In The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage against the West, published in 1994, Oleg Kalugin, a former major general in the erstwhile Soviet Union’s KGB details the realities about the KGB foreign intelligence service and to a great degree provides a good framework for understanding what Russian Federation intelligence services are doing right now. It also provides a framework by which readers are enabled to peer into the future, with all of its mysteries, and better conceptualize what those intelligence services might do under the present leadership in Moscow. Most of all, First Directorate provides a look into the art that moved the mind of one of the most capable spymasters of the 20th century. Kalugin’s work surely earned him a place among the era-defining geniuses of the intelligence industry of the Eastern Bloc.

The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage against the West is the memoir of Oleg Danilovich Kalugin, a former major general in the erstwhile Soviet Union’s Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (the Committee for State Security) or KGB. The KGB was responsible for Soviet internal security, foreign intelligence, and counterintelligence during the greater part of the Cold War era. It is fairly well-understood now that the KGB was the embodiment of the Soviet systems intimidating, inhumane, authoritarian order. The book’s title First Directorate referred to Pervoye Glavnoye Upravieniye (First Chief Directorate) or PGU of the KGB which was the element responsible for foreign operations and intelligence activities. The manner in which Kalugin details the realities about the KGB foreign intelligence service in First Directorate provides a good framework for understanding what Russian Federation intelligence services are doing right now. To that extent, First Directorate better enables readers to peer into the future, with all of its mysteries, to better conceptualize what those intelligence services might do under the present leadership in Moscow. Most of all, the book provides a good look into the art that moved the mind of both a superlative foreign intelligence officer and a foreign counterintelligence officer. Kalugin was one among of a number of era-defining geniuses within the intelligence industry of the Eastern Bloc. Surely, he could be rated alongside luminaries such his mentor, former Chairman of the KGB and eventual Soviet Premier, Yuri Andropov, and the chief of the German Democratic Republic’s Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (Main Directorate for Reconnaissance) or foreign intelligence service, Colonel General Markus Wolf. Based on information that has been made public from US intelligence services and law enforcement records since the end of the Cold War, Kalugin was viewed by them as an extremely clever antagonist. While Kalugin was on the beat, the US tried to play down the degree of damage Kalugin’s success had inflicted but it could hardly be denied that his efforts left US intelligence services limping back to the barn a bit. One would be completely off the mark if one expected a diatribe from Kalugin in First Directorate about his former US adversaries of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The US not only became the host of Kalugin and his family, but granted them US citizenship.

In First Directorate, Kalugin does not engage in an esoteric discussion of the strong-arm security apparatus of the Soviet Union, what 20th century US philosopher and political theorist, Hannah Arendt, best described as a totalitarian and authoritarian Communist regime in The Origins of Totalitarianism. Indeed, he discusses it in a manner easily perceived from a KGB-officers-eye-view, from junior worm up to the top of the heap, effectively illustrating how completely alien the KGB culture was to Western attitudes and inclinations. At the same time, Kalugin offers readers a reality a bit different from what are very common perceptions of the activities and inner workings of the KGB foreign intelligence service and to a large extent, present-day foreign intelligence service of the Russian Federation. He achieved much in terms of recruiting spies who were already well-placed in the US national security apparatus and collecting some the most secret information concerning the defense of the US and Western Europe. Although Kalugin considers fair the assessment notion among many Western experts of an ultra-labyrinthine structure and system that existed within the KGB that thwarted even officers’ understanding of how the organization worked, he knocks it down describing how it’s system worked with a certain simplicity and consistency, once one became accustomed to it. Condensed, everyone had a particular job, and knew their responsibilities. However, he notes that the manner in which some KGB officers performed their jobs would vary from what was expected. Therein lies the rub. Indeed, the peculiar behavior of some officers ignited a near catastrophic end to Kalugin’s career. It became an inflection point in his life story. While narrating a story, Kalugin explores such situations with readers and provides edifying answers. One might go as far as to state that he takes on the role of instructor, introducing nuanced details about certain matters in his lecture as if he were trying to impart the full benefit of his experience to nescient, young KGB officers at the erstwhile Yuri Andropov Training Center housed at Leningrad State University or Red Star in the Yasenevo District of Moscow, preparing them for what they might face on the beat overseas. Of course, he certainly is not part of that anymore.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a deluge of information put out about the KGB. Numerous books were written by the organization’s former intelligence officers. Given the quantity and quality of a big portion of what has been made available about Soviet and Russian Federation foreign intelligence services, it was surprising how many self-declared and presumptive experts on this subject, ignored or were blissfully unaware of the realities about such work that rather casually accused US President Donald Trump of being an agent for Moscow. (If the basis was his four visits to Moscow over a 25 year period, once for a beauty pageant, then potentially any US citizen could be vacuously accused of spying for any country they may have visited more than once for tourism, business, or any other Innocuous reason. All countries have intelligence services and all are interested in the US at all levels.) Surely, Trump’s accusers believed that they fully understood as much as they needed about the Russian Federation intelligence services to reach that conclusion. Surely, in all seriousness, that purported knowledge was augmented with what they may have extrapolated from James Bond and Jason Bourne films, as well as streaming television programs about spying. They are all banal amusements, mere jumped up versions of 19th century penny dreadfuls and “adventure stories for boys.” Even Members of both chambers of the US Congress among Trump’s political adversaries, who actually receive briefings from the US intelligence community, hold hearings in committees in order to get questions about any information answered, and are allowed access to intelligence, appear more influenced by such “data” from Hollywood. Such is the state of national politics and political discourse in the US today. A problem arising from it all is that many US citizens have been bewildered by such absurd propositions from supposedly reliable sources as Members of Congress. Argumentum ad veracundiam. (Argument from authority.)

In The Second Book of his work, The History of Britain, That Part Especially Now Called England, (1670), the great 17th century English poet and intellectual, John Milton, explains: “Worthy deeds are not often destitute of worthy relators; as for a certain fate, great acts and great eloquence have most commonly gone hand in hand, equalling and honoring each other in the same age.” As is the case with his memoir, Kalugin is a worthy relator of his own actions. Surely, with the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to enumerate all of the mistakes, the poor choices, Kalugin made. With regard to that, Kalugin clearly was willing in the text to consider the propriety of his choices and actions or at least at that point he seems to have begun that sort of post-mortem self-evaluation. That process takes place on paper as he candidly conveys his personal experience within the system that turned against him. As one learns about Kalugin through First Directorate, not creating his own record of what he did in the KGB, what KGB had done, and what the Soviet system was really all about, would have been tantamount to admitting to never having had a spark of dignity or decency.

In First Directorate, Kalugin creates a sense of immediateness to what he writes. He would often build tension on the book’s pages while doing that. Indeed, many anecdotes he relates, great and small, are truly edge of seat, nail-biting stuff. Of the cases that he selected to detail, each had its own set of intriguing complications, stirring and engaging the interests of the reader. As for what he shares, his style of presentation, his pace, Kalugin’s efforts are nothing less than brilliant, and greatcharlie has come across nothing better. He beautifully provides the mise en scène using crisp descriptions of surroundings. He marvellously constructs in the mind’s eye of readers a certain atmosphere and desired theatrical effect.

About the Author

Kalugin was born in Leningrad on September 6, 1934. He is of medium height, and for his age, which as of this writing is 85. He has maintained an excellent build, and was at least at one time, quite athletic. Even into his 60s and 70s was known to go on long distance ocean swims. In public, he keeps himself well-groomed, well-attired. Apparently, he is appreciative of a good suit. He has been also blessed with being handsome for a lifetime, possessing what would be popularly described as “manly good looks.” Indeed, it is hard to imagine how anyone would hire Kalugin as an intelligence officer, believing he would be able to avoid notice in public or fade into the background. However, by his countenance, one could immediately recognize his was not just “a pretty face.” Beyond his becoming smile, there has always been a discernable depth to Kalugin even during his earliest years. Nearly everyone who has met Kalugin has called him a charming man with a big and ready laugh and an attractive wit. In conversation, he is talkative, but does not dwell long on unpleasantries. In the US, Kalugin lived in a suburb north of Washington in Silver Spring, Maryland. His wife Ludmila was part of that life for 47 years. They fell in love in 1951, the same year that he made the firm decision to join the intelligence service. She saw Kalugin through all of the rough days of his career, particularly the false allegations, his demotion, the transfer to Leningrad, his stand against the KGB after retirement, his difficulties with Putin’s regime, and the self-imposed exile. His wife was also at his side in the US when she died of cancer in 2001. Doubtlessly, at least at some point, it was difficult for Kalugin to keep it together over her loss. Kalugin is known to entertain visitors to his home by showing off mementos of his intelligence career. Initially upon his independent return to the US, he served as a lecturer at Catholic University. Since then, Kalugin has become a much sought out speaker, and has lectured at a multitude of venues, traveling his new homeland, from state to state “without papers,” enlightening audiences primarily on Putin’s Russia and the often stunning actions of his intelligence services. Currently, he is a professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies.

Kalugin’s connection with Soviet intelligence began at an early age. After graduating from high school in Leningrad in 1952, and completing his mandatory military service, Kalugin was admitted to study at the Institute of Foreign Languages in Leningrad run by the Ministerstvh Gosudarstvennoe Bezopasnosti (Ministry for State Security) or MGB, the precursor of the KGB foreign intelligence service. After graduation from there in 1956, with honors, he was sent as a young officer to study at the Higher Intelligence School No. 101 of the KGB in Moscow which actually fell under the USSR Council of Ministers. The KGB leadership selected Kalugin for assignment to the First Department of First Chief Directorate which concerned foreign intelligence operations in and against the US and Canada. In 1958, Kalugin, who was considered a graduate of the faculty of journalism, was deployed to New York to undertake journalism studies at Columbia University. After briefly returning home, he was deployed again to New York, working in the early 1960s as a journalist for Moscow Radio at the UN. Kalugin was very competent as a reporter. He was not just a spy, but a successful one. One might say that spying seemed to be Kalugin’s metier. His working habits as a KGB officer, as he describes in First Directorate, were to be envied. He was always honorable and discreet, using mental agility and memory, acting gradually and with a certain gentleness. Kalugin let nothing escape his examination. In 1964, due to the threat of being arrested, he was recalled to the Soviet Union, and assigned as press officer in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. However, he was not in Moscow long. He was soon sent back to the US, on that occasion to Washington. There, Kalugin would serve as the equivalent of the deputy KGB station chief under the guise of a deputy press attaché of the Soviet Embassy. In 1971, according to Kalugin, he was suspected of treason, but the Chairman of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, knocked the matter down deciding the case in his favor. Andropov, as elaborated upon further later in this review, was a mentor for Kalugin and took an interest in his career trajectory. He was transferred to the external counterintelligence service. By 1974, at the age of 40, Kalugin received the rank of KGB Major General. It was at this stage that the Kalugin’s activities were more reflective of Soviet behavior that caused most to deem the country as an immoral, worldwide menace, and threat to global peace and security.

For Kalugin, there was unlikely any real opportunity, in the midst of his work against the West, to view matters from a broader or humane perspective. Comparing Kalugin’s efforts side-by-side versus his opposite numbers in the West boil down to efforts to apportion wickedness. There was a balance of terror in the Cold War. Deception, subversion, and countersubversion was what it was all about. The 18th and 19th century French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was quoted as saying: “In war, as in politics, no evil–even if it is permissible under the rules–is excusable unless it is absolutely necessary. Everything beyond that is a crime.” It was easy enough in the West to understand that during the Cold War, intelligence services fought under the conundrum of knowing how much could be done to defend a free and decent society while remaining a free and decent society worth defending. The Soviet Union was governed under an authoritarian, Socialist and Marxist-Leninist system directed under the auspices of the de facto one-party rule of the Communist Party. As aforementioned, instrumental in maintaining order to allow for the implementation of revolutionary precepts was the KGB, which often in the performance of its domestic security mission showed little regard for the human rights of Soviet citizens. To that extent, its behavior observed domestically would be reflected in its foreign intelligence activities overseas. Yet, despite what may have been the concept and intent of KGB headquarters concerning the conduct of its officers, not all, but many performed, without ethics, without any moral creed. Certainly, Kalugin had well-served the Soviet Union and the Communist Movement. There was never any indication in First Directorate that Kalugin had a sense that he had sacrificed his own humanity during his career. In Kalugin’s mind, whatever he did for the service, even if it skirted what was morally questionable by his own ethics, was for the greater good, not to soothe his own ego. If Kalugin caused anyone any suffering through this process, he most likely would say it was regrettable but the best option at the time.

Facilis descensus Averni: Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis; Sed revocare gradium superasque evadere ad auras, Hoc opus, hic labor est. (The gates of hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labor lies.) While there was a tacit understanding that a recruit could find a home with all the care and comfort imaginable during and after active service in the KGB, the Soviet government made no real promises that the link would be permanent through thick and thin. When things were going well, there was a duplicity between Kalugin and the KGB that he loved. That meant that he, as with others, would support and tolerate what he knew was wrong. When things were not going well, especially between managers and a staff or field officer, Kalugin demonstrates that the KGB could become a very brutal place internally for that officer. By the time Kalugin had been demoted and sent to Leningrad, long since renamed St. Petersburg following the collapse of the Soviet Union, he had become jaded by what he experienced on the front line of the Cold War. Alas, all of his efforts may have felt futile to him. Indeed, in the end, his struggles with the West, his extertions over the years, proved to be Sisyphean. Kalugin metaphorically was left standing alone on a dark and stormy night, apparently feeling abandoned by the Soviet government that he loved so dearly, to which he was loyal to the core. Due to all of this, Kalugin had to face the painful reality of many loyal Soviet citizens, which was that the hand of the Soviet state that they were taught early on, was benign, caring, comforting, encouraging, and infallible, as not always extended open palmed toward them and their needs. Kalugin had to lift his head above those of his adversaries. He would eventually recognize the need to make up for quite a sin of promoting such an organization. Kalugin retired from the KGB on February 26, 1990, and became a vocal independent critic of the Communist system. When one who lacks political power is unable to implement change, one can still voice opposition. Levels of success and failure will vary due to circumstances. It was Kalugin’s inability to stand by quietly that brought down upon him the full weight of the intelligence industry, the oppressive reputation of which he helped to build. Kalugin’s continuous attacks on the KGB garnered him notoriety and a political following. In 1990, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was rash enough to sign a decree stripping Kalugin of his rank, decorations, and pension. If Gorbachev only had a hint of what was coming his way from the same KGB management that his decision supported, perhaps he most likely would have made another choice. Gorbachev would restore all that was taken from Kalugin in August 1991, after the coup attempt. Kalugin loved his homeland, Mother Russia and the Soviet Union, and presumably still does today. Certainly, he does not love the regime that controls it. After retirement, Kalugin served as a deputy in the Supreme Soviet, representing the Krasnodar region from September 1990 to December 1991. Kalugin ventured into politics to change the security apparatus, reform it. That was simply not in the cards. Doubtlessly, Kalugin never planned to become an expat, or more accurately, live in a self-imposed exile. He had little choice otherwise for existential reasons. He could not change his circumstances, so he had to change his perspective. Kalugin conquered the uncertainties of his life in Russia by leaving his homeland and embarking on a new journey in the US. It is from the US that he produced his memoir.

