Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence

changed six years later for 21 men and women, three who had served

as American and West German agents, and 18 East German political

prisoners.

The Felfe case shows the KGB at its best. Felfe and two confeder-

ates were targeted by the Soviet services because of their previous

service in the SS and their common hatred for the American bomb-

ing of Dresden. As agents they were given excellent training in

avoiding surveillanceand were supplied with money and equipment.

Felfe received messages inside jars of baby food, supposedly bought

for an infant child. Moreover, the KGB realized that when Felfe was

finally caught, the news would cripple the BND and poison relations

between Bonn and Washington.

FIRST CHIEF DIRECTORATE.SeeKGB ORGANIZATION.

FIRST SECTION (PERVIY OTDEL). One of the keys to the KGB’s

control of Soviet society was the First Section, the personnel direc-

torate at every plant and educational institution in the country. The

section, always headed by active-duty or retired KGB officers, served

as an instrument of bureaucratic control over dissent. The chief of the

First Section also had responsibility for the flow of paperwork within

Soviet institutions. Material from the West was kept in special repos-

itories (spetskhran); the head of the first section decided who could—

and could not—have access to the material and determined what

could—and could not—be photocopied.

Retired KGB officers were often offered positions as head of a

First Section as a sort of honorarium. They were useful to the KGB

in recruitment of informers, and in the search for young staff offi-

cers. In these positions, the retired officers often received higher ac-

ademic or bureaucratic rank than they enjoyed in the security service.

According to the memoirs of a number of Soviet academics and sci-

entists, First Section heads had and abused considerable power. Ye-

lena Kozeltseva served as a colonel in the NKVDbefore and during

World War II. Later, as a retired officer, she headed the First Sec-

tion at Moscow State University for more than two decades. In inter-

views, she noted with pride that she had been able to “protect” stu-

dents from their bad judgment by preventing them from attending

demonstrations and becoming marked as dissidents.

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