Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence

Directorate K of the First Chief Directorate was responsible for

running counterintelligence operations abroad. Its target was the in-

telligence and security services of enemy states. Under General Oleg

Kalugin, Directorate K had a number of major successes. This suc-

cess continued into the 1980s and 1990s with the recruitment of Ed-

ward Howard, Aldrich Ames, and Robert Hanssen. Directorate K

was also responsible for the security of foreign missions abroad.

Every KGB report from 1985 on had details of Directorate K work in

thwarting the defection of Soviet citizens.

The Seventh Directorate was responsible for the physical and tech-

nical surveillance of known and suspected intelligence officers and

their Soviet contacts. Other directorates had responsibility for coun-

terintelligence in the economy, the transportation bureaucracy, and

the intelligentsia. In effect, these components of the KGB were more

responsible for sniffing out corruption and dealing with anti-Soviet

elements than for detecting foreign spies. Nevertheless, the KGB saw

these “political” responsibilities as part of its broad counterintelli-

gence mission of protecting the party from subversion and corruption.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian foreign intelli-

gence and counterintelligence services continue to run operations

against foreign intelligence services. Since 1991 the SVR, the new

Russian foreign intelligence service, has run two officers of the Cen-

tral Intelligence Agency and two special agents of the Federal Bureau

of Investigation. It would seem from an examination of these cases

that the foreign counterintelligence responsibilities of the KGB trans-

ferred seamlessly to the successor services.

The FSB, the new security service, has been no less busy. The

FSB’s official website reported the arrest and prosecution of 87 Rus-

sian civilian and military personnel for spying or revealing state se-

crets in 2002. The FSB also pursues political dissidentsas part of its

counterintelligence mission. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union,

however, convicted spies are no longer shot but receive jail terms.

COUNTERTERRORISM. Until the death of Joseph Stalinin 1953,

the Soviet Union broadly defined opposition to the Soviet state as ter-

rorism. Millions went to the gulag—or the grave—for terrorism of-

fensives such as owning a book of Nikolai Bukharin or telling a joke

about Stalin. Post-Stalin legal reforms drastically redefined treason to

58 •COUNTERTERRORISM

06-313 A-G.qxd 7/27/06 7:55 AM Page 58