Nullius addictus lurare in verba magistri. (No master can make me swear blind obedience.) Vladimir Putin came on the scene ostensibly as a reformer, hand picked by Yeltsin. Apparently, Putin came highly recommended by other self-declared reformists and he managed to curry favor with President Boris Yeltsin of the nascent Russian Federation. Yeltsin, known for being earnest, was a bit too trusting. Putin ostensibly embraced the idea of a new beginning for Russia. At that point, it would have been counterintuitive for Putin to bemoan the Soviet Union’s collapse. What lurked beneath the surface would eventually set the path upon which he placed his country. Kalugin was able to see Putin straight. Alarm bells started to ring in his head, and he could see what was coming. By the time he wrote First Directorate, he was already feeling terribly apprehensive. Little was done directly by Kalugin to set himself up for what became a near David and Goliath schema of independent, capable man taking on the monstrous Evil Empire as well as its second-self, Putin’s Russia. Indeed, left in control of the Russian Federation by Yeltsin after 1999, Putin, rather than reform the system, gradually made it look more and more as the old Soviet one, particularly with regard to the intelligence services. Putin wanted all of the former KGB men, many of whom had become extremely popular among the Western think tanks, academia, the news media and law enforcement and intelligence services, to become Lotus Eaters. Much milk had been spilled concerning Eastern intelligence operations after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dutiful Kalugin had been tasked one more time by his “former” masters in Moscow, to get some of it back into the bottle. Putin felt that there was a threat posed by revelations by KGB officers eager to please book publishers, magazine editors, and television producers than an effort to establish power over the intelligence service left over from Soviet times, including the old boy network of retirees. If any talking had to be done, Putin likely would have preferred pushing out a message strictly controlled by the Kremlin amounting to a curious sort of ventriloquism. Active measures had come home. Kalugin came to the personal attention of Putin himself. Kalugin from what was presented was the very soul of discretion. There was presumably nothing to fear from him. He was not snooping round corridors. However, there was an apparent sense of anger toward Kalugin in the Kremlin not only because he ostensibly traded in on his knowledge of the service, but that he told enough to stir a sense of betrayal. Among Kalugin’s former KGB colleagues who would eventually people Putin’s government, were the same adversaries from the organization who could not hold a candle to him in the industry. They did not have his stature, only reputations for wrongdoing, oppression. Thus, envy and jealousy were also the likely culprits for their odium toward Kalugin as much as anything else. Kalugin would be solely portrayed in a negative light by Putin and his senior aides and advisors. To hear Kalugin speak of Putin, it is clear that the leader had become a perfect monster in his eyes. While Kalugin was lecturing in the US in 2002, he was put on trial for treason in absentia in Moscow, in part for certain revelations placed in First Directorate, and consequently sentenced to 15 years in prison. Kalugin now appears relatively serene. Through his words, one recognizes that he has come to terms with his role in an extremely dangerous and dynamic organization. Kalugin became a US citizen on August 4, 2003. Kalugin would insist that Putin would love to send a message to the US by harming him. At the present, with Donald Trump as US President, the harsh consequences of Moscow doing such would with assurity far outmatch any possible gain, psychic or otherwise.

Critiquing First Directorate

Perhaps it may be revealing too much, but without pretension, greatcharlie must admit initially feeling somewhat ambivalent about reviewing First Directorate, unsure of being knowledgeable enough to judge the written work of such an extraordinary professional as Kalugin. Suffice it to say that it must be left to readers of this review, who will hopefully also read First Directorate, to determine whether greatcharlie got it right. Seeking out Kalugin’s memoir, one might discover as greatcharlie did that his1994 book was published in English under two titles: First under First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage against the West published by St. Martin’s Press, as it is reviewed here; and, Spymaster: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage against the West published by Smith Gryphon Publishers. In a 2009 revised edition of Spymaster: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage against the West, rev. ed. (Basic Books, 2009), in which the text is enhanced with greater details about his cases. In a new Epilogue, discusses developments in his personal life since the book’s first publication. Upon examining the text of each edition, one cannot help but be impressed by the care invested in the creation of this work. As indicated on the cover of both titles, Kalugin completed the book with the assistance of the journalist and former head of theMoscow Bureau of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Fen Montaigne. Surely Montaigne’s contribution was useful and important. Still, anyone fortunate enough to have heard Kalugin speak publicly or review recordings of his many news media interviews and presentations at colleges, universities, think tanks, foreign policy associations and societies on YouTube, could attest that his command of the English language is superb. Indeed, he writes First Directorate in a way that is clear, concise, and flawless grammatically. Surely, Kalugin would have had little difficulty actually establishing himself as a novelist or nonfiction writer in the West if he had chosen to do so. Kalugin initially developed his proficiency in English to serve as an element of his tradecraft overseas. It did, as he used the unofficial cover in the US of Soviet journalist. He had to comfortably communicate with others and fully comprehend the world in which he was immersed. Kalugin was also proficient in German and Arabic.

Kalugin hangs what he provides In First Directorate’s 374 pages on two chronologies: the chronology of his career; and a historical chronology, neatly pairing events of his times and experiences he had which were directly connected to them. The titles of books chapters mark milestones of a life lived. They include: “A Stalinist Boyhood”; “Washington Station”; “The Spy Game”; and, “Exile”. Kalugin jumps into his story as early as the Prologue with an anecdote from his formative years as a KGB officer, working in the US under non-official cover. Indeed, Kalugin offers readers bits and pieces on the Cook case, which involved a US scientist from the US defense contractor, Thiokol, who became his and the KGB’s prize recruit. It proved to be a particularly important episode for Kalugin. He later discusses how the echoes of that case ultimately shaped the outcome of his career. Having set the reader off on that track, Kalugin then formally begins the memoir, allowing the reader to learn about his formative years. Readers are provided an understanding of how he came to accept Communism from top to toe in the traditional sense, how that shaped his worldview, his choice for a career, and how he got into the KGB. As he retraces his steps, he begins skillfully peopling the world in which he allows his readers. For instance, readers learned about his father and the psychic influence that he had on Kalugin due to his position in the the Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) or NKVD, a forerunner of the KGB. He provides enough about each personage, allowing for the creation of a full image of the individual in the reader’s mind. Having shared memories from his early years, Kalugin begins discussing his career in Soviet foreign intelligence. Interestingly, his connection to the intelligence service began as early as the years of his formal education. It all neatly blends together.

First Directorate is far from dull, plodding, or pedantic. As for the mechanics of his method, once Kalugin decided what he is going to offer, he did so with a pace that could be called a very smooth and normalized ejection fraction–stealing a term from the medical industry concerning the measure of blood pumped out with each heartbeat. The anecdotes told are the blood which keeps makes Kalugin’s story lively, informative, edifying, and satisfying. Kalugin does not simply unload ideas and hope the reader does not get lost in the weeds when they encounter what seems to be abstraction, due perhaps to a lack of in-depth knowledge about the spy business. One will discover that as the situations he describes evolve, characters evolve, and Kalugin evolves. Kalugin makes no assumptions about the reader’s ability to grasp all that is going on in the text in terms of tradecraft and the spy business. He does not take for granted how much the reader can absorb from what he teaches. Rather, he takes control of that process, apportioning how much of the story he feels would be appropriate. When he feels the reader should be ready for more, Kalugin increases quantity and complexity in his anecdotes. To that extent that he does all of this, Kalugin uses what could be best described as a pedagogy for developing the reader’s understanding of the world he is moving them through.

Kalugin creates a sense of immediateness to what he writes. He would often build tension on the book’s pages while doing that. Indeed, many anecdotes he relates, great and small, are truly edge of seat, nail-biting stuff. Of the cases that he selected to detail, each had its own set of intriguing complications, stirring and engaging the interests of the reader. As for what he shares, his style of presentation, his pace, Kalugin’s efforts are nothing less than brilliant, and greatcharlie has come across nothing better. He beautifully provides the mise en scène using crisp description of surroundings. He marvellously constructs in the mind’s eye of readers a certain atmosphere and desired theatrical effect. Unless greatcharlie is extremely mistaken, he paints with words in a way that will cause First Directorate’s readers to find themselves, at the same time while fortunately sitting in at some safe spot, feeling as if they are actually present on the scene that he describes, watching everything transpire perfectly through the mind’s eye.

It would be an understatement to say First Directorate did not have paeans written about in 1994 when published in the US. Indeed, Kalugin’s book was not really appreciated or welcomed. Through book reviews, one can pick up on a reviewer’s disposition generally, and can gain a good insight about a reviewer’s perceptiveness and thinking. (In that vein, readers can perhaps gain some degree of insight into how greatcharlie thinks given what is noted here as important about First Directorate.) Perhaps 1994 reactions were due to the proximity of the book’s publishing to the so-called end of the Cold War, marked with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Feelings within journalistic and literary circles about the Soviet Union and all connected to it were still decidedly negative, even hostile. It was likely those sensibilities that influenced the thinking of reviewers of First Directorate. The following is a sample of the reviews it received. In a October 13, 1994 review in the Washington Post, Amy Knight did little to conceal her disdain for Kalugin. Knight wrote: “Though he proclaimed himself a democrat in 1990 and denounced the KGB, Kalugin had spent more than three decades determinedly trying to undermine Western democracies. His book tells us a great deal about the KGB’s operations during the Cold War, but it also raises anew the question of how we should react to the confessions of erstwhile enemies.” Distrustful of his intentions in the foregoing statement, she evinced her concern over Kalugin’s integrity with the words: “Kalugin can hardly be criticized if he wrote this book simply to make money. After all, we in the West have been encouraging Russians to become entrepreneurs. But did he have another, darker purpose? Is it possible that Kalugin’s much-publicized denunciation of the KGB was stage-managed to give him credibility in the West, so that he would be believed when he told people that he knew of no KGB moles in the CIA?” In a December 25, 1994 review in the Baltimore Sun, entitled, “The Spy Who Loved It: Tales from a KGB Life”, Scott Shane begins by stating: “In ‘The First Directorate,’ written with the assistance of former Philadelphia Inquirer Moscow correspondent Fen Montaigne, Mr. Kalugin tells his engrossing story and tells it well. Focusing on Kalugin as KGB intelligence officer, he notes: “A spy lives by his powers of observation and memory, and they equally serve the autobiographer.” Shane reveals his suspicions of Kalugin, writing: “Mr. Kalugin, whose perpetually raised eyebrows give him a look that is at once untrusting and untrustworthy, nicely illustrates the habit of lying spies naturally develop. Indeed, Mr. Kalugin is so candid about the cheerful Iagoan malice with which he did his dirty work that his occasional, self-described twinges of conscience come across as unconvincing. As his story almost unconsciously makes clear, it was not the KGB’s brutality that turned him against the agency.” Having stated that, Shane completes his review somewhat positively, saying: “One need not wholeheartedly admire Mr. Kalugin, however, to enjoy his story. It is a reminder that in the wake of the Soviet collapse, we have learned a good deal more about the KGB than we have learned about the CIA and its sister agencies on the other side of the Cold War.” On November 9, 1994 in composite review of post-cold-war scholarship on Lenin, the atomic bomb, and KGB espionage in the Christian Science Monitor, Leonard Bushkoff stated about First Directorate: “After the beautifully crafted books by Holloway and Kapuscinski, there is a letdown in The First Directorate: My 32 Years In Intelligence and Espionage Against the West, the bureaucratic memoirs of Oleg Kalugin, a retired KGB major-general whose authoritative visage has graced American television. His book–written with Fen Montaigne–is filled with lively tidbits about operating in the United States, recruiting agents, roaming the world on this or that mission – and enjoying the perks. Bushkoff goes on the say: “The ideological disillusionment that Kalugin insists began in the 1980s is unconvincing in this ambitious career-minded official, who now presents himself as a liberal, democratic political figure.” Among professional reviewers, there seemed to be more of a willingness to beg off on uncoated expressions of suspicion over Kalugin’s intentions and actions, and even more, his character as with the foregoing. In Booklist, a book-review magazine that has been published by the American Library Association for more than 100 years, Gilbert Taylor wrote in August 1994: “After he had been cashiered from the KGB in 1990, Kalugin blazed into prominence as a critic of the pervasive spy empire. But oddly enough, he remains a professional loyal to the spook’s ethos: tell no tales out of school. Although frank about generalities, he ventures few blockbusting specifics that haven’t popped up elsewhere in the post-cold war wave of espionage books, but this memoir of a stellar career in the secret service is, nonetheless, engrossing for aficionados.” Taylor finishes his review noting: “Filled with anecdotes linked by personal journey from Stalinist true believer to champion democrat, Kalugin’s account of life in the secret world will haul in all spy buffs–a number to be augmented by a full-press publicity push.”

Given Kalugin’s former profession, spying, it would be fair to ponder whether the book relates truth, fiction, or something in between. Indeed, some readers may wonder whether one of the main elements of spying, promoting fraud, influenced his writing of First Directorate. As aforementioned, Kalugin has the skills to provide a colorful description of a man, and ascribing vibrant characteristics, impressive associations, and intriguing experiences to him. It also cannot be stated with absolute certainty by greatcharlie Kalugin actually loosed-off a full-frontal on himself as well as the KGB. However, greatcharlie is convinced that while there may very likely be certain omissions from his anecdotes, Kalugin presents the truth about himself in First Directorate. That truth about himself is rich enough, and would hardly require any embellishment. Although Kalugin’s intelligence career was amazing and his superb work in the KGB that made him more desirable to his new country’s government, there was more to Kalugin than his work. Some might feel Kaligin does quite a bit of preening in First Directorate. However, perhaps a second thought might be given to that idea backed by the consideration that among specialists, masters of a particular craft, there is typically a desire to look over their shoulders, to detail what has transpired, and to scrutinize themselves and their actions technically and tactically. Chronicling the past on paper, the convivial Kalugin also seemed to recount it all in his soul and spirit. As Kalugin dredges around himself, to discuss his contacts with people and memories of events, he willingly opens the kimono on his conscience. In the Preface of The Cenci: A Tragedy in Five Acts, the 18th century English romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, wrote: ”The highest moral purpose aimed at in the highest species of drama is the teaching the human heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowledge of itself.”

The symbol of the KGB (above). It should not be overlooked that all that Kalugin discusses in First Directorate is actually couched in an overarching discussion of the operations of the giant Soviet state security service, the KGB. The KGB was gloriously called the Soviet Union’s ”Sword and Shield” and the “Vanguard of Communism.” Its  primary responsibilities of the KGB were: foreign intelligence; counterintelligence; operatives investigatory activities, protecting the Soviet border, protecting the leadership of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Soviet Government; organization and security of government communications; and combatting nationalism, dissent, and anti-Soviet activities.

What Was the KGB?

