While the very fearsome KGB technically ceased to exist when the State Council of the disintegrating Soviet Union disbanded it on Oct. 11, 1991, Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin write in “The Sword and the Shield” that “the SVR, the foreign intelligence service of the Russian Federation…. saw itself as the heir of the old” First Chief Directorate of the KGB.  When a former KGB operative became Russia’s president, that signaled a resurgence of the ethos of secret skulduggery as a chosen means to hold Russia together. 

Unhappiness with autocracy has motivated some of those Russians who have provided secret information to western governments.  For example, General Dmitriy Fedorovich Polyakov chose to spy for the U.S. after Soviet authorities denied permission for his son to receive lifesaving medical treatment in New York.  And Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin took his notes of KGB documents, not first to the U.S. as the CIA would have us believe, but directly to British Intelligence, from his conviction that the Russian people should have access to all of their history, without bias or distortion.

While Russians have aided our understanding of the KGB and its successor agencies out of love for their country, it is a long time since Americans have spied for Russia for idealistic reasons as such. For example, a certain level of cynical disillusionment with our CIA motivated Philip Agee to blow the cover of American intelligence assets. Rick Ames gave up Polyakov and others because he just didn’t care.

CIA operatives have understood their contract involves breaking the laws of other countries, although not those of our own.  The USSR was a key adversary to the CIA, which will have expressly violated their laws.  A Jan. 25, 2024 New York Times article, “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin,” lets me wonder if Russian leaders may think they are fighting a lawless organization, the CIA, in their aggression against Ukraine.  Meanwhile, Trevor Paglen has described in “Blank Spots on the Map” how national security exceptions to our rule of law let corruption fester here at home. 

Mary H. Hall

South Hadley