minded bureaucrat. Vladimir Putin, a veteran of Andropov’s KGB,
put flowers on Andropov’s bust at the Lubyankasecurity service
headquarters the day he became president. Nevertheless, Andropov
failed dramatically as both a security professional and a party and
state leader: the KGB could neither scare nor reform Russia into the
modern world.ANDROPOV INSTITUTE. The Andropov Institute, the SVR’s
training facility for foreign intelligence officers, is located 15 miles
east of Moscow and was named after the former head of the KGB,
Yuri Andropov, following his death in 1984. The school was
founded in 1938 as the Shkola osovogo naznacheniya(Special Pur-
pose School) to train intelligence officers who were scheduled to
serve overseas under official cover to make up for the intelligence
professionals purged during the Yezhovshchina. It has also been
known as the 101st School and the Red Banner Institute. Courses
include tradecraftand foreign languages. Retired intelligence offi-
cers with a proven record of success have often been pressed into
service as instructors.ANTI-FASCIST COMMITTEE.The Jewish Anti-Fascist Commit-
tee was authorized to raise money and support for the Soviet Union
in the United States during World War II. Its leaders, including the
actor Solomon Mikhoels, brought in more than $45 million, but its
members were privately critical of Soviet anti-Semitism. When the
news of the criticism reached Joseph Stalin, he ordered the MGB
to murder Mikhoels and to begin an intensive investigation of the
committee’s leadership. Stalin also authorized a general purge of
Jews from high positions in the Soviet Union. In 1945, Jews held
12 percent of senior posts in the government bureaucracy and the
media; in 1951, the figure was 4 percent. Articles in the press criti-
cized Jews for lack of patriotism and insisted on greater vigilance
by the Soviet people.
As part of his plans for a purge of the Communist Partyleader-
ship in 1952, Stalin saw many uses for a series of trials in the Soviet
Union and Czechoslovakia of “Zionists.” The trials would play to
Russian anti-Semitism and enrage political opinion. Between 11 and
15 July 1952, 14 Jewish party officials and intellectuals were tried forANTI-FASCIST COMMITTEE •1306-313 A-G.qxd 7/27/06 7:54 AM Page 13