It should not be overlooked that all that Kalugin discusses in First Directorate is actually couched in an overarching discussion of the operations of the giant Soviet state security service, the KGB. At the risk of being perceived as tiresome to those who already know much on the subject, some of the basics about the behemoth Soviet security organization are laid out here by greatcharlie for those less-familiar with it. The KGB was gloriously called the Soviet Union’s ”sword and shield” and the “Vanguard of Communism.” Its  primary responsibilities of the KGB were: foreign intelligence; counterintelligence; operatives investigatory activities, protecting the Soviet border, protecting the leadership of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Soviet Government; organization and security of government communications; and combatting nationalism, dissent, and anti-Soviet activities. Headquartered at Lubyanka Square, 2 Moscow, the KGB was well-situated, well-equipped, to cope with external, foreign threats to the system, counterrevolutionaries and reactionaries internally, as well as organized criminals and the black market. Its manpower would steadily grow in parallel with its activities and influence, reaching a total of 496,000. A large portion of that number included the Pogranichnyie Voiska KGB CCCP (Border Troops of the KGB USSR), a defense against threats from land, air, sea to Soviet territory. In 1989, the organization’s strength was estimated at 230,000 covering 63,000 kilometers of the Soviet border. There were additional smaller formations and independent units. Its land air and maritime troops and sailors functioned under the Main Directorate of the Border Troops which was subordinated to the First Deputy Chairman of the KGB. The Vtoroye Glavnoye Upravleniye (Second Chief Directorate) or VGU was the Internal Security Service of the KGB. Among Soviet citizens at home and abroad, it was the KGB’s Second Chief Directorate in a paranoid search for Soviet enemies and never ending quest to maintain total control over the Soviet Union’s population that unnerved and struck terror in their hearts as they tried innocently going about their daily business. In Hollywood, a sure-shot way to create a dark, mystifying picture of life in the Soviet Union was to depict scenes in which ordinary Soviet citizens would occasionally be taken aside by the KGB and asked: “Show me your identity card” or, make the more polite request, “Identity card please.” It would capture the flavor of Soviet rule and have the chilling effect on audiences, accurately illustrating how alien and atrocious life was in the Soviet Union and under Communism in general. The KGB was to be avoided by the ordinary Soviet citizen as best as possible. During Kalugin’s time, the KGB truly had a grip on everything except the Communist Party organization. Even then, the KGB was also known to play an important part in the allocation of power and authority by Soviet leaders after Stalin’s death, being drawn into the arena of internecine conflict among them. Perhaps it could be said that all Soviet citizens sailed the same sea but KGB members did so in different boats. The nomenklatura in the Soviet Union, or high ranking management of government bureaucracies and Communist Party functionaries, reigned as the main authorities in the country, ironically becoming the de facto aristocracy in its society, and entitled themselves to opportunities and privileges unavailable to ordinary citizens. The apparatchiks, or government bureaucrats, who actually oversaw the KGB’s abhorrent work of keeping the Soviet people under the thumb of their government, saw themselves as being indispensable members of an indispensable Soviet instrumentality. Most generally believed that as a benefit of being a member of the KGB, there was little chance that the conditions which beset ordinary Soviet citizens would impact their circumstances until discovering otherwise. Nimia illæc licentia profecto evadet in aliquod magnum malum. (This excessive license will most certainly eventuate in some great evil.)

The history and organization of the KGB’s foreign intelligence service, which directly concerns Kalugin’s career, well reflected the nature of its global mission and how that mission was performed. In 1917, the post-Bolshevik Revolution Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) secret police was founded and designated Vserossiyskaya Chrezvychaynaya Komissiya Po Borbe S Kontrrevolyutsiyey I Sabotazhem Pri Sovete Narodnykh Komisarov RSFSR (All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution, Speculation and Sabotage under the Council of People’s Commissary of the RSFSR) better known as the Cheka. It was Soviet Premier Vladimir Lenin, himself, who characterized the Cheka as the sword and shield of Communism. In those postwar years, Soviet internal security, foreign intelligence, and counterintelligence organizations went through a period of transformation donning an alphabet soup of titles. As outlined in Henry S. A. Becket, The Dictionary of Espionage: Spookspeak into English (Stein & Day, 1986), its various iterations included: 1922-1923, Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie (State Political Administration) or GPU; 1923-1934, Obedinennoe Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenye (Unified State Political Administration) or OGPU; 1934-1938, Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) or NKVD; 1938-1946, Narodnyi Komissariat Gosudarstvennoe Bezopasnosti (People’s Commissariat for State Security) and Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) or NKGB-NKVD, placing police and security functions under one chief; and, 1946-1953, Ministerstvo Vnuirennikh Del (Ministry for Internal Affairs) and Ministerstvh Gosudarstvennoe Bezopasnosti (Ministry for State Security) or MVD-MGB. Eventually all of the non-military security functions were organized in what was dubbed the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (the Committee for State Security) or the KGB. Founded upon the experiences of other iterations of Soviet state security, the new KGB had no need to shed baby fat as it were. It was populated by men and women made of the same solid stuff of those who around 20 years before defended Leningrad and Stalingrad and drove Germany and its allies eastward until they reached Berlin. However, things are seldom perfect in any organization.

KGB’s leadership included its Chairman, the First Deputy Chairman (there could be more than one), Deputy Chairman (as many as 4 to 6), a policy Collegium, which included a chairman, a deputy chairman, the directorate chiefs, and the KGB chairmen of the Soviet republics. As aforementioned, Pervoye Glavnoye Upravieniye (First Chief Directorate) or PGU of the KGB which was the element responsible for foreign operations and intelligence activities and concerned Kalugin’s work. As such, the First Chief Directorate would provide for the training and management of covert agents, intelligence collection administration, and the acquisition of foreign and domestic political, scientific and technical intelligence. According to Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, Comrade Kryuchkov’s Instructions: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations, 1975-1985 (Stanford University Press, 1993), the KGB included the following directorates, services and departments during Kalugin’s years there. Included among the directorates and services were: Directorate R: Operational Planning and Analyses; Directorate S: Illegals (agents inserted into societies, blending in, but carrying out orders from Moscow.

Forged documents, establishes themselves as citizens of the host country.); Directorate T: Scientific and Technical Intelligence (collected scientific, technological, and military information through espionage. Targets were in the Western industrial sector.); Directorate K: Counter-Intelligence: (infiltration of all the foreign special service operations: intelligence, counter-intelligence, police forces worldwide); Directorate OT: Operational and Technical Support; Directorate I: Computers; Directorate RT: Operations in USSR; Directorate V: “Wet affairs” (track down traitors, sabotage, assist international revolution, terrorism, and act in time of war.); Service A: Active Measures (disinformation, propaganda, forgery; support of front organizations, underground movements, revolutionary insurgencies, criminal and terrorist groups; Service R: radio communications; and, Service A of the 8th Chief Directorate at the First Chief Directorate (the code section).

Operations broke down regionally and functionally in the following departments: First Department: US and Canada; Second Department: Latin America; Third Department: United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia, Malta; Fourth Department: East Germany, West Germany, Austria; Fifth Department: Benelux countries, France, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Greece, Italy, Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania; Sixth Department: China, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, North Korea; Seventh Department: Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines; Eighth Department: non-Arab Near Eastern countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Israel; Ninth Department: English-speaking Africa; Tenth Department: French-speaking Africa; Eleventh Department: liaison with Socialist states; Thirteenth Department: direct action, “assassination,” of enemies abroad and at home; Fifteenth Department: registry and archives, security of government installations; Sixteenth Department: signals intelligence and operations against Western code clerks; Seventeenth Department: India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Burma; Eighteenth Department: Arab Near Eastern Countries and Egypt; Nineteenth Department: Soviet Union Emigres; and, Twentieth Department: liaison with Third World states. It must be noted that special attention was given to the UN by the First Chief Directorate. The UN provided a peaceful, respectful, diplomatic forum for international dialogue, yet it was the site of extensive Soviet activities inside the UN during the Cold War. Impartial UN employees from Eastern Bloc also employed by KGB. Ideals and goals of the UN not followed. The orders that they would obey only came from KGB.

Beyond its own operations, the First Chief Directorate very successfully directed and controlled other Eastern Bloc intelligence services that were very often operating under the radar in many countries around the world. The officers of those aligned intelligence services certainly did not in any form akin to the Malgré-nous of the Alsace-Moselle performed for the German Waffen-SS during World War II. The product of many Eastern Bloc intelligence services actually far exceeded expectations as well as the capabilities of their Soviet task masters. Case in point was the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance), the foreign intelligence service of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic). Under the skilled leadership of Markus Wolf, its Western foes even had to acknowledge that it was probably the most efficient and effective such service on the European continent

The author as a teen (above). As a teen, Kalugin devoured the books of Arkady Gaidar, which included stories of young characters doing courageous and noble deeds for Motherland. It planted seed in Kalugin’s mind of becoming a secret service officer. Those feelings were intensified when he attended camp for children of secret police. He met with university students attending the Security Ministry’s Higher School. Kalugin saw them as confident, fun loving. Kalugin stated: “I wanted to be like those dashing officer trainees, and a career in the Intelligence Service beckoned.” At 17, he decided to join the intelligence service. With an English proficiency and strong academic capabilities, he was well qualified.

Kalugin’s Early Years and Career Choice

In illo viro, Tatum robur corporis et Naomi fuit, it quocunque loco Angus esset, Fortuna facturus. (In that man there was such oak-like strength of body and mind that whatever his rank by birth might have been, he gave promise of attaining the highest place in the lists of fortune.) As has been the case with previous reviews, greatcharlie most enjoys examining a memoir to understand what sort of individual develops into who the author became. In its review of First Directorate, greatcharlie explores how, from youth to his earliest years in the KGB, how Kalugin evolved into the man he is today.

At least from what he shares, his early life was entertaining, pleasurable to recall rather than filled with dissatisfaction, disappointment, and hard lessons. Indeed, Kalugin relates the days of his youth with a subtle humor, recounting the efforts of a young man trying to make his way through life. Kalugin was raised in a “sleeping district” outside of Leningrad, something akin to a French banlieue. His circumstances seemed relatively ordinary, however, his father worked for the NKVD. Kalugin’s father, Danil, was a dark haired, handsome man with facial features revealing a Tartar blood trace. He was not well educated, but by Kalugin’s description a solid man, who cared for his family. After serving In the Red Army in the 1920s, he sought work in Leningrad, and that is when he landed a job as security guard for the secret police, then known as the NKVD. When Kalugin grew up, his father was working at the Headquarters building in Smolny. (Interestingly, in the KGB, officers who were the children of officers and former officers of the security services are affectionately referred to as Chekisty (Chekists), a name derived from the first security service in Communist Russia mentioned earlier, the Cheka. Some would come from families whose “roots” go back to the beginnings of the Communist Party as Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin. Children raised in the Chekist community, attending schools and a university Chekists’ progeny typically attended.)

Kalugin’s mother Klavdia, came from a family of skilled factory workers from St Petersburg for more than a century. Based on the manner in which he described himself, Kalugin was clearly a bon garçon, born with a good soul, nourished by a fine family and appropriate associations in his youth. Unfortunately, he was born during a wave of terror in which 29 to 40 million Russians were killed, and a dark shadow hung over Russia. When Nazi Germany invaded Russia, Kalugin travelled wuth his mother to stayed in Omsk, Siberia. His father remained in Smolny, guarding Party elite. Kalugin and his mother returned to Leningrad after a 900 day siege. Only her sister survived the war. Other seven members among 27 million lost during war. This clearly had an impact on the young Kalugin. Dogma among Russians in the immediate postwar period was to say that Russia’s victory in the so-called Great Patriotic War proved Communist system was best. The defeat of the Nazis proved to Kalugin and his young compatriots that Soviet Union was invincible. Still, it went much further for Kalugin. He confirms in First Directorate that from the days of his youth he was absolutely subsumed by Communism; he was a true believer, and that perspective colored every decision he made. He yearned for the opportunity to defend his political ideals, defend his country, and fight on behalf of the Communist Movement. Kalugin’s political leanings did not make him a zealous firebrand.

Unless greatcharlie is terribly mistaken, as he grew, Kalugin appears to have been gentle in temperament, but at the same time a mature boy, not showy, but within possessing a burning ambition with an idea of where to place it. Kalugin undertook the path toward excellence as a Communist with a great sense of ritual. He joined the Young Pioneers at an early age, and in his teens, he became involved with Kommisol. These were the sort of activities that types such as Kalugin went for. One could posit that as a result of his indoctrination in the Soviet Union, Kalugin genuinely viewed Communism as a coherent ideology and provided a clear direction. For the Communist, too, hope supported imagination and drove the individual’s faith in the system. Faith supported and drove the individual’s action to achieve. Despite violent outcomes of KGB dealings with his fellow citizens, Kalugin would have likely confided that there was no reason to argue the point. In his heyday during Staliin’s era of Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, Kalugin likely would have looked any Western accusers directly in the eye and declared it all as Western disinformation, compelled by their bourgeoisie sense of morality to falsely critique the “superior” Soviet system any way they can. Much of what Soviet citizens were told about their country’s government, its security apparatus, its leaders, and its place in the world was filtered out by Moscow leaving what was reasonably bad out. Given the Kremlin insistence on concealing the truth about the country, many indoctrinated adherents of the system would contribute to their misunderstanding of it by doing their own filtering. Thus, the rest of what was understood of the Soviet Union, typically shaped by the desire to create the best picture of their country as possible, was usually just conjecture. It also made reasonable sense to those as Kalugin, psychically bound to the Soviet system, that there would always be the occasional differences of opinion over how efficiently something was done or how the government might have handled a matter more effectively under the Socialist framework. Amabilis insania. (Fond illusion.)

As a teen, he devoured the books of Arkady Gaidar, which included stories of young characters doing courageous and noble deeds for Motherland. It planted seed in Kalugin’s mind of becoming a secret service officer. Those feelings were intensified when he attended camp for children of secret police. He met with university students attending the Security Ministry’s Higher School. Kalugin saw them as confident, fun loving. They sang songs in English and Russian to campers to younger students. Kalugin stated: “I wanted to be like those dashing officer trainees, and a career in the Intelligence Service beckoned.” Kalugin had never assumed that he would have an ordinary life. Kalugin saw possible work in the state security service as more than a job. For him, it was a grand opportunity to support and defend his political ideals. Kalugin and his cohorts believe they were born to be men of action. Each wanted to be a pride to his fellow countrymen. For Kalugin, as with most of his young colleagues, the KGB offered a solid basis for believing that the Soviet system could be protected and sustained. The KGB, as a central organ of the government, ostensibly had the know-how and the resources to prevent the Soviet Union, and the contiguous countries of the Eastern bloc that it led, from falling into a chaotic condition. There was a perspective once common in the Soviet Union, and perhaps holds a place today in the Russian Federation, that in an heroic way, Kalugin and his KGB comrades were making good on the sacrifices of the previous generation of Soviet citizens in the Motherland’s defense. Kalugin explained that at 17, he decided to join the intelligence service, then called the MGB. With an English proficiency and strong academic capabilities, he felt qualified. Kalugin’s father, Danil strongly objected. As he worked for the NKVD, his father knew only too well what happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin, and. Indeed, he witnessed first-hand–from the screams he heard as a jail guard to the countless Communist Party bosses he saw disappear during his days at Smolny–what the glorious security services were doing to the Soviet people. Danil Kalugin secretly told his son about what he had seen and heard in the security forces. He explained to Kalugin that was what the NKVD was really all about; violence, torture, death. He did not want his son involved with the dirty work of the NKVD.

Isthuc est sapere non quod ante pedes modo est videre sed etiam illa quæ futura sunt prospicere. (True wisdom consists not in seeking that which is immediately before our eyes, but in the foresight of that which may happen.) Strangely enough, Kalugin explains that his father’s stories made the life of a secret policeman seem even more intriguing. Kalugin put it this way: “After all, wasn’t the KGB on the front line of the battle against capitalism and world imperialism? The thought of dying for one’s country and the Socialist ideal stirred my blood. His talk of screaming prisoners didn’t sound nice, but I asked myself, What else can you expect in a bitter struggle with our enemies?” Kalugin was held captive by the idea and ideals of Communism and too easily overcome by the seeming prestige, the power, and the draw of it all. With his romanticized visions of a career in the state security service, he was too excited to look both ways, too young and inexperienced to intuit where it all might lead. While Kalugin’s very caring father did his level best to dissuade his son from joining the security service but  was not able to fully comprehend what he was telling him, that the security service was not something ideal, not an organization of “superheroes,” but a real place with real people, and certain unusual men worked in the state security service.  As he moved through the years at KGB, Kalugin would slowly come to realize exactly what his father told him about the security service’s horrors. Four decades later, Kalugin, more mature, more experienced, more insightful, explained to readers much as his father tried to explain to him what he unexpectedly experienced in the intelligence service. What Kalugin expresses sometimes plainly, but most often subtly, throughout in First Directorate, is that from his first days of training to the day of his retirement, some KGB personnel, not all, did not appear to be well-vetted psychologically to perform their function given the behaviors they displayed. Surely, among the KGB’s internal security elements, there were acts of undue severity and abominable cruelty committed, bordering, if not fully manifesting, sadism. Such monstrous individuals appeared absolutely unhinged from the reality that they were serving the Soviet government, not themselves, and that their authority came from the government, not themselves. Much of that was already well-known.

