Russian Secret Police Part 6: Khrushchev's KGB
The Origins of Russia's most successful Spy Agency
Welcome to Secret Police!
Secret Police explores the history and methods of the world’s most brutal secret police forces. Today’s secret police probably need no introduction. The KGB was one of the most successful spy agencies in history. If you ask the common person to name a secret police force, they probably won’t name the Oprichniki or the Okhrana. A lay person is much more likely to name the KGB. They’re sort of an infamous household name. Let’s get to know their story within the wider context of Russian state security.
The podcast version of this post was broken into three separate parts. This post combines that three-part script into a single story. Enjoy!
Let’s recap what we learned in Part 5
The Soviets emerged victorious over the horrors of Nazi Germany in May 1945. Joseph Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD, fought alongside the Red Army as they pushed the Germans to the embattled heart of the Third Reich in Berlin. The NKVD used psychological warfare on their enemies and deported civilians and combatants from captured territories into the vast Soviet interior.
By 1945, Stalin was at the height of his power. Victory in the Great Patriotic War solidified his place in history and the risk of an uprising against him was likely the lowest it had ever been. But Stalin wasn’t about to let his grip on power loosen. As the saying goes: the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Increasingly paranoid and dealing with recurring cardiac issues, Stalin prepared for another purge.
Some of the returning Red Army soldiers were sent to Gulags. Jewish doctors were targeted, faced interrogations, imprisoned, and executed. Despite Stalin’s immense authority, the Soviet Union was deeply scared by the immense human and economic cost of the war. The challenges only grew as the Soviets entered a cold war with the United States. America demonstrated the terrifying power of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Stalin assigned NKVD chief Lavrenti Beria to develop a nuclear weapon within five years.
The Soviet Union lacked the infrastructure and scientific capacity to meet this goal in 1945. However, what they lacked in resources, they made up for in espionage. The NKVD infiltrated the Manhattan Project and convinced sympathetic British physicists to provide nuclear secrets. Soviet engineers reverse-engineered their own bomb from the stolen designs. On August 29, 1949, the Soviets successfully detonated their first atomic bomb, RDS-1. Nuclear annihilation was a new and grim reality looming over all life on Earth.
Stalin died on March 5, 1953, leaving a massive power vacuum in the Kremlin. Nikita Khrushchev eventually emerged victorious over his rivals and the loathed Lavrenti Beria was executed. Let’s explore how Khrushchev maneuvered to claim leadership and examine the transformation of the Soviet secret police into the most famous spy agency.
The Life of Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was born on April 17, 1894, in Kalinovka, Russia, a small town near the Ukrainian border. His family’s background was as proletarian as you could get: his grandfather was a serf in the Russian Empire and his father was a coal miner. Religion doesn’t appear to have played a significant role in Khrushchev’s life, though his family adhered to the teachings of Christianity probably within the Orthodox tradition.
In 1908, when Khrushchev was about 14 years old, the family relocated to Yuzovka in Ukraine, now modern-day Donetsk. It was here that Khrushchev entered the industrial workforce as a pipe fitter and developed skills to become a talented metalworker. Khrushchev envisioned a career in engineering. His first wife, an educated woman named Yefrosinia, encouraged him to pursue his aspirations. The couple married in 1914 and had two children, Yulia, born in 1915, and Leonid, born in 1917.
Also in 1914, a terrorist assassinated Archduke of Austria-Hungary, Franz Ferdinand, triggering a web of alliances and defense pacts between European powers, leading to World War I. Russia soon mobilized its armies to support Serbia against Austria-Hungary. At first, Khrushchev’s job kept him out of the Imperial Russian Army—his work as a metalworker was deemed too valuable to abandon. By 1917, however, Russians grew increasingly frustrated with Tsar Nicholas II, the royal family’s opulence, and their apparent indifference to the people’s suffering.
The February Revolution forced the Tsar to abdicate, and power was transferred to a Provisional Government led by Alexander Kerensky. Later that year, Lenin organized the Bolshevik Revolution and overthrew the Provisional Government. In Ukraine, Khrushchev’s home, civil war broke out between the Bolsheviks (Reds) and Tsarist loyalists (Whites). In January 1919, Khrushchev joined the Red Army as a political commissar and fought both the White Army and Polish forces in Ukraine. By October 1922, the Red Army defeated the Whites, and by December the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was born. Nearly the same time as the war’s end, Khrushchev’s wife tragically passed away possibly due to typhus. Her death left Khrushchev with two children to care for while pursuing his education.
