Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence

fight as a soldier in the Great Patriotic War. He was arrested in the late

1940s when his mother again fell into disfavor.

SECRETS AND MYSTERIES

There are still countless secrets—which the next generation of scholars

will probably uncover with the opening of archives—and mysteries—

which no amount of research will ever solve. Russian intelligence his-

tory is a “live” subject, and those engaged in researching and writing

about it are to some extent working on disappearing archeological sites

as they probe the archives and search for witnesses.

In Mikhail Bulgakov’s great novel The Master and Margarita, the

hero claims that “manuscripts don’t burn,” reflecting the author’s belief

that the great truths of Russian history would outlive the tyranny of the

Stalin age. This poetic aphorism is both true and not true when applied

to Russian intelligence history: the archives have many secrets yet to

give up. Tragically, however, some of the archives may no longer exist.

As far back as the 1920s, Lenin may have ordered the Cheka to destroy

its archives, and many Stalinist era archives were purged in the 1980s

and 1990s. According to one KGB officer, whose career began in the

1950s, the KGB began destroying files in 1959 to eliminate evidence of

its excesses.^11 The few remaining living witnesses are interesting, but

their memoirs have to be handled by scholars with the same care dem-

olition experts use while dealing with unexploded ordnance.^12

Historians may know in the next few years if Robert Oppenheimer,

the father of the American atomic bomb, was a Soviet agent during the

years he served at Los Alamos. The role of Ethel Rosenberg and the de-

gree of her complicity in her husband’s espionage may possibly be un-

derstood once scholars have better access to archives. One of the prob-

lems for intelligence scholars is the interpretation of partially

deciphered Soviet intelligence messages. Take this message on Ethel

Rosenberg sent from the NKVD in New York to Moscow on the re-

cruitment of David and Ruth Greenglass:

Lately the development of new people has been in progress. LIBERAL

recommended the sister of his wife’s brother, Ruth Greenglass, with a safe

flat in view. She is 21 a TOWNS WOMEN (an American), a GYMNAST

(member of the Young Communist League) since 1942. LIBERAL and

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