In the more elite KGB formations, officers were engaged in more complex and challenging tasks, were further vetted and had received extensive training However, Kalugin also gets across that problems similar to those that impacted the internal security section also existed among some employees of the more elite intelligence sections. (Examine the text very closely; such statements are really there!) Surely, this was a very important matter for Kalugin as he repeatedly makes a point of describing the many different personalities that he encountered in the KGB. His depiction of them left no doubt that they had no business being in the organization. As readers will discover late in the book, such individuals got the ball rolling in the right direction to lower the curtain on Kalugin’s career. The indications and implications of the insights Kalugin shares concerning the KGB’s organizational well-being were that a nexus existed between the decaying performance of the KGB and the eventual collapse of the Soviet system. True, KGB recruits were strenuously vetted through training, yet some who did not openly manifest any deficiencies while under the watchful eyes of instructors apparently got through. More than a few violent, overzealous, under motivated, dishonorable, and vengeful individuals, suffering from a wide range of other pathologies, would move up through its ranks. As the success of each directorate, department, and service of the KGB was dependent on the quality and consistency of the performance of individuals in their respective positions, these bad hires given their troubling actions and the ugly environment they would create, managed to have a damaging impact upon the organization over time. (The uneven thinking and anomalous behavior Kalugin reports was exhibited by some clearly misplaced KGB officers, is actually a phenomenon common to many large intelligence services. It is very possible that deep-seated emotional difficulties or disorders are stimulated and amplified in the individual working in an intelligence services due to the unique responsibilities of the job, rather broad authority one possesses, unusual and morally questionable activities required, and potent stressors that strain. The thinking and behavior noted here was recently evinced in the record of activities undertaken by members of the US Intelligence Community who vigorously sought to destroy reputations and the lives of several innocent individuals inside and outside of the Trump administration. It was an apparent venomous, mentally unbalanced quest to force the collapse of Trump’s presidency. The exact reasons for their behavior will likely be difficult to identify until facts about them and their actions are fully known. Unfortunately, honorable men and women in the intelligence services run up against such damaged individuals in their organizations more often than they should.)

After graduating from high school in Leningrad, Kalugin passed four entrance exams with high marks and qualified for service in the MGB. In 1952, Kalugin began his studies at the Institute of Foreign Languages ​​of the MGB in Leningrad. There was only one other school similar to it for MGB officer training in the Soviet Union, the Higher School in Moscow. As mentioned earlier, in the immediate postwar period, Ministerstvo Vnuirennikh Del (Ministry for Internal Affairs) and Ministerstvh Gosudarstvennoe Bezopasnosti (Ministry for State Security) were combined to form the MVD-MGB. Kalugin graduated from the Institute of Foreign Languages with honors. Kalugin notes that at time of his graduation, his father was suffering as a result of a sharp decrease in KGB wages ordered by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in an effort to reign in the heavy-handed security service and he was subsisting with partition employment offered by friends. Yet, despite his own situation and his expressed misgivings about his son’s career choice, Kalugin’s father told him that he was proud of his achievement. By then the MVD-MGB had become the KGB.  The next step for Kalugin was more specialized training at the KGB Higher Intelligence School No. 101 or Advanced Spy School in Moscow. At the Advanced Spy School–later renamed the Andropov Red Banner Institute by the KGB and now called the Academy of Foreign Intelligence–Kalugin was trained as an Arabist, and in the course of his education, he studied the Middle East in detail. Kalugin was trained in tradecraft and prepared for technical work in the field. He learned how to set up radio transmitters, to use and detect bugging devices, to make microfilm and how to conceal microfilm and microdots in household items, how to cultivate intelligence assets, coding/decoding and cryptology, location orienting when dropped into unfamiliar locations, how to use a gun, how to tail people invisibly, how to detect when being tailed, how to evade all kinds of surveillance, and how to pass a package without being noticed even when being tailed. As his training came to a close, the leadership identified him for distribution to the most complex and prestigious First Foreign Intelligence Department, which, as aforementioned, dealt with the US and Canada. He was also informed that he would be joining a group of young people to take a graduate course in the US. As he relates the early days of his career, Kalugin appears to be transported to a place of happiness. The 20th century US philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, John Dewey said: “To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.”

Kalugin (center right) with Soviet cohorts at Columbia University. Kalugin initially came to the US in September 1958 to attend the Columbia University School of Journalism as one of 17 ostensible students from the Soviet Union to arrive under the Fulbright exchange program. In reality, half of them, including the 24-year-old Kalugin, were officers from Soviet intelligence services. Before going to the US, Alexander Feliksov, Head of the KGB’s North American Department instructed Kalugin: “Just lay the foundation for future work. But don’t overstep the line. Now that you’ve been picked to go to America, make it your business to learn more about the country. Buy yourself good maps. Improve your English. Find out about their way of life. Communicate with people and make as many friends as possible.”

Kalugin’s First Visit to the US

Kalugin initially came to the US in September 1958 to attend the Columbia University School of Journalism as one of 17 ostensible students from the Soviet Union to arrive under the Fulbright exchange program that year, and the first Soviet citizens to study in the US since the end of World War II. In reality, half of them, including the 24 year old Kalugin, were actually representing Soviet intelligence services. He was already a lieutenant in the KGB. Before he left, Alexander Feliisov, the Head of the KGB’s North American Department instructed Kalugin: “Just lay the foundation for future work. But don’t overstep the line. Now that you’ve been picked to go to America, make it your business to learn more about the country. Buy yourself good maps. Improve your English. Find out about their way of life. Communicate with people and make as many friends as possible.” In New York, Kalugin came in contact with a culture alien to him. He tried to better understand it by experiencing as much of it as possible. Kalugin was impressed by Manhattan; the power, the beauty, the bustle. Other worldly creations, skyscrapers, the Empire State Building. He travelled throughout the city, no restrictions were placed on his movement. He would ride the subway for hours. He saw 100 films and visited clubs in Greenwich Village. Soon enough, the haunts and pleasures of the elite class became his stomping ground, too! He attended Broadway musicals, the Metropolitan Opera, and visited Manhattan’s many museums. Extremely impressive to Kalugin were giant department stores well stocked with a diversity of items and supermarkets with their abundance of fresh food, unheard of in the Soviet Union, known for shortages of everything and long breadlines. It is here, early on in the book that the reader has the opportunity to enjoy the vividness of Kalugin’s descriptions. One can imagine him taking in the sights, the sounds, the smells, the touch, the impact of the city on the young Soviet citizen. His level of thrill and enjoyment, though expressed on paper, is all made so palpable

Kalugin recognized that FBI operatives sought to make clandestine contacts with him at Columbia University, but did not experience such problems outside the school. At Columbia, he wrote for the school newspaper. He was elected to the Student Council. Kalugin curried enough curiosity by his presence in New York that the New York Times interviewed the young Fulbright Scholar for a human interest article which was given plenty of page space and garnered a lot of attention. Kalugin would venture outside of New York to Philadelphia, Chicago, New Orleans, and Washington. He also travelled through Iowa and Wisconsin. People were mostly very friendly to him. He admitted his happiness with all that was good gave him joy, but it also created a spark of doubt about his own world back home. His prescience, however, served him well as he kept his eyes wide open. He never took any experience to its furthest extreme to consider how he would fit into such a world. He would take note that the US had visible flaws. He noticed problems of poverty in Bronx Bowery, and Harlem. Kalugin also discovered endemic racial prejudice and ethnic and social discrimination. He learned about clashes over civil rights as well as voting rights and labor laws. He kept in his head that Soviet Union had a longer way to go, given what he saw in the US, but its vitality would overcome the US which would very likely stumble over its own deficiencies.

As his experience at Columbia University evinced, counterintelligence officers of the FBI and CIA likely had eyes on Kalugin as soon as he arrived in New York. What was akin to present-day FBI SSG surveillance teams and their typically maladroit surveillance contractors, would have been assigned to watch his every move. The insistence of his superiors that he remain untangled with anything before him was presumably based on their judgments on that strong likelihood. The alert sounded over FBI counterintelligence efforts was intriguing as it indicated that somber and astute KGB officers would heavily factor in FBI surveillance and attempts at clandestine contacts in all activities in the US to include mundane tasks of daily life such commuting, shopping, exercising, visiting museums, attending the opera, going to the movies and engaging in other recreational activities. Aa Kalugin goes on to explain, the rather heavy hand of FBI counterintelligence would prove most apparent at social events, receptions, dinners, cocktail parties, and gatherings in private homes.

While Kalugin’s contact with Soviet émigré named Anatoly that he gave the pseudonym Cook, who was a scientist at Thiokol has regularly been chalked up to luck, there is the possibility that it was not so unusual. Kalugin was not the only one involved in the recruitment; Cook had a say in the matter. There was an awareness in the US, especially among educated US citizens, as Cook–who it turned out was a Stalinist–that the Soviet Union was an authoritarian, Communust regime. As such, its citizens did not move freely overseas. Those travelling abroad with the approval of the regime would very likely be tethered to it via the KGB. Contact with a Soviet citizen visiting New York and attending an event on technology at the once famous New York Coliseum, would almost guarantee creating a potential link to the KGB. Kalugin’s level of success with Cook albeit was frightfully high. To borrow from cricketing parlance, Cook was a lolly, an easy catch. However, Kalugin did not struggle afterward to duplicate that first success. Rather than focus on trying to capture lightning in a bottle twice, he focused on simply doing his job as best he could. Esse quam videri bonus malebat; ita quo minus petebat gloriam, eo magis illum sequebatur. (He chose to be good rather than to seem good; and so, the less he strove for fame, the closer it followed after him.)

His First Deployment: New York

During his first full operational deployment, Kalugin went back into the US, returning to New York. From June 1960 to March 1964, operated out of the Rezidentura at the Soviet UN Mission, using the cover of Radio Moscow UN correspondent. Kalugin’s true purpose was political intelligence work. Kalugin  would send communications with information necessary for the leadership in Moscow under the pseudonym Felix. He spent time cultivating US citizens and diplomats and citizens of other countries at the UN and in New York, who he foresaw could supply the KGB with classified or unclassified information about US foreign and domestic policy. Those in contact with Kalugin were imaginably unaware that he was a KGB officer, collecting useful information from them. Kalugin would also utilize his contacts for active measures. Indeed, active measures activities were not something apart from, but integral to the KGB officer’s day-to-day efforts in the field. Paralleling efforts to determine the political leanings and the degree of compatibility and favorability toward the Soviet viewpoint was spotting, developing, assessing, recruiting and even handling agents. While engaged in active measures, KGB officers would reflexively spout “the party line” on issues of the day with those they encountered while making their social rounds. The intention of injecting the Soviet line and disinformation into conversations in this way was to infect the opinion making process in the US. New York was fertile ground for that activity as it was the center of publishing, newsmedia, writers and “agents of influence,” that would set the US political agenda. He, indeed, had conversations with luminaries in US society from all fields. Not every KGB agent performed this work well. Kalugin did. Indeed, in First Directorate, Kalugin provides an ample idea of how that work transpired in real terms operationally, bringing him triumph and bringing grief to adversarial US counterintelligence officers. Active measures, however, included much more than exchanges of knowledge and sharing news stories. More intense activities, as Kalugin recounted, would include paying for, and helping write, ads in the New York Times signed by prominent and unsuspecting political activists protesting the US involvement in Vietnam. The KGB sent racist letters, supposedly from US citizens, to African diplomats at the UN and has operatives paint swastikas on synagogues and desecrate Jewish cemeteries. Kalugin would visit the site of the vandalism and write reports for Radio Moscow on how anti-Semitism was sweeping the US.

What is particularly interesting about active measures is the double-edged impact the work may have had ultimately. Essentially, all of the information relentlessly propagated by the KGB in the US and the rest of the world, though ostensibly the Soviet line, was false information or disinformation. It was designed not to authentically inform but to shape thinking in a pro-Soviet direction or forment dissatisfaction and social and political unrest in the target country. To that extent, most likely consciously but perhaps subconsciously in the minds of the KGB officer engaged in such work was that the Soviet line, the same one Soviet citizens were hearing at home, was full of lies. Certainly KGB officers were worldly wise enough to know that no strategy should have been necessary to present the truth, for it stands for itself. Activities such as active measures were really being used to defend against or counter the power of the truth. Perchance it was never calculated or officially considered what type of destabilizing impact requiring KGB officers to engage in active measures might have on morale, esprit de corps, honor, loyalty. The impact of KGB officers’ sensibilities may have also played a role in decisions by some to defect. While the ultimate ends of active measure may have justified the means in Moscow Center, the collateral effects of the activity on its personnel may not have. (This causes one to consider what impact former senior and mid-level US intelligence and law enforcement officials who, every ten seconds wrongfully and repeatedly argued in the news media and elsewhere in public that Trump and members of his administration, in truth all guiltless, had colluded with the Russian Federation Government, but meanwhile testified under oath in US Congressional Committees that there was no evidence that they had actually seen that indicated such. In this instance, one could genuinely ruminate on whether one of the main elements of spying, promoting fraud, influenced their perjurious behavior. Ultimately, the conscience of each may by their undoing. In Act V, scene iii of William Shakespeare’s play The Life and Death of Richard the Third, King Richard, on Bosworth Field, confesses: “My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, / And every tongue brings in a several tale, / And every tale condemns me for a villain. / Perjury, perjury, in the high’st degree / Murder, stem murder, in the direst degree; / All several sins, all used in each degree, / Throng to the bar, crying all. Guilty! guilty!”)

In the ordinary sense Kalugin was not engaged in laborious toil as an foreign intelligence officer. Yet, surely, the work was strenuous, high-pressure, and anxiety-filled. The risks were never trivial. For his daily work, within the limitations of his cover assignment, Kalugin was on the street, working agents and performing technical intelligence tasks. From what can be ascertained from Kalugin’s description of his work in the US played out, generally, he, just as other officers, would handle four or five agents or targets under development. He was not expected to spread his range of intelligence activities further, although he was still encouraged to develop a large circle of casual contacts among whom he could conduct active measures and from whom a relatively small number of serious targets might be selected at some point. As Kalugin describes his work, he undoubtedly demonstrated his flexibility and adaptability, ensuring the collection of valuable information from sources reached his managers. There was a particular case in which Kalugin made the unconventional choice. He came into contact with a 25 year old Columbia University graduate student who held extreme left-wing political views. Thinking he could be motivated to work for Soviet Union to promote Socialist state. However, he could not deliver anything really of value. His parents, both of whom were Communist  told him to stop working with Kalugin because it was too dangerous. Kalugin was insistent but to no avail. Despite that breakdown, the young student’s father contacted Kalugin and asked him to leave his son alone and offered to help him instead. Kalugin, convinced he was genuine, told his manager at the UN Mission. When his manager contacted the Center, in a reply Kalugin was admonished not to deviate from procedure again but to continue with the recruitment. Further, the cable ended with the instruction: “Allowing for the initiative and courage shown by Comrade Felix–as aforementioned Kalugin’s codename, I suggest he be promoted to the rank of senior case officer.” The father turned out to be a good KGB asset, and was used on numerous occasions to run messages and deliver materials to agents outside the 25 mile city radius to which Soviet Mission staff were restricted. By Kalugin’s own admission, the Center displayed a considerable degree of patience over that move. It did not want Kalugin to be inventive. It wanted officers to strictly adhere to procedures. Yet, the Center also very much wanted good results. Ostensibly, while deviations from procedures were greatly frowned upon, apparently if no damage was done to a case and the efforts of the officer and his station were not detected or harmed in any other way, and success was achieved, nothing punitive beyond a bit of admonishment resulted. Indeed, KGB case officers were held strictly to account for the results of their actions. Yet, they were not expected to report on day-to-day developments to the Center. KGB officers were expected to be on the beat and usually did not spend much time at the desk writing reports, reading guidance from headquarters or maintaining his files. When he had a problem he took it up with his boss, but was supposed to know the difference between what he really needs consultation about and what he ought to be able to handle on his own. There was virtually no lateral distribution of communications and an extreme emphasis on compartmentation. His boss in turn has the responsibility of not only guiding the case officers that work for him, but of ensuring that vital information pertinent to the work of one case officer but acquired through another is made available. The custom that each officer prepares his own reports and kept them brief, made it possible for their reports to actually be read all the way up the chain.