Khrushchev enrolled at a Soviet Workers’ School in Yuzovka where he deepened his loyalty to the Bolshevik regime by joining the Yuzovka Student Communist Party. Under the Tsars, his educational opportunities were limited but the Bolsheviks provided resources previously reserved for the elite. In 1924, he married his second wife, Nina Petrovna. His Party work earned him more responsibility. By 1929, Khrushchev moved his family to Moscow to pursue higher studies in metallurgy, but his real goal was to expand his political influence.
In Moscow, Khrushchev met powerful Communist figures including Lazar Kaganovich who became his mentor. Khrushchev and Nina also had three children: Rada (1929), Sergei (1935), and Elena (1937). Khrushchev quickly climbed the Party ranks, earning major assignments like overseeing the construction of the Moscow Metro. The project’s success elevated him to de facto mayor of Moscow.
During Stalin’s purges in the 1930s, Khrushchev survived by playing the court jester, disarming potential rivals with his bumbling personality. Stalin often asked him to perform silly dances during drunken late-night dinners, and Khrushchev obliged. Despite his jolly demeanor, Khrushchev actively supported Stalin’s purges. He co-signed numerous arrests and executions and betrayed dozens of his colleagues in the process. Khrushchev’s willingness to do Stalin’s bidding earned him a full Politburo membership by 1939.
In 1937, Khrushchev was sent to Ukraine, where he intensified the purges in pursuit of Stalin’s collectivization program—though he privately detested the famines that these policies caused. During World War II, Khrushchev served as a political commissar in various battles for Kiev, Kharkiv, Stalingrad, and Kursk.
Stalingrad marked a turning point in Khrushchev’s career. Working alongside General Vasily Chuikov, Khrushchev focused on troop morale and propaganda rather than military strategy. However, the war also brought personal tragedy when, in 1943, his son Leonid, a pilot in the Red Air Force, was killed in action.
After the war, Khrushchev was appointed Premier of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) and tasked with rebuilding the war-torn region. By 1949, he returned to Moscow as part of Stalin’s inner circle.
Stalin’s death in March 1953 triggered a power struggle among his closest associates. Khrushchev, initially an underdog, outmaneuvered rivals like Beria and Malenkov. Beria’s arrest and execution in December 1953 removed Khrushchev’s most immediate and dangerous threat; thereafter, Khrushchev gradually consolidated power.
By 1957, Khrushchev outlasted a coup attempt by Malenkov, Molotov, and Kaganovich, solidifying his position as the First Secretary of the Communist Party and Premier of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev embarked on a campaign of de-Stalinization which dismantled Stalin’s cult of personality and initiated several reforms. He even ordered that Stalin’s body be removed from Lenin’s Mausoleum and be buried at the Kremlin Necropolis instead.
Alongside Khrushchev rise to power was the transformation of the Soviet state security apparatus. The secret police adapted from Stalin’s NKVD to a force suited for the Cold War era, focusing their efforts on international espionage.
The Structure of the KGB
The secret police underwent reforms enroute to becoming the KGB well before Khrushchev took power. In 1943, the NKVD split into two distinct organizations -- the NKVD for internal affairs and the NKGB for state security.
In 1946, the term ministry came back into fashion for naming government agencies rather than the Soviet term people’s commissariat. The NKVD and NKGB were reorganized into the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) and the Ministry for State Security (MGB). In 1953, Beria’s death effectively subordinated the MVD to top partly leadership which was different from the NKVD which was anchored to the party through Beria. Some responsibilities, such as concentration camp operations, typically performed by the secret police, were routed to other ministries. An effort was made to decentralize the MVD having inherited these administrative duties from the NKVD. Never again would a secret police chief in the Soviet Union be granted full membership in the Politburo, which was renamed the Presidium in 1952.
On March 13th, 1954, the MVD was pulled apart and the MGB’s responsibilities were transferred to the Committee for State Security or Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti or the KGB. Despite the KGB’s subordination to the Presidium, in practice the KGB was a super-ministry of state security according to historian Ronald Hingley; though the KGB was accountable exclusively to the Communist Party.
