ABSTRACT
One of the main aims of the KGB was always to impress the Soviet leadership. Right up to the abortive coup of August 1991, it supplied regular reports designed to show its success in influencing the politicians and public opinion of the Third World. The format seems to have changed little from Brezhnev to Gorbachev. Among documents released from Communist Party Central Committee archives during the year after the coup was a 1969 report from the then KGB chairman, Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, boasting of the KGB's ability to organize large protest demonstrations outside the US embassy in Delhi for $5,000 a time, and a letter to Gorbachev 20 years later by Andropov's successor, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov, reporting an increased number of agents in the Sri Lankan parliament and the 'sincere gratitude to Moscow' allegedly expressed by the leader of the Freedom Party for Soviet 'financial support'. 1 The KGB was also fond of boasting of its influence on a wide variety of international organisations, ranging from sections of the peace movement to the World Council of Churches (WCC). One recently declassified document of 1969 describes the work of five KGB agents on the WCC Central Committee and the appointment of another to a 'high WCC post'. A similar report of 1989 claims that, as the result of agent operations to implement 'a plan approved by the KGB leadership', 'the WCC Executive and Central Committee adopted public statements (eight) and messages (three) which corresponded to the political course of Socialist [Communist] countries'. While it would be naive to take such boasting entirely at its face value, there can be little doubt about the reality of Soviet penetration of the WCC. 2