Kalugin (center) on the beat in New York. During his first full operational deployment, from June 1960 to March 1964, Kalugin operated out of the Soviet UN Mission, using the cover of a Radio Moscow UN correspondent. Kalugin would send communications with information necessary for the leadership in Moscow under the pseudonym Felix. He spent time cultivating US citizens and diplomats and citizens of other countries at the UN and in New York, who he foresaw could supply the KGB with classified or unclassified information about US foreign and domestic policy. Within the limitations of his cover assignment, Kalugin was on the street, working agents and performing other intelligence tasks. Appreciation of Kalugin’s work by headquarters resulted in further promotions. From 1965 to 1970, he would be assigned to Washington as deputy rezident with the cover of deputy press officer, and then acting chief of the Rezidentura at the Soviet Embassy.

Recruiting KGB Spies

When tested by unexpected challenges in the field, Kalugin would assess the situation, then begin to act based on his training. A big lesson gleaned from Kalugin’s anecdotes is to “Trust your training.” Still, the most devastating weapon stored in Kalugin’s figurative armoire as a KGB intelligence officer was his mind. Kalugin possessed an intellect that stood out a mile (and still does now). There were never too many moving parts in a situation. What Kalugin could not see or confirm with his own eyes, he was clearly able to conceptualize better than most. Even more, Kalugin’s intellect was continuously animated concerning his work. To be successful at running agents in the field, an intelligence officer must know a lot about humanity. One must know a lot about human relationships. There are said to be certain secrets and knowledge of human existence, human circumstance. Whether Kalugin managed to acquire that hidden bit of information is unknown to greatcharlie. However, little doubt is left that Kalugin very much wanted to better understand, to put it sort of whimsically, “what made people tick.” Clearly, he successfully acquired that knowledge and experience as evidenced by all of his interactions recounted in First Directorate. Concerning prospective recruits, Kalugin would parse out all that is made available to him about the subject at hand. The minute Kalugin observes something, he knows what can happen. Kalugin would know the answer; he knows the usual result. Kalugin could feel a good recruitment on the tips of his fingers. As aforementioned, the Center left no doubt in its instructions and communiques to Kalugin that it was not looking for immediate success, dicey efforts. It repeated that guidance often. It may appear that the Center was figuratively hanging on Kalugin’s gun arm, but it certainly was not. The Center was adverse to chasing miracles. The Soviet intelligence service possessed a great deal of patience and determination to wait for years before the source, led along the way, would join the Department of State, the CIA, or some other entity, and attain a position useful to it. According to Kalugin some US recruits were approached even before reaching college. It was the understanding of KGB that US intelligence services were unable to wait that long. There were some US citizens apparently recruited for a long-term plan. For instance, in the event of war between the US and the Soviet Union, they would be directed to sabotage Washington’s power lines or poison drinking water sources.

Earlier here, greatcharlie mentions how Kalugin takes the reader to school concerning KGB spying, particularly running agents in the field. This was particularly true of his in-depth discussion of the recruiting process. One also learns from Kalugin in First Directorate that each recruitment effort is a little different.  There are always different triggering motives leading to cooperation with an intelligence service, especially, one from another country. The psychological contact of the intelligence officer with the prospective recruit is key. In recruiting agents, speech is everything. Word choices must build confidence, create trust, console, assure, inspire, and comfort. To create compliant agents, the right word choice must be made every time. To that extent, Kalugin could not conceal his ebullience, recalling occasions when all he collected about a prospective recruit would coalesce and he formulated, once again taking from cricketing parlance, a jaffa, a particularly good pitch. Whether a recruiting target signs something at the time of being recruited (using the KGB terminology) about cooperation or not, really depends on the preceding circumstances. A written agreement was required when a recruitment was based on some compromising materials. If there was a later refusal by an operative to cooperate, the agreement could be used for blackmail. Yet, despite how well Kalugin laid out his discussion of recruitment, the process was far from a simple matter or easy to do. When the Soviet Union looked like the wave of the future, its best spies came to its  intelligence services out of ideological convictions. In the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, their recruitment service among such individuals was counted upon. Kalugin posited that after 1956 when Khrushchev exposed the cruelty of the Stalin regime and showed that “ ‘Soviet achievements’ had been built on the bones of our own people,” true believers in the Communist Movement began to dry up and disappear. Kalugin explained further that after Czechoslovakia was invaded in 1968, “only the most fervor ideologue could hold any illusions that the Soviet Union was striving to build a Socialist utopia.”

Both directly and delicately, Kalugin indicated that what drove recruits to spy boiled down to four primary motivations: money; ideology; conspiracy; and excitement. Concerning those recruits interested in money, spying was little more than service offered through a business transaction. There were many such cases. Perhaps the most infamous was that of the notorious US Navy traitor, John Walker, who was able to spy for the Soviet Union for 19 years. His recruitment and handling was Kalugin’s greatest achievement at the Soviet Embassy in Washington. Walker was a walk-in, came to the Soviet Embassy with a treasure-trove of secrets. He was in it for the money. The entrepreneur spy included his son, brother, and best friend in his spy ring. He tried to bring in his daughter, but she refused. Walker needed no physical contact with his Soviet handlers, pep talks, and no hand holding. He in fact operated 10 years without meeting one. Nearly everything done after the initial set of meetings was done with dead drops. His wife finally reported his activities to authorities. There were others such as a CIA officer in Washington who claimed to have been recently fired. He made it clear from the start that he was looking for money. He would eventually pass a considerable amount of material. However, the most valuable document was a long paper entitled “Detection and Approaches to Psychologically Vulnerable Subjects of the Enemy,” which cited US efforts to recruit Soviets worldwide and painted a portrait of Soviet citizens most likely to become spies.

Regarding ideology, Kalugin indicated that when a recruits motivations were ideological, they were typically pro-Soviet, adherents of Socialism and the Communist Movement, fellow travellers. At other times, they were simply left-leaning in that era of protest. The Soviets could recruit such agents in the US and provide them no remuneration. Some even refused it. An example was that of left-wing publisher, M.S. Armoni, editor of a journal Minority of One, who would do the bidding of the KGB by publishing articles allegedly written by Kalugin. They were actually written by the KGB propaganda department in Moscow. The KGB supplied money for Armoni to run several ads in the New York Times criticizing the US involvement in  Vietnam and signed by leading liberals at the time. When Armoni had financial difficulties, Kalugin provided him with nearly $10,000 in funds for being “So faithful in presenting the Soviet view of world affairs.” The money broken down into smaller sums was falsely attributed by Armoni to anonymous US donors. Kalugin also gives the example of a diplomat at a Western European embassy who furnished the KGB with diplomatic cables, top secret reports, recording with the US State Department. The same diplomat was approached without immediate result when posted to Bonn, West Germany. Kalugin met with him in Washington under orders from the Center. He convinced the diplomat to provide classified materials for very little money. His motivation was ideological because he held leftist political leanings.

Relating to conspiracy, such recruits were most often vengeful toward the government, scientific, or technological organization that employed them. An extraordinary case was that of an FBI special agent with considerable access. He first approached the KGB station chief one day and said he wanted to help the Soviets. He immediately supplied the station chief with some information about FBI activity against several Soviet citizens in New York City. The KGB was suspicious, but the FBI man proved reliable. Through personal meetings and by mail, the FBI recruit sent other portions of information about the FBI’s counterintelligence work against the KGB. the mysterious FBI recruit, as Kalugin refers to him, never asked for money.

As to excitement, there were the sensation-seekers, driven by the excitement of spying, self-gratification, or amusement. Kalugin recalls a female diplomat from what Kalugin characterized as “a major European country,” who, after being posted in Moscow for two years and becoming involved with a KGB officer, made contact with Kalugin in Washington. She would supply information to him, as Kalugin suggested, to support the work of her romantic interest still in Moscow. Kalugin would meet with her frequently in restaurants and receptions. When asked to provide cables from  her Foreign Ministry, she refused but recited what was in those she read when they met. Kalugin would also gift her with jewelry, scarves, and other presents. Kalugin deduced that the woman likely knew he was a KGB officer, but enjoyed the sensation of meeting in cozy restaurants and being treated well by him. What the woman provided was valuable political intelligence. There was also the curious case of I.F. Stone, a well-known left-leaning Washington journalist. The Center had informed Kalugin that Stone had been a useful contact who broke off after the invasion of Hungary in 1956. It wanted Kalugin to reestablish the connection. Stone would meet with Kalugin a half-dozen times a year for lunch. During those meetings, he would share insightful views on the US political scene. Kalugin referred to Stone merely as a former “fellow-traveller. However, having meetings with someone he likely suspected was a KGB officer was undoubtedly intriguing to Stone. Stone abruptly ended their acquaintance, however, after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Big Promotions

Appreciation of Kalugin’s work by the Center resulted in further promotions. From 1965 to 1970, he would be assigned as deputy rezident at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, with the cover of deputy press officer, and then acting chief of the Rezidentura at the embassy. He was invited to serve in Washington initially by an eventual mentor of a sort, Boris Solomatin, who was taking over as rezident there. As defined in The Dictionary of Espionage, the KGB section of a Soviet Embassy was the Rezidentura. The ranking officer of the embassy was the rezident, who operated under diplomatic cover, and this had diplomatic immunity. The rezident’s equivalent in the US Embassy was the CIA chief of station. As the rezident would hold senior status in the KGB, his identity in the foreign intelligence service was known to Western intelligence services and law enforcement. To that extent, the rezident engaged in almost no espionage activities while deployed abroad. What is curiously noted in The Dictionary of Espionage is that some residents did roam the cocktail circuit where posted “for hard drinking seemed to be a prevalent trait.”

Interestingly, KGB officers were promoted through the service on bicameral tracks. Being essentially a military organization, an officer was promoted from junior lieutenant up to lieutenant, senior lieutenant, captain, major, lieutenant colonel, colonel, and then, if fortunate enough, through the general ranks, major general, lieutenant general, colonel general, and general of the army. The KGB officer’s formal rank was largely based on his time in service up to lieutenant colonel. Concurrently,  the officer receives the classification as a junior case officer, case officer, or senior case officer, and then progresses further as a deputy rezident or rezident. Those operational designations were based on the officer’s experience and performance as an operator in an assigned field. The chain of command was determined by operational positions rather than rank. Indeed, a major could be reassigned from one part of the KGB to the First Chief Directorate and be designated as a junior case officer for lack of experience and be subordinate to a senior lieutenant who was a case officer or senior case officer. Pay was determined by where the officer was ranked in both hierarchies. Kalugin’s title at the Soviet Embassy was acting rezident, and not fully the official rezident. Kalugin explains that the cause for this was sensational editorial columns aimed at exposing Kalugin as a KGB officer. It was an act completely estranged from tradition among journalists in Washington. First, there was a Washington Post article referring to a Soviet intelligence officer’s work with a Greek agent. The name of the officer published was Victor Kraknikovich, the alias Kalugin used for the Greek case. The Center was informed. Kalugin suspected the story was fed to the Washington Post by the FBI and the beginning of a campaign. Then, Jack Anderson published an article naming Kalugin as a Soviet agent. The article’s opening paragraph stated: “His name is Oleg Kalugin, second secretary at the Soviet embassy. For some time, he has been trying to place a female acquaintance of his as his agent in the State Department. He also instructed an aide to cultivate a girl who works at the FBI. Neither attempt succeeded. Both girls have been leading him under the direction of the FBI.” Anderson followed up on the Kalugin story in his “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column, headlined “Soviet Spy Allowed To Remain in U.S.”, “His [Kalugin] undercover activities in this country are known to the FBI.” Anderson included: “But only the State Department knows the reason he is still here. Other spies caught in the act have been declared persona non grata and have been given 48 hours to leave the country.” On first impression, the Center took it all very calmly, telling Kalugin “Curb your activities just a bit but do not worry.” Nevertheless, the Center was concerned that Kalugin would be deported, a headache the KGB did not need. Kalugin was not deported. An intriguing reality was that KGB operations in the US were not solely dependent on the work of the rezident at the Embassy in Washington. As noted in the aforementioned The Dictionary of Espionage, along with the official rezident, an illegal rezident was deployed who lived abroad without any official cover, usually with an assumed identity, responsible for controlling subordinate illegal agents who worked in his area. The illegal rezident would have no contact with the Soviet Embassy or any of its personnel, and he maintained his communications with the Center. In terms of authority, the illegal rezident had the rank of the official KGB rezident. If the illegal rezident was arrested, the officer could not plead diplomatic immunity and would go to prison.

On the Threat of Defections

Once operating in foreign territory, a considerable concern regarding intelligence officers and their agents was the threat of betrayal. Concerns were almost always raised among Soviet citizens when anyone with whom they may have just met or were in contact for other reasons, suddenly showed an eccentric interest in them. One had to be resolute regarding personal and collective loyalty. There had to be a defined sense of what you owed to your country, what you owed to your own sense of ethics and morality. For some KGB officers, deployed overseas, even while facing-off with their Western counterparts, it often became the same old trudge day in, day out. Some of Kalugin’s fellow KGB foreign intelligence officers would struggle mightily to develop informants, find bona fide targets with access to considerable information to recruit, and get anything started from which they could develop concrete proposals for a foreseeable recruitment at their postings. Others figuratively shuffled along, hoping to go unnoticed and evade the behests of the Center along much as the theatrical comic relief of an aged butler seeking to avoid the master and mistress of the house hoping to keep his exertions to a minimum. Causality for such difficulties often resided in those KGB officers, themselves. Personal and professional inadequacies, having gone undetected during the vetting process and training, often found their way to the surface, and would provide an open door to inappropriate indulgences and improprieties. Embezzlement was a problem. There were those who would keep hundreds of dollars of payments intended for KGB operatives for themselves. A number would outrightly make personal use of KGB funds. Some had already displayed the most deplorable carnal behavior while still in the Soviet Union. Then deployed to Western countries, they would indulge in all that had to be offered. They would set aside their defensive training. In the end, a number of them would be caught flat footed in rather fatuous, fairly obvious honey traps set by US counterintelligence. They most likely were obliged to play the double-game against their bosses at Moscow Center. Kalugin explains that there was a particularly nasty problem in Canada in which a half dozen KGB personnel were left open to blackmail by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and all were recalled and disciplined. (An individual is tracked by an intelligence or counterintelligence organization with the goal uncovering evidence for a case or investigation. To endlessly surveil an individual, or subject as one would be dubbed, using mountains of taxpayer dollars, with no real goal, is not just inept, it is malfeasance. The subject, who may not be guilty of anything, is essentially being harassed, and very likely some dishonorable individuals in the intelligence or counterintelligence organization violating their oath to the country and highly likely, in nasty surreptitious ways, attempting to build an extra pension for themselves. It happens in Intelligence services more than one might imagine.)

