The World Was Going Our Way

by Christopher Andrew

  The Peruvians who were studying at the special P-2, P-3, and P-4 departments at the FCD’s Red Banner [later Andropov] Institute were active in making contact with girls and women of loose behaviour in Moscow, and had intimate relations with them, after which these acquaintances were handed over to another group of students for intimate relations. The students did not heed the attempts of the course supervisors to enlighten them.24

  In general, however, the Centre congratulated itself on the success of intelligence collaboration with Peru. A 1975 report gave the work of the Lima residency ‘a positive evaluation’.25 Intelligence on ‘the situation in Peru’s ruling circles’, some of it passed on to the Politburo, was assessed as ‘especially valuable’.26 KGB co-operation with SIN against US targets led to the expulsion of a series of CIA officers and the curtailment of Peace Corps activities and US-sponsored English-language courses.27 A relative of President Velasco’s wife, occupying ‘a high position’ in the administration, was exposed as, allegedly, a CIA agent.28 The Lima residency also carried out ‘wide-ranging active measures’ against US targets.29 ‘Operational technical’ experts were sent from the Centre to instruct SIN officers in the use of KGB surveillance, eavesdropping and photographic equipment in operations against the US, Mexican and Chilean embassies in Lima.30 With financial assistance from the KGB, SIN agents were sent to carry out KGB assignments in Chile, Argentina and other parts of Latin America.31

  From 1973 onwards Peru made a series of massive Soviet arms purchases, totalling more than $1.6 billion over the next twelve years. In the Western hemisphere only Cuba received more.32 The Centre’s claims that it also succeeded in ‘increasing the progressive measures of Velasco’s government’,33 however, were probably made chiefly to impress the Soviet leadership. The KGB’s influence on the military government’s security, defence and foreign policy did not extend to its domestic reform programme. In 1972, for example, the Interior Minister, General Pedro Richter Prado, was dismayed by much of what he saw on a tour of collective farms in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Soviet bloc agriculture, he told Alistair Horne, was ‘going backwards’. The junta publicly declared that, ‘Peru stands for neither Communism nor Capitalism’. Horne concluded that, by this time, its confused ideological preferences lay somewhere between Tito’s Yugoslavia and Gaullist France. Its heavy-handed economic mismanagement was compounded by the problems of financing the imports of Soviet arms. Almost a quarter of the national budget went on the armed forces, double the proportion in neighbouring Colombia. The revenues from the massive newly discovered oil reserves in the Amazon basin were frittered away.34

  The Centre did not usually make reports to the Politburo which undermined its own previous claims to be able to influence foreign leaders. It is therefore unlikely that it reported to the political leadership on the declining prospects of the ‘progressive’ Peruvian junta as it struggled to cope with the consequences of its economic mismanagement. The coup toppling Velasco in August 1975, led by General Francisco Morales Bermúdez, began a more conservative phase of military rule.35 The KGB was, however, able to claim an apparently striking victory over Peruvian Maoism. In June 1975 the Lima residency made ‘operational contact’ with one of the leaders of the pro-Chinese Marxist-Leninist Party of Peru, codenamed VANTAN. The KGB claimed the credit for disrupting, with VANTAN’s assistance, the Party’s 1976 Congress. According to a file summary noted by Mitrokhin: ‘At its Congress, the Party sharply criticized Peking’s policy, including its line of splitting the Communist and Workers’ movement, and decided to break with Maoism and to dissolve itself. This operation produced great repercussions in Latin-American countries.’36

  The next Latin American state after Peru to acquire what the KGB considered a ‘progressive’ military government was Bolivia, its landlocked southern neighbour. Bolivia’s turbulent political history had been punctuated by more military coups than anywhere else in the world. At the beginning of the 1970s the presidential palace in La Paz (at 12,000 feet, the highest on the continent) was still pockmarked with bullet holes from previous coups which, given the likelihood of further violent regime changes, were not thought worth repairing. In front of the palace was a lamp-post with an inscription recording that a president had been hanged from it in 1946.

