovnik S.Iu. Kishonas. Date: 3 December 1972),
92-93 (Spisok s nalichiem kompromaterialov, kotorym v dopuske
otkazano, no prodolzhaiut rabotat’ na ukazannykh dolzhnostiakh. Date: 2
December 1972), 94-109 (Spisok lits, otvedennykh ot poezdki za granitsu
za 1970/72 goda. From nachal'nik Panevezhskogo GO KGB pri Sovete
Ministrov Lit. SSR podpolkovnik S.Iu. Kishonas. Date: 2 December 1972),
110-122 (Spisok s nalichiem kompromaterialov na lits, zanimaiushchikh
rukovodiashchie dolzhnosti. From nachal'nik Panevezhskogo GO KGB pri
Sovete Ministrov Lit. SSR podpolkovnik S.Iu. Kishonas. Date: 3 December
1972). “WC” = white collar.For further description see the text.