FBI counterintelligence, Kalugin’s main opponent in the US, engaged in near endless  attempts to intercept him and perhaps neutralize and recruit him, came in the form of clandestine contacts. Those attempts confirmed that he had actually been under surveillance as the FBI would only have undertaken such an effort if counterintelligence managers believed that special agents had collected enough about him and his activities that they were convinced he was a Soviet intelligence officer, that they understood how Kalugin thought, and that he would respond favorably to an effort to make clandestine contact with him. The method used by FBI counterintelligence to reach Kalugin was its bog-standard employment of women as honey traps. As defined in The Dictionary of Espionage, a honey trap is a method of sexual entrapment for intelligence purposes, usually to put a target [such as Kalugin] into a compromising position so that he or she can be blackmailed. Perhaps it would be enough to say Kalugin displayed restraint and elegance in the face of advances by the female FBI counterintelligence operatives. Indeed, as he describes his response, he displayed a sensibility akin to what the French call “bof” (whatever) to it all. One might simply chalk that up to Kalugin’s self-discipline, his Apollonian nature. In the field, Kalugin was always dedicated to his country, the Communist Movement, and his mission. He was laser focused on his responsibilities as a KGB officer to spot potential recruits, collect information, even passively, and report observations, engage in active measures, and not fall prey to the women used against him. Beyond consideration of Kalugin’s professional response to what to him were far less than enticing honey traps, consideration should be given to his response simply as an individual. There exists a line of thinking which notes unless one has already thought, deliberated, pondered, or meditated on certain behavior, one will be hardened to it. One would not be going out on a slender thread to presume Kalugin was neither ignorant of nor surprised by attempts at such manipulations, carnal behavior among adults. Perchance, he simply never considered getting involved with such nonsense  or pondered having anything to do with such women while on the beat.

Perhaps proof and precedence of previous successes with less capable, less adroit, or simply inept KGB officers, along with some likely unsupported, doctrinaire, Cold War era preconceptions concerning the Russian male libido, convinced FBI counterintelligence of the correctness and efficaciousness of that method of clandestine contact with Kalugin. The focus was on the physical, the carnal, not the intellectual. The underdeveloped mind can rarely get beyond physical facts. Even at the most basic level of decisionmaking on the matter, some recognition that a mental attraction, some cerebral connection between Kalugin and a female operative foisted upon him might be required. That was apparently ignored or disregarded by the FBI, presumably counting upon some id-explosion that would overwhelm him. It was a considerable oversight. Based on how he described the women involved, such a connection under any circumstance, would have been near impossible. In the intelligence game, nothing about making contact with an opponent in the field can be considered too trivial to disregard. under the leadership of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, Special Agents in counterintelligence were genuinely tough. Kalugin admits to that in the book. Yet, they could hardly be judged as being socially conscious by current standards. Their record of responses on a variety of other issues, the Civil Rights Movement and Anti-War Movement for instance, indicates they were in fact quite the opposite. The use of honey traps and similar artifices by FBI Special agents, surveillance specialists or contractors, continues today.

Although as he recounts them, Kalugin indicates that he was cautiously amused by the FBI honey traps, but he also seemed to take a professional interest in why in US society in which there were far more better things to do, would a woman even entertain the idea of serving as a seductress for the FBI. Recognizing that the use of the method was a gauge, a manifestation of the thinking among serious US government intelligence and law enforcement officers, Kalugin very likely began at that time to contemplate how Soviet foreign intelligence in the US could effectively turn the ploy against them and other targets in the US. That is exactly what he did. Kalugin used his personal attributes and charm and those of other handsome males and females to further the KGB’s mission by loosening those attractive qualities as weapons against unsuspecting Western officials and especially secretaries working in key offices in the US foreign and national security policy apparatus, when he believed something considerable could be gained by doing so. The Ancient Greek comic and playwright, Aristophanes in The Birds (414 B.C.) wrote: “Men of sense often learn from their enemies. Prudence is the best safeguard. This principle cannot be learned from a friend, but an enemy exorts it immediately. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war. And this lesson saves their children, their homes, and their properties.”

Kalugin (right) standing with Kim Philby (left). In reaction to increasing defections by KGB officers, Yuri Andropov, the Chairman of the KGB, ordered KGB foreign counterintelligence to develop a new program that would make defection to the Soviet Union attractive. He ordered that life for existing defectors made to be envied and to make certain to let the world know about it. Kalugin was directed to handle the matter. A defector that Kalugin devoted time to was Kim Philby, the United Kingdom MI6 traitor. Philby’s life in the Soviet Union was awful and Kalugin found him in a terrible state. He had faced considerable mistreatment, particularly psychological torture. Kalugin set forth on a genuine course to rehabilitate Philby. Yet, reversing the damage to those mistreated by intelligence and counterintelligence services is extraordinarily difficult. If anything, Kalugin salvaged the best of what was left of the Soviet spy. In the photo above, relative to Kalugin, Philby appears as if he had the Hell posted out of him.

At KGB Foreign Counterintelligence

In 1971, having returned from the US, Kalugin became deputy chief of the Second Service of First Chief Directorate, which meant a two-step increase in the hierarchy of the central intelligence apparatus. However, the counterintelligence service proved to be broken, unprepared, and understaffed. The counterintelligence function was pivotal to KGB operations and its mission, but it was not given the status and attention it truly required. Even housing made available for its officers was undesirable. Kalugin had a negative immediate impression of the director of the Second Service of First Chief Directorate, Vitaly Boyarov. However, his concerns were resolved over time. Concerning the other deputies Kalugin had nothing greater good to say. One was a chain smoking, profane man who constantly berated his subordinates. Kalugin described another deputy as a fussy, indecisive man who had “no business being in the KGB let alone in relatively high position.” Kalugin depicted the third as an “utter nonentity.” All three were at least a decade older than Kalugin. The decline for KGB foreign counterintelligence operationally was also apparent. In the 1950s and 1960s, foreign counterintelligence, according to Kalugin, had managed to penetrate deeply into the French, United Kingdom, and Italian intelligence services. Concerning the US, the KGB had Walker, their superspy. However, by the 1970s, it was clear to many that the Soviet Union really was not the model society of the future, both politically and socially, and the Soviet system could do nothing to reverse that impression. As disillusionment with the Soviet Union set in, the number of KGB defectors also began to skyrocket, further damaging its operations.

When Kalugin first started working in foreign counterintelligence in 1970, the KGB was only experiencing a trickle of defections from the ranks. However, the rate steadily increased. However, the defection of Oleg Lyalin of Department V, tasked with preparing contingency plans for sabotage and assassination in time of war, defected after working for the United Kingdom’s intelligence services for six months. The story of his activities as presented by Kalugin would surely be astonishing to any readers. His revelations resulted in the expulsion of 105 Soviets from the country, personal non grata. Visas for known KGB officers were denied. In reaction to Lyalin’s defection and the many others, Yuri Andropov, the Chairman of the KGB, ordered Kalugin’s director at counterintelligence, Boyarov, to develop a new program that would make defection to the Soviet Union attractive. He suggested using large amounts of money, fancy apartments and country homes, and complete freedom of movement in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. He also ordered that life for existing defectors made to be envied and to make certain to let the world know about it. Boyarov put Kalugin on the case. That led to perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of that period of Kalugin’s career, his contact with the infamous double agent Kim Philby, formerly of the United Kingdom’s MI6, Secret Intelligence Service. While Kalugin met with a number of the defectors, to include the infamous George Blake, also from the United Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service, and Donald Maclean, but Philby was the most interesting case. Suffice it to say, greatcharlie sense that it is going out on a slender thread in discussing the matter of Philby, but it is critical to the process of understanding and characterising Kalugin. Philby is a delicate and painful subject in some Western intelligence services even today. Harold Adrian Russell “Kim” Philby, was a member of “The Magnificent Five.” Others included two diplomats, Guy Burgess and the aforementioned Donald Maclean, and the former officer of MI5, the  domestic focused Security Service, and leading art historian, Anthony Blunt. The identity of the fifth member was never confirmed. The intelligence officer, John Cairncross, was suspected. All but the fifth member defected to the Soviet Union. Kalugin had heard rumors of Philby’s life in Moscow–”drinking, womanizing, hours of depression, and squalid existence.” Most of it proved to be true.

For Philby, defection to the Soviet Union did not pan out as he had hoped. It was nothing near the paradise he likely envisioned. He had a relatively decent apartment, but had few possessions in it worth having. The big problem he faced though was not so much being deprived of material things, but rather his treatment. Philby was subjected to repeated house arrests over regular suspicions of KGB as to his “activities.” His every movement, even in his home, was considered suspect. For instance, when he was heard writing over hidden microphones, it was determined that he was composing reports to pass to Western agents. The overall surveillance was ham-handed, guaranteed to harass and cause discomfort. The only element that was missing from his treatment was the rough stuff, physical torture, though there was plenty of psychological torture. The deep grief felt by Philby over the death of his image of a Soviet wonderland, coupled with his mishandling was likely made somewhat less painful by his daily practice of soaking himself in alcohol. For those in the KGB who were acting against him, that likely provided a sense of accomplishment. They were clearly the types. Philby’s behavior was rumored to have been questionable–”drinking, womanizing, hours of depression, and squalid existence,” but little was placed in official reports about his treatment. For this reason, Kalugin did expect to find what he did when he contacted him. As things were, there was no chance of showcasing Philby’s situation as reflective of that of defectors. If the truth of Philby’s actual treatment had gotten out to the rest of the world, it would have choked the Soviet voice on defections. A singer with fine pitch would notice something wrong with a note that an ordinary or amateur might not. However, everything Kalugin observed was plain as day, actually absolutely over the top. The inhumanity, illogica, and incompetence of Philby’s handling screamed out. As Kalugin described what those KGB officers involved in what had been done to Philby were further examples of how deep seated psychological issues of some officers would drive them to engage in odious acts. Kalugin set forth on a course of attempting to rehabilitate Philby. There was nothing superficial about his efforts. He essentially debriefed him again under calm, informal conditions. He began to visit him somewhat regularly. He then brought other friendly KGB officers to talk to him, ask his opinion on professional matters, tradecraft, trying to give him a sense of being useful, capable, and needed. Kalugin used the authority granted to him by Boyarov to involve Philby in KGB training. He brought him to the KGB Higher School to lecture young officers who were set to be deployed to Western countries. Philby would help with active measures by inserting sins poster passages in US State Department and CIA documents. Kalugin would genuinely ask Philby for input into programs being formulated for defectors and prospective recruits. For all in which Philby was becoming involved, Philby was amenable and did not want payment. Kalugin did what he could to remunerate him by boosting his ongoing payments. He had repairs made to his apartment and replaced the furniture. Kalugin would also arrange for Philby to travel outside of the Soviet Union to Socialist Countries in the Eastern Bloc and beyond to Cuba and Mongolia. In doing all of this, Kalugin followed his orders, but his noble and humane effort did credit to both his head and his heart.

The damage intelligence and counterintelligence services can do to an individual’s psyche is well understood to be grave and considerable. To paraphrase a recent remark by US Senator Charles Schumer of New York on the tactics, techniques, procedures, and methods of the US Intelligence Community, they can come at you six ways from Sunday. The soul and the spirit of the target of such efforts is typically seared. Surely, some having suffered similar harsh treatment from their own side as in Philby’s case, have been able to have renewal of mind. Yet, rehabilitating those mistreated by intelligence and counterintelligence services, reversing the damage, is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible. That is a reality that is rarely understood or dismissed. Perhaps there is such a strong desire to believe otherwise by those who might engage in such efforts, that the mere notion, itself, that it can be done, becomes true. As for the individual, supposedly being rehabilitated, it is likely that when placed regularly under inhumane treatment, physical or psychological, a valiant effort is made to hold on to all of the many aspects of themselves. However, self-discernment would more likely cause them to face the reality that much has been lost after enduring such terrible experiences. Kalugin, at the time, appears unable to fully fathom that although he was interacting with someone who looked, sounded, and moved as original Philby, the zealous member of the Komintern, the Soviet spy, the proud defector, but that man was gone, no longer intact. The psychological capsule that Philby likely created to hold on to the remainder of himself, to protect himself, to survive, would never have been so easy to break open in an effort to find him. Philby was also very likely suffering from a form of severe, debilitating depression. The original Philby may have had far more to offer. If anything, what Kalugin did was salvage the best of what was left. The trust that Kalugin sought to create was not really possible either. Doubtlessly, Philby noticed Kalugin, for whatever reason, was authentically trying to be congenial and helpful. Understanding that, he may likely have displayed an outward modification of attitude and behavior perhaps even to satisfy Kalugin. To that extent, he understood that Kalugin was the source of better things than before, and with the hope this does not sound indelicate, he responded to Kalugin, though not obsequiously, but much as stolid hound that recognizes its owner as the source of its nourishment and shelter. Perchance, there was much more in all of this. In an uncanny way, Philby’s situation foretold a similar future for Kalugin. Indeed, perhaps Kalugin had an extra sense, a presentiment that he might find himself in a similar boat in another country. Both men experienced somewhat similar types of betrayal by the same monstrous Soviet system and the same organization, the KGB, in which that they placed so much faith and for which were ready to surrender their lives. Luckily for Kalugin, when his day of reckoning came, he ran into individuals in the US possessing sensibilities much as his own, and not the sort that Philby dealt with upon arrival in the Soviet Union.

In March 1973 Kalugin became head of the Directorate KT, KGB Foreign Counterintelligence. In the process he became the youngest leader at that level in the KGB. In 1974, the 40-year-old Kalugin received the rank of major general, making him the youngest general in the KGB. A KGB officer was promoted from junior lieutenant up to lieutenant, senior lieutenant, captain, major, lieutenant colonel, colonel, and then, if for nature enough, through the general ranks, major general, lieutenant general, colonel general, and general of the army. The KGB officer’s formal rank was largely based on his time in service up to lieutenant colonel. Concurrently, the officer receives the operational designation as a junior case officer, case officer, or senior case officer, and then progresses further as a deputy rezident or rezident. Those designations were based on the officer’s experience and performance as an operator in an assigned field. The chain of command was determined by operational classification rather than rank.

In March 1973 he became head of the Directorate KT, foreign counterintelligence. In the process he became the youngest leader at that level in the KGB. In 1974, the 40-year-old Kalugin received the rank of major general, making him the youngest general in the KGB. Such career leaps, Kalugin believes, were primarily due to the personal patronage of Andropov. Kalugin refers to Andropov his “guardian angel,” and writes that “the relations of father and son” developed between them. Made aware of Kalugin’s success, as all of the most senior managers of KGB doubtlessly had, Andropov surely recognized that the KGB had a gem in their midst, a “bright red” carbuncle. Andropov was a rather intriguing player in the history of Soviet Intelligence. As it was detailed in Robert Pringle’s Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence, 2nd ed. (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015), from the Historical Dictionaries of Intelligence and Counterintelligence series, much as Kalugin’s career at KGB, Andropov’s career moved up rapidly in Soviet political sphere. His advancement began after being appointed Soviet ambassador to Hungary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1954. While at that post, the November 1956 Hungarian Uprising ignited. A segment of the society demanded independence from the socialist state. The upright morphed into an armed conflict. Andropov called the uprising “counter-revolutionary, an anti-social riot” and informed the Kremlin that he supported the idea of sending Soviet troops to aid the Hungarian socialist government to quell the protesters. Andropov directly coordinated the activities of pro-Soviet forces in Hungary, which managed, with the support of Soviet forces, to keep all of Hungary socialist. More than 2,500 people died during the conflict.The Hungarian Uprising shaped Andropov’s thinking, after leaving his post in 1957, he reportedly kept on speaking about it. Soviet diplomat Oleg Troyanovsky remembered: “Andropov of 1956 in Hungary. He often said: ‘You can’t imagine what it is – hundreds of thousands of people flooding the streets, completely out of control’.” Troyanovsky believed that Andropov feared to see such a scene in the USSR – and did all he could to prevent it. Still, his advisors recall that when he led the department on relations with the socialist parties within the Communist Party’s Central Committee from 1957-1967, he was a “liberal leader.” According to renowned political scientist, Georgy Arbatov, Andropov would supposedly say: “In this room, we all can speak our minds, absolutely openly. But the second you leave it–play by the rules.” During Leonid Brezhnev’s tenure as Soviet leader from 1964 to 1982, Andropov, efficient and professional, became one of the most important figures for the regime. Named Chairman of the KGB in 1967, Andropov took on several urgent and important issues, with a predictable hardline approach, to include:  international crises in the Middle East; Czechoslovakia; Afghanistan; regional conflicts in the Soviet Union; and, suppressing Soviet dissident movements, putting dozens in asylums and deporting hundreds of others. On November 12, 1982, Andropov would become General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and on June 16, 1982, he became Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. However, he died on February 9, 1984, serving just under fifteen months in power.

