1979 December: Soviet troops enter Afghanistan; KGB Alpha Group
storms presidential palace and kills Afghan president Amin and family.1980 Andrei Sakharov and wife are banished from Moscow.1981 Solidarity movement increases authority in Poland. Moscow
bluffs to convince Polish communist leaders they intend to intervene.
2–13 December: Polish regime cracks down on Solidarity.
1982 February–March: Yuri Andropov moves to Central Committee
Secretariat as Leonid Brezhnev’s heir apparent; Vitalii Fedorchuk heads
KGB. November: Brezhnev dies and is succeeded by Andropov as
party chief. December: Viktor Chebrikov succeeds Fedorchuk as head
of KGB; Fedorchuk is assigned to MVD.1983 Edward Lee Howard makes first contact with the KGB. Yuri An-
dropov demands that the intelligence services provide information
about American first strike. October: The RYaN(Nuclear Rocket At-
tack) program artificially creates a war scare.
1985 March: Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Communist Party General
Secretary. April: Aldrich Ames volunteers to serve as Soviet agent and
provides KGB with information about two cases. May: John Walker is
arrested by the FBI; other members of the ring are arrested shortly
thereafter. 13 June: Ames provides KGB with the “big dump,” the
names of ten Soviets working for the CIA. (All are arrested by 1987.)
August: Vitaliy Yurchenko defects to the United States and provides
leads to Edward Howard and Ronald Pelton. Howard subsequently flees
to Moscow. October: Robert Hanssen mails letter to KGB offering to
provide sensitive information about FBI cases. Hanssen provides infor-
mation about three KGB officers under CIA/FBI control, as well as
technical information. November: Yurchenko “redefects.”1986 April–May: Mikhail Gorbachev begins campaign for glasnost
(openness) and perestroika(economic restructuring). Summer: In Op-
eration Famish, the United States expels more than 50 Soviet intelli-
gence officers as the Reagan administration moves to restrict Soviet in-
telligence activities. December: Gorbachev permits Andrei Sakharov to
return to Moscow to further glasnost.1987 November: Mikhail Gorbachev fires Moscow city boss Boris
Yeltsin. Opposition to Gorbachev’s agenda increases from the leftCHRONOLOGY• xix06-313 (00) FM.qxd 7/27/06 7:53 AM Page xix