Stalin and Foreign Intelligence

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Sluzhba Vneshnei Razvedki (SVR), successor to the KGB’s First Chief [Foreign Intelligence] Directorate, has continued to celebrate the achievements of Stalin’s foreign intelligence services, of which it sees itself as the direct descendant. In 1995, it marked the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the Inostrannyi Otdel (INO), the foreign intelligence arm of the Cheka and its inter-war successors, by publishing a volume which celebrated the careers of 75 leading intelligence officers and agents of the Soviet era in a style which differed little from the uncritical hagiographies previously produced by the KGB. ¹ In 1995, the SVR also began the publication of a multi-volume official history of Soviet foreign intelligence operations which, at the time of writing, has reached the end of the Great Patriotic War. ² Though a mine of mostly reliable factual information, it too presents a heroically sanitised view of Soviet intelligence history. The videos on foreign operations in the Stalin era recently produced by the SVR’s Television Information Service take a similar approach. ³