  The leader of the junta which took power in April 1969, General Alfredo Ovando Candía, had been commander-in-chief of the Bolivian army at the time of Che Guevara’s capture and death eighteen months earlier. It was widely believed, however, that he had since been at least partly seduced by the Che revolutionary myth and felt a deep sense of guilt at having ordered his execution. Once in power, Ovando followed the Peruvian example, nationalizing American-owned companies, establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and seeking support from workers, peasants and students. In October 1970, following a failed coup by right-wing army officers and riots by left-wing university students, Ovando was overthrown by the vociferously anti-imperialist General Juan José Torres González, who had been sacked as commander-in-chief for what Ovando considered his excessive adulation of Fidel Castro.37

  The resident in La Paz, Igor Yevgenievich Sholokhov, was instructed to gain access to Torres (codenamed CAESAR by the KGB) ‘in order to use him to carry out measures to rally anti-American forces in Bolivia’.38 In the excitable aftermath of the ‘October Revolution’ which had brought Torres to power, students at San Andrés University in La Paz led violent demonstrations against American imperialism. Torres took no action as US offices were broken into and pillaged and the Yanqui community was reduced to living in a state of semi-siege. US diplomats removed the CD plates from their cars for fear of attack; even the Clínica América in La Paz was forced to change its name to Clínica Metodista.39 The KGB was encouraged by Torres’s close relations with the Communists as well as by his hostility to the Yanquis. Soon after he became President, the First Secretary of the Bolivian Communist Party, Jorge Kolle Cueto, reported to Sholokhov that Torres was ‘taking steps to involve the Left in co-operation with the government’, and had offered to help the Communists establish paramilitary groups to meet the threat of a right-wing coup.40

  In July Andropov wrote to Brezhnev:

  Considering the progressive nature of the change occurring in Bolivia, Torres’s desire to develop multifaceted co-operation with the USSR, and the Bolivian friends’ [Communists’] positive attitude towards the President, it would be worthwhile examining the possibility of supplying arms to Bolivia, as well as providing Torres with economic aid . . . , for the purpose of increasing his influence in the army and assisting in frustrating the conspiratorial plans of the reactionaries, thus gaining the time needed by the country’s democratic forces to strengthen their position.41

  Andropov’s assessment, however, proved far too optimistic. By the time he wrote his report Torres’s prospects of survival were already slim. ‘Progressive change’ in Bolivia was rapidly collapsing into anarchy. The army was deeply divided between right- and left-wing factions. In June 1971 the unoccupied Congress building next to the presidential palace was seized by the various factions of the left who declared themselves the Asamblea del Pueblo and began to function as a parallel government. Inevitably the factions quickly fell out among themselves, with the Communist Party denouncing the Maoists as ‘petit bourgeois dedicated to leading the working class on a new adventure’. The extravagant if confused revolutionary rhetoric of the Assembly and Torres’s apparent impotence in the face of it helped to provoke in August 1971 Bolivia’s 187th coup, led by the right-wing Colonel Hugo Banzer Suárez, who had been sacked by Torres as commandant of the Military Academy. After the discovery of the large quantities of arms from the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia despatched at Torres’s request, Banzer ordered a mass expulsion of Soviet diplomats and intelligence officers.42

  Despite the disappointment of Torres’s overthrow, the KGB continued to seek opportunities to cultivate other Latin American leaders. Before the 1970 presidential election in Costa Ric
a, it had secret discussions with the successful candidate, José Figueres Ferrer (codenamed KASIK).43 Figueres was the leading Costa Rican politician of his generation. As head of the founding junta of the post-war Second Republic, he had taken the lead in abolishing the army and turning Costa Rica into an unarmed democracy - a unique event in the history of the Americas. Figueres’s first contact with Soviet intelligence, though he did not realize it, went back to 1951, when he had unwittingly appointed as envoy in Rome (and non-resident envoy in Belgrade) a KGB illegal, Iosif Grigulevich, posing as Teodoro Castro, the illegitimate son of a dead (and, in reality, childless) Costa Rican notable. Unknown to Figueres, early in 1953 Grigulevich had been given a highly dangerous mission to assassinate Marshal Tito. When his mission was aborted after Stalin’s death in March, ‘Teodoro Castro’ disappeared - so far as Figueres was concerned - into thin air, beginning a new life in Moscow under his real name, Grigulevich, as an academic expert on Latin America.44

