I once took a course whose professor instructed students to design our own final exams.  Instead of our floundering over the vastness of our incomprehension of the assigned subject matter, he wanted us to show what we did know. I shall discuss, here, some beginning forays into learning of matters too large for my small mind to comprehend.

I should think, Russians may have enjoyed being a part of the U.S.S.R. While Soviets were quite prickly towards visitors from the West, within the Soviet bloc I must imagine there was freedom of movement and, perhaps, even a high level of trust — or, so it would appear.  Russians will not have understood their relations with Ukraine were fraught, because they had successfully inculcated in their Ukrainian neighbors a healthy understanding of the costs of resisting Kremlin hegemony. One of the first tasks of Pavel Sudoplatov as a Soviet operative was to undermine the Ukrainian nationalist movement, which historian Serhii Plokhy describes in detail in his book, “The Man with a Poisoned Gun.”  A problem for the Kremlin, however, was that undermining dissent against their hegemony only drove people’s unhappiness with KGB tactics deep underground; it did not make it go away.

The tactics of Soviet intelligence were very successful, so that the American CIA saw their initiatives in Europe fail time after time after time. In his biography of the CIA’s Winston Scott, author Jefferson Morley writes a primary motive for the U.S. to overthrow the democratically elected government in Guatemala was just to have a win, as a boost to CIA morale.

The Kennedy brothers, JFK and RFK, were more susceptible to Kremlin ploys than most Americans know.  They acquiesced to Soviet wishes to establish back-door diplomacy —with a KGB operative as the Soviet intermediary — that cut out the State Department from knowing what was going on. However, JFK had campaigned as a staunch opponent of communism. His bid to reverse losses at the Bay of Pigs so as to win reelection may have cost JFK his life.

Mary H. Hall

South Hadley