Targets of Soviet Intelligence
There were two main intelligence agencies in the Soviet union at the time, the GRU and the KGB. The GRU focused exclusively on military intelligence while the KGB focused on general intelligence with eight main lines — diplomatic intelligence, military intelligence, economic intelligence, misinformation, infiltration of security agencies & intelligence services, influencing foreign governments, industrial intelligence and guerilla warfare/sabotage.
Diplomatic intelligence is monitoring the communications of foreign countries to identify the deals struck, both official and understood, between countries as well as to determine the true intentions of countries towards the USSR. This line focused heavily on acquiring private documents and secret information. The main method of acquiring this information was the recruitment of persons inside the diplomatic corps of various countries.
The soviets had more success recruiting ‘elites’ and ‘proto-elites’ than the work-a-day employees. This includes the recruitment of high ranking politicians and officials. People’s character flaws don’t change, the bribes just get bigger. They found that the ‘work-a-day’ employees often had more integrity and honesty that those climbing the hierarchy, contrary to what they suspected would be true it was often easier to recruit from the latter than the former.
They also had considerable success recruiting and retaining homosexuals as agents at the time (1920s-1940s) because even if a homosexual target turned them down they would rarely report the recruitment attempt to prevent outing their fellow homosexuals inside the diplomatic corps. [Editor note: This was likely due to social pressure to be publicly out at the time, understanding it would be personal and career suicide. ]
Military intelligence was the second line of intelligence that the KGB focused on. It focused on identifying the quality and quantity of western militaries including mechanization, troop numbers, technology, munitions production capability, etc. The GRU also participated in this line; the GRU focusing on analyzing open source intelligence while the KGB focused on stealing secrets. The KGB also had a secondary mission here – monitoring their allies to make sure they weren’t putting out peace feelers or otherwise moving away from Moscow’s directed policies and orders. The KGB has considerable success inserting spies as refugees.
Economic intelligence was not, contrary to what one might assume, directed at monitoring foreign economies. It was a mission to exercise control over Soviet imports and exports and to protect trade from outside forces and international economic cartels and organizations.
Misinformation was the line tasked with feeding incorrect information to foreign powers. Unlike the other intelligence lines where the collector has influence over what was collected, this line was directed at the highest levels by policy. It was intended to influence foreign powers to do what the Kremlin desired as well as to frighten or bluff those powers into giving concessions during negotiations. For example, they fabricated Nazi documents showing a much stronger air force than actually existed and used those documents to pressure France into a treaty.
Infiltration of security agencies and intelligence services is exactly what it sounds like; the placement of agents or recruitment of agents inside a country’s security and intelligence services. The Soviets had a cultural fascination with this and were ‘thrilled and curious’ when they encountered a fellow spy. While the hostility was real, after a foreign agent was recruited they were treated as genuine allies with friendliness and good relations — fellow professionals. The goals of this line were to determine what the foreign power knows about the USSR, are there moles in soviet spy networks inside the host country, if they know about any spies and if they intend to arrest them and to use the target service’s assets to investigate other targets that the Residentura is interested in.
Going further, they want to discover what information has been stolen or transmitted, how it was transmitted (diplomatic pouches, radio or through couriers posing as tourists), and if the target service’s country has established a spy network inside a Soviet state.
The Soviets were generally unimpressed with the quality of product produced by western intelligence often viewing it as amateurish and incorrect for a multitude of reasons. They did take advantage of western countries freely sharing intelligence to learn what other countries outside the target country knew.
It’s important to know three things for sound policy decisions – your own real power, the real power of your enemy and how your enemy country perceives you (“your image through their eyes”). This is key because the enemy will act based on how they perceive you, not how you actually are.
The KGB considered recruiting enemy operatives their most hazardous mission urging caution and slow movement. Also recommended always meeting in a neutral third country until the recruit could be trusted…and trust was determined by providing verifiable secret information in sufficient quantity. The Soviets were very good at this line.
Influencing decisions of foreign governments through secret agents. This sometimes happened by recruiting high ranking officials through money or baser considerations (drugs & sex). Other times junior officials were recruited and kept as they rose through the ranks. Officials were also recruited through the promise of power and aid in elections — the soviets would promise to use their levers of power to help them gain power in their own country. [In the modern world, imagine a country sending someone to help run a campaign or funding/training street level grass roots organizations that make the politician look good or gain support.]
This line also included inciting coup d’etats.
This line also included paving the way for ticklish negotiations in the future through back channel communications. If the target country was receptive then the talks would be moved from the KGB to official diplomatic channels.
Industrial Intelligence had the goal of acquiring industrial information (trade secrets, technology, processes, techniques, patents, etc). This was sometimes done through legal channels such as paying companies for access but if the price was too high they would be instructed to steal in the information instead.
In both cases it was common for foreign engineers to visit the USSR and train Russians on the technologies and techniques. In cases where the techniques were stolen, the Russians would pay engineers covertly to come overseas for a few days and train them, sometimes paying $10,000 for a few days work (in 1920s/1930s money).
A big company cracking down on a start-up competitor can drive the competitor into the arms of a hostile foreign power.
The last line, guerilla warfare and sabotage, will be covered later.