  Figueres was first elected President in 1953, serving until 1958. His long-running feud with the US-backed Somoza dictatorship in neighbouring Nicaragua, which continued after his presidency, appears to have attracted the favourable attention of the KGB. When President Luis Somoza challenged him to a duel, Figueres agreed - provided it was fought on the deck of a Soviet submarine which Somoza falsely claimed to have captured.45 Despite his anti-militarism, Figueres became a strong supporter of the Sandinistas. Before the 1970 presidential election the KGB secretly transmitted to him via the Costa Rican Communist Party a ‘loan’ of US $300,000 to help finance his campaign in return for a promise, if elected, to establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. Once reinstalled as President, Figueres kept his promise.46 In 1971 the CPSU Central Committee authorized A. I. Mosolov, head of the newly established San José residency, to establish contact with him.47

  Mosolov and Figueres agreed on regular secret meetings to be arranged through the intermediary of a confidant of the President. Before each meeting, the confidant would meet Mosolov at a pre-arranged rendezvous in San José, then drive him in his own car to see Figueres.48 Some of Mosolov’s reports on these meetings were considered sufficiently important by the Centre to be passed on to the Politburo. The KGB’s motives in doing so probably had less to do with the intrinsic importance of the reports’ contents than with the further evidence they provided of the high level of its foreign contacts. As in Peru and Bolivia, the Centre wished to demonstrate to the Soviet leadership that in a continent formerly dominated by American imperialism, it now had direct access even to presidents and juntas. It claimed, probably with some exaggeration, that the KGB was able ‘to exert useful influence’ over Figueres.49

  As well as providing confidential reports on other countries in Central America and the Caribbean, Figueres discussed his own political future with the KGB residency, probably in the hope of obtaining further Soviet financial support. He told Mosolov that he intended to stay in control of his political party and influence government decisions even after he ceased to be president in 1974. ‘In order to do this’, Mosolov reported, ‘he has acquired a radio station and television channel, and is preparing to publish his own newspaper.’ All were regarded by the KGB as useful vehicles for active measures. 50

  The Soviet ambassador in San José, Vladimir Nikolayevich Kazimirov, like his colleagues in a number of other capitals, deeply resented the fact that the resident’s political contacts were superior to his own. While on leave in Moscow in August 1973, he demanded a meeting with Andropov and complained that Mosolov did not even bother to inform him about his contacts with Figueres. On one occasion he had called on the President, only to discover that Mosolov had met him an hour earlier. Kazimirov claimed that American agents in Costa Rica were seeking to use the President’s contacts with the KGB to compromise him.51 The ambassador’s objections appear to have had little effect. KGB meetings with, and subsidies to, Figueres continued. The Centre informed Brezhnev in January 1974: ‘In view of the fact that Figueres has agreed to publish materials advantageous to the KGB, he has been given 10,000 US dollars under the guise of stock purchases in his newspaper. When he accepted this money, Figueres stated that he greatly appreciated Soviet support.’52

  Relations with Figueres, however, gradually cooled. In 1976 Manuel Piñeiro, head of the Cuban Departamento de América (DA), told a senior KGB officer that Figueres was ‘an arrant demagogue’, who kept a private armoury of weapons including machine guns and bazookas at his villa outside San José.53 A KGB assessment concluded that Figueres’s ‘views and actions’ were inconsistent.54

  By far the most important of the KGB’s confidential contacts in South America was Salvador Allende Gossens (codenamed LEADER by the KGB),55 whose election as President of Chile in 1970 was hailed by a Moscow commentator as ‘second only to the victory of the Cuban Revolution in the magnitude of its significance as a revolutionary blow to the imperialist system in Latin America’. Allende was the first Marxist anywhere in the world to win power through the ballot box. His victory in Chile, following the emergence of ‘progressive’ military governments in Peru and Bolivia, was cited by Pravda and other Soviet official organs as proof of ‘the multiplicity of forms within the framework of which Latin America is paving its way to true independence’.56

