SPY SWAPS. In 1962 the United States and the Soviet Union inaugu-
rated a policy of trading captured agents. The first trade involved the
exchange of the Soviet illegal William Fisher(“Colonel Abel”) for
U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers at the Glienicker Bridge in Berlin. A
year later the Soviet Union escalated the policy by arresting a Yale
professor in Moscow to exchange for a captured intelligence officer
in the United States who lacked diplomatic protection. These swaps
continued through the 1970s and 1980s. The United States largely
tolerated Moscow’s actions, trading to get back American citizens
and allowing Moscow to protect its agents. In 1986 the Ronald Rea-
gan administration ended this with the wholesale expulsion of Soviet
intelligence officers in an action referred to as Famish.
Spy swaps became a major feature in the struggle between East
and West Germany. To redeem agents captured by the West German
security service, the East German regime traded and sometimes sold
its citizens seeking a life in the West. Bonn accepted the policy as part
of the price of doing business with the East German regime. Up to
1986, hostage-taking benefited Moscow and its German ally, allow-
ing them to tell their agents that they had a “get out of jail” ticket
should they be arrested.STALIN, JOSEPH VISSARONOVICH (1878–1953). Born into the
family of a drunken cobbler, Stalin was educated in a Russian Ortho-
dox seminary. Expelled for reading banned material, he drifted into
Marxist revolutionary circles. As a youthful revolutionary, Stalin
worked in the Bolshevikunderground and may have been co-opted
by the Okhrana. What is certain is that he was at home with the most
extreme and violent members of the party, some of whom were im-
plicated in bank robberies.
Stalin, unlike other Old Bolsheviks, sought power through key ad-
ministrative posts. As the Communist Party’s general secretary, he
served as its chief administrative officer, assigning people to key
party and police posts. As general secretary in the early 1920s, Stalin
built contacts with the Chekathrough his role as overseer of the
party’s personnel directorate, and from 1924 he used the service to
keep track of his political opponents. Crucial to Stalin’s defeat of his
rival Leon Trotsky was his ability to use the security service to ha-
rass and disrupt his opponent’s political movement.STALIN, JOSEPH VISSARONOVICH (1878–1953)• 25106-313 P-Z.qxd 7/27/06 7:57 AM Page 251