80 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
parcel to the USSR. No photos at all, no photographic films or video-
tapes, no cameras. No images of a religious nature. No fashion
catalogues. No medicines, food or even underwear.^7
The USSR never trusted Eastern Europe enough to allow free
passage to and from its allied countries: people, facilities, finance and
ideas were subject to severe restrictions. The border that stretched
along the eastern edges of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and
Bulgaria was heavily guarded. Affidavits from the authorities in
foreign communist states were required before permission was granted
to cross into the USSR. Moscow did not trust even its own Soviet
republics to issue visas. When technical specialists were needed for
work in Lithuania – such as three Czechoslovak radio experts in Janu-
ary 1983 – only the Lubyanka could give the go-ahead.^8 Everyone
from engineering specialists and academics to manual workers was
subject to the same vetting system. It was an exhaustive process. When
the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic wanted a team of twenty build-
ers from Czechoslovakia in March 1983, the KGB leadership funnelled
a set of queries to its agencies in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belorussia
and the Russian city of Pskov near the Estonian border. Lack of vigi-
lance was treated as an unforgiveable betrayal of the ‘Motherland’, as
the Soviet Union was described. The security forces tried to ensure
that the USSR would suffer no harm from the arrival of a score of
labourers from a friendly communist power.^9
There was a comprehensive programme of surveillance and
arrests, and the KGB regularly advised the Politburo about additional
work that was needed to stamp out trouble.^10 Across the USSR there
was ceaseless pursuit of people who wrote anonymous written denun-
ciations of the Soviet order. In 1979, for example, there were 2,020
authors – and the Soviet security agencies noted that this was 360
more than in the previous year.^11 Investigations were strengthened to
root out the problem. By 1983 the number had fallen to 1,325 and the
KGB took pride in its efficiency.^12 It also highlighted the activities of
foreign intelligence agencies. The CIA was thought to pose the greatest
subversive threat; the Chinese and the West Germans were thought
next in importance.^13 In Lithuania, the Vatican could not be over-
looked. The KGB noted that Pope John Paul II and the Roman Curia
were exerting themselves, by methods legal or otherwise, to infiltrate
and undermine the USSR.^14 Catholic priests and nationalists reached
out to young Lithuanians ever more boldly in the early 1980s. Illegal
publications were on the increase. The anti-Soviet Lithuanian diaspora