  Allende had first attracted KGB attention in the early 1950s when, as leader of the Chilean Socialist Party (Partido Socialista), he had formed an alliance with the then banned Communist Party. In 1952 he stood with its support at the presidential election but won only 6 per cent of the vote. Though there was as yet no KGB residency in Chile, a Line PR (political intelligence) officer, Svyatoslav Fyodorovich Kuznetsov (codenamed LEONID), probably operating under cover as a Novosti correspondent, made the first direct contact with Allende in the following year .57 At the presidential election of 1958, standing as the candidate of a left-wing alliance, the Frente de Acción Popular (FRAP), Allende was beaten into second place by only 35,000 votes. What Allende’s KGB file describes as ‘systematic contact’ with him began after the establishment in 1961 of a Soviet trade mission in Chile, which provided cover for a KGB presence. Allende is reported to have ‘stated his willingness to co-operate on a confidential basis and provide any necessary assistance, since he considered himself a friend of the Soviet Union. He willingly shared political information . . .’ Though he became a KGB ‘confidential contact’, however, he was never classed as an agent. The KGB claimed some of the credit for Allende’s part in the campaign which led to the establishment of Soviet-Chilean diplomatic relations in 1964. 58 The new Soviet embassy in Santiago contained the first KGB legal residency on Chilean soil.59

  At the 1964 presidential election, standing once again as the candidate of the FRAP alliance, Allende was further from victory than six years earlier, being soundly beaten by a strong centrist candidate in what became virtually a two-horse race. But, with 39 per cent of the vote, he did well enough to show that, if the anti-Marxist vote were to be divided at the next election, he would stand a good chance of victory.60 The glaring social injustices of a country in which half the population lived in shanty towns or rural poverty also seemed to favour the electoral prospects of the left. The Archbishop of Santiago told the British ambassador that, ‘considering the appalling conditions which the mass of the population had to put up with, it was not surprising that there were many Communists in Chile; what was . . . surprising was that the poorer classes were not Communist to a man.’ The high birth-rate and level of immigration added to Chile’s social tensions. During the 1960s the population grew by nearly a third.61

  Though recognizing the advantages of electoral alliance with Allende, the leadership of the Chilean Communist Party made clear to the KGB that it regarded him as both ‘a demagogue’ and ‘a weak and inconsistent politician’ with Maoist sympathies:

  His characteristic traits were arrogance, vanity, desire for glorification and a longing to be in the spotlight at any price. He was easily influenced by stro
nger and more determined personalities. He was also inconsistent in his attitude to the Communist Party. LEADER explained his attitude to the Communist Party by referring to his position as leader of the Socialist Party to which, as a party member, he was bound to be loyal. He had visited China a number of times and ranked Mao Zedong on the same level as Marx, Engels and Lenin.

  The Santiago residency also reported that Chilean Communists were concerned by Allende’s close connections with Freemasonry. His paternal grandfather had been Serene Grand Master of the Chilean Masonic Order, and Allende himself had been a Mason since before the Second World War. His Masonic lodge, the Communists complained to the KGB, had ‘deep roots among the lower and middle bourgeoisie’.62 Allende was unlike any existing stereotype of a Marxist leader. During his visits to Havana in the 1960s, he had been privately mocked by Castro’s entourage for his aristocratic tastes: fine wines, expensive objets d’art, well-cut suits and elegantly dressed women. Allende was also a womanizer. The Nobel laureate in literature, Gabriel García Márquez, described him as ‘a gallant with a touch of the old school about him, perfumed notes and furtive rendezvous’. Despite the private mockery which they aroused in Allende’s Communist allies, however, his bourgeois appearance and expensive lifestyle were electoral assets, reassuring middle-class voters that their lives would continue normally under an Allende presidency. As even some of Allende’s opponents acknowledged, he also had enormous personal charm. Nathaniel Davis, who became US ambassador in Santiago in 1971, was struck by his ‘extraordinary and appealing human qualities . . . He had the social and socializing instincts of a long-time, top-drawer political personality.’63