Kalugin reasoned that Andropov trusted him. Still, knowing Andropov’s history, Kalugin knew exactly who he was dealing with. Developed from that understanding appears to have been an invaluable intuition about his own organizations’ moves on issues and regarding personnel. Anecdotes included indicate that he was able to intuit the decisions of managers and executives allowing him to think ahead to how he could satisfy their next steps, and new requirements. The very positive impression with Andropov enabled Kalugin, at least until late in his career, to survive the danger that KGB managers would pose to him. An eventual cause of problems for Kalugin was another protégé of Andropov, Vladimir Kryuchkov.

KGB Chairman and later Soviet Premier, Yuri Andrpov (above). Kalugin believes his career leaps were primarily due to the personal patronage of Andropov. Kalugin refers to Andropov his “guardian angel.” Made aware of Kalugin’s success, as all of the most senior managers of KGB doubtlessly had, Andropov surely recognized that the KGB had a gem in their midst. Kalugin reasoned that Andropov trusted him. Still, knowing Andropov’s history, Kalugin knew exactly who he was dealing with. From that understanding, he appears to have developed an invaluable intuition about his own organizations’ moves on issues. The very positive impression left with Andropov enabled Kalugin, at least until late in his career, to survive the danger that other KGB managers would pose to him. An eventual cause of great problems for Kalugin was another protégé of Andropov, Vladimir Kryuchkov.

The primary mission of the Soviet Foreign Counterintelligence Service was infiltration of all the foreign special service operations: intelligence, counter-intelligence, police forces all over the world. The primary target was the US. Second came NATO and Western European countries. As chief of counterintelligence, Kalugin had control of the most significant cases due to the possibility that potential success was merely pretense by the FBI. What appeared interesting may merely have been dangled before KGB with the hope of entrapment of its officers and their networks. The counterintelligence unit, Directorate K of the First Chief Directorate, would take charge of a case from the regular chain of command of the foreign intelligence service whenever an agent appeared to be doubled, compromised, or on track to be compromised. The field case officer may remain the same, but in Moscow the Counterintelligence Service assumes full authority for directing the case. Deception and some types of complex political action operations often were run directly by the headquarters element, Department A, that prepares the operation in Moscow. In such cases, of course, local assets of a Rezidentura may well be employed in support, but the operations are frequently run by specialists. In the Soviet Union, foreigners, especially, US citizens, were closely investigated by the local internal KGB office. That kind of investigation was not conducted with a view to recruit immediately. It was important to identify the psychological profile of a person, his political orientation, his attitude towards his home country and towards the country he was visiting for some reason. After accumulating a sizable amount of material (based on a whole array of undertakings: plain observation, audio- and video-surveillance of the places of residence, agency-level scrutiny, including “honey traps”), on the basis of the analysis, a decision is made about a transforming the investigation into a recruitment with appropriate conditions (such as through compromising materials or a voluntary agreement) or about wrapping up the whole thing by “educating” a foreigner in order to convey a favorable image of a country that investigated him, in his home country.

As his record at counterintelligence indicated, Kalugin could hardly have been judged as being too kind-hearted in his job. In 1975, Kalugin was directly related to the operation to abduct and rendition Nikolai Artamonov, alias “Lark,” to the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, Artamonov died along the way. Kalugin claimed that the reason was an error with the dosage of the anesthetic. Kalugin was one of only three men in a meeting in which the KGB sanctioned the assassination of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in London in 1978. Kalugin explains that the KGB’s science and technology directorate had the weapon designed and constructed in Japan. It was an umbrella that fired a small dart into Markov’s leg. Kalugin would pass the orders from his KGB bosses along to subordinates to provide the poison-tipped umbrella used in the assassination. Kalugin would also organize and execute the 1981 bombing of Radio Liberty headquarters in Munich.

Kalugin indicated that his Foreign Counterintelligence Service was not organized to carry out assassinations. According to the KGB table of organization provided earlier, that dirty work was the shared responsibility of Directorate V and the Thirteenth Department. Work as a KGB foreign intelligence and counterintelligence officer, however, required an understood pledge to commit certain violent undertakings. It would be a leap to call Kalugin an ordinary cutthroat due to his obedience to facilitate that action. There is a classic expression heard in organizations: “One is either in or one is out.” Kalugin certainly was “all in.” Nonetheless, many in the KGB began to doubt that.

Reversal of Fortune

In a sudden pivot in his story, Kalugin’s luck would change at what was for so long his beloved KGB. Kalugin’s reporting of observed lawlessness and arbitrary rule and cronyism within the KGB created friction within its leadership. Shadows gathered. In response to his vocal disagreements with how the KGB was operating, the Center threw Kalugin a dip that caught him by surprise. Telling that part of his story, Kalugin positioned himself as the protagonist, and rightly so in greatcharlie’s humble opinion. Although acting with the best intentions, Kalugin incurred the worst. Soon enough, he found himself facing great difficulties. Despite his near impeccable record, Kalugin’s work was placed under “special scrutiny.” Senior executives of KGB, to whom Kalugin was loyal and obedient, loosed counterintelligence investigators, headhunters who relished ruthlessly destroying officers’ careers, even innocent ones, upon him. They were dishonorable individuals who willingly bore false witness on Kalugin and breathed out lies. Kalugin explained that at first he was a bit bemused by it all, then disgusted as his whole world seemed to come crashing down around him. Nothing would be the same again.

The 18th century French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, wrote in a August 8, 1736 letter to the Prince Royal of Prussia who later became Frederick the Great: “Such is the destiny of great men that their superior genius always exposes them to be the butt of the enveloped darts of calumny and envy. “ Undoubtedly, there were quidnuncs in the KGB who would happily push out scuttlebutt on what was going on everywhere in it and occasionally exacerbating situations, despite all the secrecy and efforts at classification and compartmentalization. Employees within an intelligence service would surely understand the need to keep watch against efforts by adversaries to recruit spies among their organizations ranks. With the right manipulations and pressures, such breakdowns can often be forced. There is also the need to stand guard against the possibility of betrayal and defections impelled by a variety of reasons. However, stories of management’s undue suspicions of officers and internal investigations, seen and unseen, would have conceivably created apprehension within the organization as to what was actually transpiring within the KGB. Consequently, it also became more difficult for officers to know who to trust among their colleagues. Thus, in his career, Kalugin had to become expert in figuring out how to avoid garnering the negative attention of KGB managers who, due to nothing greater than their own disposition or paranoia, would occasionally see innocent officers as potential security risks. As aforementioned, due to his superb work, his good relations with KGB senior executives, he had no normal reason to feel his position was threatened. Aforementioned as well, Kalugin believed that he was close to Andropov, not only due to his official position, but simply because he trusted him. Yet, knowing all that he did about the organization’s quirky leaders, problematic officers in the ranks, doing his job right, and how to look good, it was only a matter of time before his fate would change. As long as Vladimir Kryuchkov, another Andropov protégé, was still Head of the First Chief Directorate, Kalugin had to keep his eyes open and ears pinned back. Kryuchkov had a reputation for acting against perceived rivals for power. Turning to Robert Pringle’s Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence, 2nd ed. (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015) as a source on Kryuchkov, one learns that he initially began working not in the Soviet intelligence services, but rather in its justice system as a prosecutor’s assistant in Stalingrad. However, Kryuchkov began moving in the direction of foreign intelligence after graduating from the Diplomatic Academy of the Soviet Foreign Ministry and becoming a diplomat. Kryuchkov met Andropov in Budapest in 1955 while he was serving as the Soviet ambassador, and got to know him closely supporting his activities during the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. From then on, Andropov became Kryuchkov’s main patron. He joined Andropov at the Department of Liaison with Communist and Workers’ Parties of Socialist Countries in 1959. When Andropov was selected as a Secretary of Communist Party’s Central Committee in 1962, he eventually brought Kryuchkov on from 1965 to 1967 as his aide. Then, when Andropov was selected as Chairman of the KGB on May 19, 1967, he brought Kryuchkov to Moscow with him to serve as Head of the Secretariat, KGB. He allowed Kryuchkov to gain experience with intelligence operations, including covert activities by placing him in charge of foreign intelligence operations under his tutelage starting in 1971. Then, in 1974, Andropov appointed Kryuchkov as head of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, and he remained there until 1988. (In 1988, he would become Chairman of the KGB, where he would remain until the failed coup of 1991.) During Kryuchkov’s years in the KGB’s foreign intelligence service, it was involved in funding and supporting various communist, socialist and anti-colonial movements across the world, some of which came to power in their countries and established pro-Soviet governments; in addition, under Kryuchkov’s leadership the Directorate had major triumphs in penetrating Western intelligence agencies, acquiring valuable scientific and technical intelligence and perfecting the techniques of disinformation and active measures. At the same time, however, during Kryuchkov’s tenure, the Directorate became plagued with defectors, had major responsibility for encouraging the Soviet government to invade Afghanistan and its ability to influence Western European Communist Parties diminished even further.

Vladimir Kryuchkov, Head of the First Chief Directorate and later KGB Chairman (above). Having caused a stir by pointing out troubles in the KGB First Chief Directorate, fertile ground was created for Kalugin’s rivals to take him down. Vladimir Kryuchkov, the Head of the First Chief Directorate became Kalugin’s biggest problem. He suggested Kalugin was possibly a US spy. According to Kalugin, Kryuchkov’s reasons for wanting to destroy him was his strong relationship with Andropov. Kalugin said Kryuchkov likely thought that he would be sent somewhere, leaving him to become the head of the First Chief Directorate. Kryuchkov’s anxieties would manifest in the sort of unsettling hostile and destructive behavior that Kalugin repeatedly pointed out had rotted away at the soul of the KGB. Kalugin could not avoid problems by staying well back from him. Kryuchkov, after all, was his manager. Kalugin could not escape his fate.

Having caused a stir by pointing out troubles in the KGB First Chief Directorate, fertile ground was created for Kalugin’s rivals to take him down. Vladimir Kryuchkov, the Head of the First Chief Directorate became Kalugin’s biggest problem. He suggested Kalugin was possibly a US spy. According to Kalugin, Kryuchkov’s reasons for wanting to destroy him was his strong relationship with Andropov. Kalugin said Kryuchkov likely thought that he would be sent somewhere, leaving him to become the head of the First Chief Directorate. Consequently, Kryuchkov’s anxieties would manifest in the sort of unsettling idiosyncratic behavior that Kalugin repeatedly pointed out had rotted away at the soul of the KGB. Kalugin could not avoid problems by staying well back from him. Kryuchkov, after all, was his manager. He could not escape his fate. As part of Kryuchkov allegations, he claimed Kalugin was possibly instrumental in allowing the flow of what was characterized as dicey intelligence from a questionable source to the Center. He determined that an intelligence source, who was Cook from Thiokol, Kalugin’s earliest recruitment in the US, was a supposed means by which the US was enabled to channel chicken feed through the Soviet system. No one really cared about Cook who was arrested for possessing and selling foreign currency and making hostile statements about the Soviet regime. He was simply used as the predicate for taking the drastic step of insinuating that Kalugin had been compromised, despite a mountain of exculpatory evidence to the contrary. Wrongful preconceptions can always be supported by bent intelligence.

Kalugin explains that things were made far worse because the matter was investigated by General Victor Alidin, head of the Moscow KGB. Kalugin explained that Alidin was an abominable KGB officer, with a solid reputation for brutality and widely reviled. Yet, he was extremely close to Soviet Premier Brezhnev. In Washington, Kalugin had caught Alidin’s son-in-law embezzling hundreds of dollars of payments intended for KGB operatives. Kalugin recommended tough action, but Solomatin, his rezident, limited the response to a reprimand to avoid all of the trouble with Alidin that likely would have followed any stronger action. Alidin and his men, to whom Kalugin refers as “Alidin & Company,” set out to find spies! As Kalugin described how their reports on the case were written, they seemed as mad as March hares, concocting a bizarre parody of a nonexistent relationship between Cook and Kalugin. It emphasized the Cook’s job as a mole was to string the KGB along and make Kalugin look good. There were leading questions asked of Cook. Those questions  concerned Kalugin’s alleged recruitment by the CIA. Alidin & Company engaged in the worst possible behavior as investigators. Using their well-exercised nefarious stratagems, they were able to make right look wrong and good look bad. One might suppose that it was relatively easy for Kalugin’s adversaries to question that an officer, so early in his career, could stumble upon such a find as Cook. Many officers with far more years and experience never came close to such an achievement. To an extent, Kalugin’s success proved to be his undoing. After being surreptitiously interviewed formally by Alidin and his investigators under the guise that they were fact-finding and needed his help in investigating Cook of Thiokol, It did not take Kalugin long to figure out what they were driving at. Kalugin’s description of the moment when he became conscious of his KGB investigators’ plans against him was chilling. After twisting and turning facts, Kalugin’s rather sophomoric investigators were able to bear false witness against him, breathing out lies. As Kalugin depicted the matter, it all seemed surreal-to-the-point-of-silliness. Again, not a bit of evidence supposedly collected on Cook or Kalugin was conclusive. Certainly, the presumption of innocence was a principle alien in the Soviet Union. Erring on the side of liberty was not something done in its system. Kalugin’s treatment ostensibly could have been chalked up as a lesson to others that all intelligence activities were subject to scrutiny. Perhaps the real lesson was that in the KGB there was an ever-present danger of certain peccant officers, petty tyrants, who, having been provided with brief authority by the Soviet state, were willing to abuse it. Within such officers, there was typically a need through harsh and disruptive behavior to prove, mainly to themselves, that they have power over others and to soothe some uneasiness over what they may recognize as their own shortcomings. They were imaginative in their thinking but in all the wrong ways. Dead ends would only open doors to more illusions and thereby their pursuits were never exhausted.

As Kalugin related this whole tragic episode, there was a duality of emotions manifested in his words. Surely there was disdain, but there was also great pity. Kryuchkov had attained one of the most important positions in the KGB. Rather than relate to Kalugin as one his successful managers and display his competence to possibly take on the position KGB Chairman, he shrunk to reveal the idiosyncrasies of a paranoid KGB official, who could think only of his own personal interest and attempt to destroy two innocent men in the process. Ironically, Kryuchkov would become KGB Chairman in 1988. Unable to accept the ideals of perestroika and glasnost implemented by Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, he participated in  the 1991 coup attempt, the consequence of which was triggering the rapid dissolution of the Soviet Union. Kryuchkov was a major part of the problem that led to destruction of the KGB, and a major part of the problem that led to the Soviet Union’s collapse. If anything could be said about Kryuchkov’s nefarious plan to undo Kalugin, he was quite thorough leaving nothing to chance, even the likely response of his mentor, Andropov. He moved Kalugin out of the Center into what was then a relative nether region of the Soviet Union, Leningrad. He would become First Deputy Chief of the Leningrad KGB, second-in-command there. In what turned out to be their final meeting Andropov in a friendly manner: “You have stirred up too much dust here at headquarters. I just want you to go away until things settle down. You go to Leningrad and when things calm down, you’ll be back. I promise you. It will take a year or so. No longer than that. You’ll be back soon.” However, Andropov died in two years, and Kalugin remained in Leningrad for seven years.

