Akhmatova, he reportedly said: “Our little nun is now receiving for-
eign spies.” Akhmatova had met with the British philosopher and
diplomat Isaiah Berlin.
The KGBand its predecessors developed a number of technical
tools to make surveillance easier. Metka, or spy dust, was used to al-
low KGB dogs to follow suspected intelligence officers. The KGB
also planted electronic devices in the shoes of NATO diplomats and
small radio transmitters in the cars of diplomats and intelligence of-
ficers. The KGB’s Seventh Directorate was specifically established
to conduct surveillance in cars and on foot. A team of 50 surveillants
was dedicated to covering the British embassy. Three cars were as-
signed to follow the British chief of station Roderick Chisolm wher-
ever he went. His wife was followed too: it was surveillance of Mrs.
Chisolm that gave the KGB their first lead to Oleg Penkovskiy.
Surveillance had two important benefits for the regime. It provided
necessary information on a host of counterintelligenceand domes-
tic security issues. It also served to intimidate the opponents of the
regime, forcing them to consider their powerlessness in the struggle
with the state.SURVEILLANCE, AUDIO. Party leader Joseph Stalin began
eavesdropping on his colleagues in 1922, when he ordered tele-
phone taps on members of the Soviet leadership. According to
Stalin’s private secretary, in the mid-1920s Stalin listened to the
phone conversations of his adversaries to learn of their tactics in the
interparty wars that followed the death of Vladimir Lenin. Stalin
continued the practice of tapping the telephones of his colleagues
right up to his death in 1953.
The Soviet intelligence and security services perfected audio sur-
veillance to keep track of foreign suspected dissidents, diplomats,
and intelligence officers at home and abroad. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s offices and bedrooms were bugged at the Tehran and
Yalta conferences, where he met with Stalin. According to Lavrenty
Beria’s son, who translated the material, Stalin asked for copies of
Roosevelt’s conversations as well as detailed comments on what the
president’s talks revealed about his health and state of mind.
One of the most famous incidents of audio surveillance involved a
wooden carving of the Great Seal of the United States presented to260 •SURVEILLANCE, AUDIO06-313 P-Z.qxd 7/27/06 7:57 AM Page 260