During the last 15 years of the Cold War, a number of GRU and
KGB officers changed sides, and the balance swung dramatically in
favor of the West. The factors motivating the second season of de-
fectorshad a great deal to do with what was seen as the faltering
Soviet economy and the corruption of the ruling class. Oleg
Gordievskiyvolunteered to serve the British secret service (SIS)
out of his anger with Moscow’s intervention in the Prague Crisis
in 1968. Other officers clearly were motivated by hopes of resettle-
ment in the West.
The best text on motivation, treason, and espionage may be C. S.
Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, a work of fiction in which a senior
tempter writes letters to a young apprentice devil, arguing that the
way to hell is very gradual, and temptation to mortal sin seems very
venal and minor at first. Analysis of many Cold War spy cases sug-
gests that most men and women seduced (and self-seduced) into trea-
son move to the other side for a variety of reasons that impact grad-
ually on their consciousness.MVD(MINISTERSTVO VNUTRENNIKH DEL).Both the tsarist and
Soviet regimes used the Ministry of Internal Affairs as the name of
the state’s police agency. In the tsarist period, the Ministry of Inter-
nal Affairs was headquartered at 16 Fontanka Quay in St. Petersburg,
and the tsarist police used the term “Fontanka” much as their Cheka
and KGBsuccessors would use Lubyankato describe their head-
quarters and higher authority.
During both the tsarist and communist periods, the MVD had a
strong paramilitary role in controlling and surveillingsociety. Un-
der the tsarist MVD, the Corps of Gendarmes had this role. During
the Soviet period, the MVD had control of “Internal Troops,” in-
cluding the famous Dzerzhinsky Division stationed in Moscow. The
Internal Troops were well armed and equipped as motorized in-
fantry formations. During wartime, they were expected to function
as infantry divisions.
The Old Bolsheviks detested the capitalist term “police” and de-
cided to name the communist service “militia.” Under Vladimir
Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Nikita Khrushchev, the militia was often
combined into commissariats and ministries of internal affairs and se-
curity. Finally, in the early 1960s, a new Ministry of Internal Affairs170 •MVD (MINISTERSTVO VNUTRENNIKH DEL)06-313 G-P.qxd 7/27/06 7:56 AM Page 170