Certainly, Kalugin knew that Andropov was quite shrewd, and made endless calculations in his decision which all had to be made in the context of Soviet politics. Kalugin was invaluable to Andropov when it came to being set straight on what was happening on the ground versus the West and what was happening among the rank and file on foreign intelligence inside the KGB. Yet, from where he was situated, Kalugin likely understood Soviet politics to a limited degree. The interplay between Andropov and Kryuchkov surely included efforts to discern the Communist Party political scene. Indeed, in the years following the 1956 Hungarian Uprising on which they worked together closely, Kryuchkov, the former prosecutor and diplomat, may have served as more than a loyal confidant who could provide bits of information, but an invaluable sounding board on political developments for Andropov. With his ears always pinned back, Kryuchkov surely had an appreciation of what was happening in the Communist Party and the Soviet system in general. His political awareness and sensitivity likely enabled him, much as that of an attorney to a client, to illuminate for Andropov, ways to finesse responses to Kremlin requests, particularly politically charged ones, to avoid any pitfalls, to ensure his survival and to create possibilities for his advancement within the political realm. Kryuchkov, while twenty years younger than Andropov, was ten years Kalugin’s senior, though he appeared about ten years additional, and spent more time observing senior Communist Party leaders and had more experience formulating nuanced responses to them, given their sensibilities. (Perhaps no better example existed Kryuchkov’s political savvy than the way in which he knocked the career of Kalugin, another Andropov protégé, completely off track while incurring no consequences for himself.) Andropov most likely thought that if he were moved up in the hierarchy and a choice had to be made for a new KGB Chairman, it would be good to have his protégé Kryuchkov to be in the running for the post. By interceding for a second time on Kalugin’s behalf, and thereby blatantly undermining Kryuchkov, Andropov may have sent the wrong signal concerning his confidence and impressions about him in the KGB and the Communist Party, potentially making Kryuchkov a weaker candidate for the top KGB post later. When Andropov was actually promoted to Deputy Chairman in 1978, Kryuchkov was not elevated to KGB Chairman but remained at the First Chief Directorate. (Kryuchkov eventually assumed that post on October 1, 1988, almost five years after Andropov’s death.) Again, Kalugin’s father warned him about the Soviet system, the state security service, the people within it.

Demoted from his post as head of KGB Foreign Counterintelligence, Kalugin was sent to the Leningrad KGB branch. There, Kalugin witnessed first-hand the true nature of the KGB’s activities as a domestic political police. He discovered that the KGB’s internal functions had precious little connection with state security but rather, benefitted corrupt Communist Party officials by keeping them in power. Indeed, from Leningrad, Kalugin could see more clearly the wretchedness of the Soviet system, and real socialism at its fullest. Further, he was authentically in touch with Soviet people for the first time and began to understand how they lived. Kalugin concluded the Soviet system was unworkable and needed to change.

At Leningrad KGB

In the end, Kalugin was demoted to serve as first deputy chief of internal security in Leningrad. Regardless of the circumstances, Kalugin did his job in his new post. One interesting case he was involved with in Leningrad was a counterespionage operation, the handling of a double agent. According to Kalugin, the KGB ran double agents to gather knowledge on hostile intelligence services. The KGB could learn a great deal by the kind of questions a hostile intelligence service was asking a double agent such as what kind of intelligence was required and what type of assignment it was giving to the double. To illustrate that point, he provides the theoretical circumstance of a CIA officer outlining what he was seeking from a Soviet agent. The officer might say a bit too much in explaining the matter and let slip some interesting information. Double agents could passively pick up valuable material just by being in the presence of hostile intelligence officers. Kalugin then gives a real life example of how a Soviet double agent grabbed a roll of microfilm that his CIA handler had forgotten. Dozens of intelligence documents, shedding light on the CIA Tokyo station were on that microfilm. Kalugin explains that the KGB also used double agents to plant disinformation and confuse hostile intelligence agencies. And running a double game could be extremely valuable in the propaganda battle with the West. On several occasions when the KGB was sure the CIA or other agency had been duped by its double, it would then nab the CIA agent for espionage. The KGB would then go about revealing details of the CIA’S spying operation, and expel the US case officer in a great fit of publicity.

Concerning the counterespionage case he became involved with while in Leningrad, the KGB elicited the cooperation of a Leningrad scientist named Pavlov who frequently traveled the world on a Soviet research ship. Ostensibly, he had access to information about Soviet science and the Soviet military industrial complex. Instructions were given to him to express dissenter views, engage in some black market operations, and do everything possible to attract the attention of the CIA and other intelligence services. For two years Pavlov was dangled at the CIA, doing everything that he was told. The KGB was surprised, for it expected the CIA to show interest in a man who had so much access. Then out of the blue, the KGB received a cable from the KGB’S station chief in Buenos Aires, Argentina stating that Pavlov had come to the Soviet Embassy and reported that the CIA tried to recruit him. He talked to the CIA agent, passed along some information, undoubtedly chicken feed, and agreed to meet him in Leningrad upon his return home. Kalugin said that his boss in Leningrad was skeptical, but the Center told them to go ahead with the meeting. And indeed such a meeting took place. Our surveillance people observed Pavlova and a diplomat from the US consulate in Leningrad–clearly a CIA case officer–rendezvous ingredients on a remote street in the city. Pavlov took money from the CIA case officer in exchange for scientific information. A second meeting was scheduled 25 miles outside of Leningrad. Pavlova was to give the CIA agent documents in exchange for another payment. As it turned out, however, the meeting came only days after the September 1, 1983 Soviet shoot down of Korean Airlines Flight 007. The Center made the decision not to continue to pursue the counterespionage operation. It ordered the arrest of the CIA case officer when he met with Pavlov and use of the incident to counter the storm of controversy that swept over the Korean Airlines fiasco. The CIA officer was caught red handed. He was expelled, but the incident while hyped did not make a dent in the bad publicity suffered over the shoot down. However, it also turned out that Pavlov was not being honest about the money he received from the US, pocketing more than he reported. As a result of suspicions over Pavlov’s honesty, his apartment was searched and the KGB found large sums of money proving he was pocketing payments. Pavlov confessed and was sentenced to 13 years in jail. He was granted amnesty in Yeltsin’s era.

In the Leningrad KGB branch, Kalugin also witnessed first-hand the true nature of the KGB’s activities as a domestic political police. He discovered that the KGB’s internal functions had precious little connection with state security but rather, benefitted corrupt Communist Party officials by keeping them in power. Indeed, from Leningrad, Kalugin could see more clearly the wretchedness of the Soviet system and appreciate real socialism at its fullest. Further, in Leningrad, he was authentically in touch with Soviet people for the first time and began to understand how they lived. Kalugin concluded the Soviet system was unworkable and needed to change. It was a conclusion from inside the Soviet Union and was not prompted by any outside ideas or reports. The disintegration of what were once considered the indestructible foundations of the KGB, as outlined by Kalugin, placed it on the road to destruction. In this segment, Kalugin provides a stark warning about what can happen to a state security organization that has lost its way. In vinculis etiam audax. (In chains yet still bold.)

Concerning the story of how his career ended, no one could be as sound on the details of the matter as Kalugin, himself. In the section of this review dubbed “About the Author,” may have been a bit of a spoiler, telling the story of how things progressed to the present very briefly. Kalugin was forced into retirement but seemed content to break free of the suffocating chains of the KGB bureaucracy, and daylight madness of a few power wielding superiors or equals in other departments. Kalugin then took a very active part in the rallies of Democrats. His disillusionment culminated in a sensational appearance at a political gathering in Moscow in the summer of 1990. He gave a speech from the abundance of the heart at the “Democratic Platform in the CPSU” conference. The former KGB general reports that he struggled to steady his voice and said: “Some people may think that I have jumped on the democratic bandwagon with evil intentions. I understand that there may be suspicions in your m8nds, but let me tell you that you’re wrong. I am from the KGB. I worked in that organization for more than thirty years, and I want to tell all of you how the KGB works against the best interests of democratic forces in this country.” Kalugin then describes an utter silence in the hall as he talked about himself and explained why the KGB must be radically reformed and the number of agents drastically reduced. He stated:  “We cannot begin a serious restructuring of society until we rid ourselves of the restraints imposed by an organization which has penetrated every sphere of our lives, which interferes with all aspects of state life, political life, the economy, science, arts, religion, even sports. Today, just as ten or twenty years ago, the hand of the KGB is everywhere. And any real talk of perestroika without reforming the KGB is nothing but a lie. All the much-ballyhooed changes in the KGB are cosmetic, a disguise upon the ugly face of the Stalin-Brezhnev era. In fact, all elements of the old dictatorship are still in place. The chief assistant and handmaiden of the Communist Party remains the KGB. In order to secure genuine changes in our country, this structure of violence and falsehood must be dismantled.” The speech was met with roars of approval, and a standing ovation. Requests for interviews and speeches followed in the weeks afterward. What also followed was a predictable KGB attack. A statement was released by the KGB press office declaring in effect: “The KGB is going to have its say about Kalugin, who he is and what he stands for.” Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev dealt the heaviest blow, issuing a decree on July 1, 1991, stripping Kalugin of his rank of major general, revoking all of his KGB awards, and cutting off his pension. Kalugin persisted against the odds. He was soon elected People’s Deputy of the USSR from the Krasnodar Territory. He remained a very vocal independent critic of the Communist system. His continuous attacks on the KGB garnered him notoriety and a political following. Political courage had to replace physical courage in the field as a KGB officer, though the real threat of violence, his assassination, existed. Nevertheless, he continued to protest KGB abuses.

Following an attempted 1991 coup against Gorbachev led by Kalugin’s nemesis, Kryuchkov, along with seven others, a popular movement under the Mayor of Moscow Boris Yeltsin emerged to subdue coup supporters. Watching events transpire in Russia as the Soviet Union collapsed and failing to act in some way would have been tantamount to accepting and admitting that he never had a spark of dignity or decency. Kalugin manned the barricades, serving as an inspirational leader for protesters. He jumped on top of Soviet tanks to address protesters. It was Kalugin who supposedly persuaded Yeltsin to address crowds before the Russian White House and elsewhere.

The Collapse of the Soviet Union

Following an attempted 1991 coup against Gorbachev led by Kalugin’s nemesis, Kryuchkov, along with seven others, a popular movement under the Mayor of Moscow Boris Yeltsin emerged to subdue coup supporters. Watching events transpire in Russia as the Soviet Union collapsed and failing to act in some way would have been tantamount to accepting and admitting that he never had a spark of dignity or decency. Kalugin manned the barricades, serving as an inspirational leader for protesters. He jumped on top of Soviet tanks to address protesters. It was Kalugin who supposedly persuaded Yeltsin to address crowds before the Russian White House and elsewhere. In September 1991, Gorbachev restated Kalugin’s ranks along with all decorations and his  pension. Yeltsin took control of the Soviet Union from Gorbachev and dissolved it, breaking it down to constituent republics. It was widely seen as a change for the better for the Soviet people and the world.  Though the new and smaller Russian Federation filled the vacuum of the Soviet space and got off to a very rocky start, reformists such as Kalugin who followed Yeltsin could be satisfied that they at least put it on the right track with an energetic shove. Kalugin decided to become a part of the reconstruction. He believed that Russia could eventually meet its full potential. His sensibilities then were representative of those times. He became an unpaid advisor to reformist KGB Chairman Vladimir Bakatin. Bakatin became famous for issuing a pattern of listening devices at the US Embassy in Moscow. However, Bakatin was only able to dissolve the old system but not reform it. As time went on, he was wise enough to recognize that possibility had passed beyond his view.

It would be easy to say that it should not have been terribly difficult for an intelligent man to predict the future of an authoritarian regime that sought to crush the spirit of its people with deceptions, crimes, and evils. Long ago, as a child, he had reached one set of conclusions on those matters. However. his experiences and intelligence provided him with the capability to discern why his initial conclusions might not have been correct. As he collected more information and experienced more of the darker side of what the Soviet system had to offer, he found that he was able to refute his long held views. Thus, he could no longer press any of his ideals about Soviet Union, the Communist Movement, the Communist Party, Socialism and the geopolitical struggle with the West forward with a degree of confidence. There was nothing puzzling about it all to Kalugin as he made that transition in his thinking. The death of Kalugin’s life in Russia opened the door to a new life in the US. Arguably, to that extent, Kalugin in the long-run oddly benefitted from the wrath of his enemies, and in a way benefited from the collapse of the Soviet Union. The righteous was separated from the unrighteous.

Kalugin always remained resolute in disappointment. He never lost his way. In his mind, he organized and synthesized the conditions that beset him. He never resembled what has been whimsically called “spiritual roadkill.” He had his own ethics, buttressed by a creed of what is right and wrong, fair and unfair inculcated within his soul at home with his parents. Ethics without such a creed are only a hollow shell. Bereft of the Soviet system that was once his mighty and faithful, shining beacon of light, upon which he could place all of his hopes and dreams for his future and the future of the world, over a few short years, as mentioned earlier, Kalugin was forced to make a series of never before imagined, new choices about his future, and his family’s future. Even through that, his heart remained stout and strong. Still today, he has refused to concede defeat to his enemies back in Moscow. How poetry manages to connect is really its classic role in culture. It provides an emotional vocabulary, putting into words what one may be sensing. When thinking about Kalugin’s struggles, wanting to achieve much for his country and do the right things, Arthur Hugh Clough’s “Say not the Struggle nought Availeth” (1849) comes to mind. It connects well with Kalugin’s persistence in humility:

Say not the struggle nought availeth,

The labour and the wounds are vain,

The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;

It may be, in yon smoke concealed,

Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,

And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking

Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back through creeks and inlets making,

Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,

When daylight comes, comes in the light,

In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,

But westward, look, the land is bright.

Kalugin always remained resolute in disappointment. He never lost his way. In his mind, he organized and synthesized the conditions that beset him. He never resembled what has been whimsically called “spiritual roadkill.” He had his own ethics, buttressed by a creed of what is right and wrong, fair and unfair inculcated within his soul at home with his parents. Ethics without such a creed are only a hollow shell. Bereft of the Soviet system that was once his mighty and faithful, shining beacon of light, upon which he could place all of his hopes and dreams for his future and the future of the world, over a few short years, as mentioned earlier, Kalugin was forced to make a series of never before imagined, new choices about his future, and his family’s future. Even through that, his heart remained stout and strong.

It is imaginable that greatcharlie’s enthusiasm over First Directorate may lead some to simply write this review off as a hopelessly oleagic encomium. However, nothing presented here is expressed with pretension. What one finds in First Directorate is of the highest quality and remains steady from beginning to end. Readers are also enabled to see the world through the lens of a man with years of experience in the world and a thorough understanding of humanity. Information from the text that is presented here, though it may wet the palate, only represents a mere fraction of what “things, wonderful things” the reader will find in First Directorate. In the genre of fiction and nonfiction spy stories, there is an artistic milieu in which writers seek to position themselves amidst. It cannot be denied that human nature instinctively finds entertainment more compelling than edification. While there is plenty in First Directorate to be entertained, in focusing on such, the depth of Kalugin, the man, might be missed. There is much that explains KGB tactics, techniques, procedures, and methods in First Directorate. When dealing with details as well as publishers and editors, one may likely find inconsistencies with previous accounts told by Kalugin of people and events. While there are many facts in First Directorate to scrutinize, in focusing on such, the mosaic of Kalugin, the man might be missed. Of course, readers should enjoy First Directorate as they wish. It is nice to get hold of a book that allows readers many ways to enjoy it. For greatcharlie, it was an absolute pleasure to read. As would be expected, greatcharlie wholeheartedly recommends First Directorate to its readers. It is definitely worth the read.

By Mark Edmond Clark