could solve the Soviet Union’s international problems with enough
back channels to the major powers.
While back channels were undoubtedly useful in many cases, they
could also create unintended confusion about Moscow’s intentions.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Moscow used Georgi Bolshakov,
an intelligence officer under journalist cover, as a back channel be-
tween Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev. Bolshakov relayed assurances that the Soviet govern-
ment was not considering placing nuclear weapons in Cuba just as
missile units were arriving on the island. Revelations of this decep-
tion badly damaged Soviet credibility, and it reduced the effective-
ness of Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and the ambassador
in Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin.BAGRATION, OPERATION. One of the most significant victories
of the Red Army in the Great Patriotic Warwas made possible by
the creative use of intelligence to deceive the Germans. In early
1944, the GKO(State Defense Committee) decided to stage a ma-
jor offensive against the German Army Group Center. The strike
was to destroy the German army group, liberate Minsk and
Byelorussia, and drive the Nazis from Soviet territory. To accom-
plish this, the GKO mandated a complicated program of strategic
deception (maskirovka) to convince Berlin that the strike would fall
farther south in the Ukraine. German intelligence was fed hundreds
of false reports about a Soviet buildup in the south, which had been
the center of the war for the previous 18 months. The movement of
Soviet reserves was carefully masked, as Soviet infantry, armor,
and artillery were moved silently into position for the June offen-
sive. Moreover, Soviet radio silence along the front made German
signals intelligenceefforts fruitless.
Moscow was able to measure and then modify the extent of the de-
ception efforts through partisansin Germany and through agents it
was running inside the German intelligence structure. The Red Army
blow, involving 14 combined armies from four different fronts (army
groups), was launched on 20 June. Over 2.4 million soldiers, 4,000
tanks, and 24,000 artillery pieces were engaged. In the first two
weeks of the campaign, Germany lost 250,000 soldiers, dead or cap-
tured. By the end of Operation Bagration, 450,000 of the German20 •BAGRATION, OPERATION06-313 A-G.qxd 7/27/06 7:54 AM Page 20