The KGB was unique among Soviet ministries in that it had the authority to establish small units inside existing structures across the entire Soviet Union. These smaller units could be set up anywhere, including the Red Army, transportation departments, and even internal affairs departments. This structure made the KGB pervasive, enabling it to collect information from all facets of Soviet society while maintaining vigilance against potential threats both within and abroad. The KGB functioned as both an intelligence-gathering and state security entity. Each branch performed different roles such as counterintelligence on foreign nations and surveillance of Soviet citizens' loyalty to the state.
The head of the KGB could be a member of the central committee but was prohibited from Politburo membership. This reform was designed to prevent any KGB chief from amassing as much power as Beria. It also ensured the KGB refrained from investigating senior government leadership. To further reform state security services, Khrushchev reduced the number of security officers employed and shut down several hundred facilities across the USSR.
In 1959, the KGB was made accountable to the Presidium of the Central Committee, and the Communist Party took charge of personnel decisions. Leadership positions in the KGB were filled by Party members rather than solely KGB insiders. This was a significant departure from the NKVD’s structure, as it introduced more oversight by the Party and limited the KGB’s ability to dominate the government. While the KGB’s power was legally curtailed compared to the NKVD, it remained a formidable institution.
Each department within the KGB was called a directorate. Some of the KGB’s directorates included:
External intelligence
Internal intelligence and counterintelligence
Cyphering
State border protection
Protection of Party leaders
Protection of special objects
Electronic and radio surveillance
Additionally, the KGB maintained Naval, Air, and Armored units within the regular armed forces and special forces called Spetsnaz.
KGB Leadership
The KGB’s first chief, or chairman, was Ivan Serov. We met Serov in Part 5 when discussing the Soviet annexation of Poland when an estimated 1.2 million civilians were deported from their homes and an additional 250,000 Polish military personnel were deported. As Deputy Commissar of the NKVD, Serov oversaw these deportations, targeting anyone perceived as a threat to the USSR such as bankers, business owners, hotel owners, clergymen, and members of non-Communist political parties. Even former Communists who had been expelled from the Party weren’t spared. British media nicknamed him “Ivan the Terrible” or “The Butcher.”
Serov also served with Khrushchev in Ukraine. Khrushchev and Malenkov also persuaded Serov to betray Beria, so his position to lead the KGB may have been a reward for his loyalty. Historian Ronald Hingley writes about a defecting KGB agent who claimed, “Khrushchev could never have risen to supreme power had it not been for the KGB and Serov.” In 1958, Serov was transferred to head the Red Army’s intelligence body, the GRU. Serov’s successor was Alexander Shelepin. He matched Khrushchev’s comparatively liberal era of leadership with limited free expression.
Alexander Shelepin
Shelepin’s background reflected the times. He had served in the Red Army during the Winter War with Finland and helped organize a guerilla movement in Moscow against the approaching Germans. Shelepin’s reputation was solidified by his role in formalizing this movement after the execution of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, an 18-year-old member of Komsomol, the Communist youth organization, and partisan who became a symbol of resistance.
For context, Kosmodemyanskaya was supposed to set fires in German-occupied villages. After her capture, she endured unspeakable torture—stripped naked, lashed 200 times, burned, and interrogated—but she never revealed her comrades' names. Before her execution, she praised Stalin and warned the Germans that they couldn’t hang all the Soviet people.
The Germans hanged her and left her body suspended for weeks, during which time her body was desecrated. Before retreating, they hastily buried her. The Soviet Union posthumously declared her a Hero of the Soviet Union. Her mission was assigned by Shelepin, so her death caught Stalin’s attention and elevated Shelepin reputation by mere association. Later, Shelepin became a senior official in Komsomol.
Shelepin’s higher education in history and literature set him apart from his predecessors, offering an intellectual approach to leadership. This was part of Khrushchev’s effort to improve the KGB’s image during a more reform-oriented period.
Vladimir Semichastny
In November 1961, Shelepin left the KGB and was succeeded by Vladimir Semichastny, who had a similar background in Komsomol. Semichastny once delivered a speech to 14,000 people, comparing Nobel Prize-winning author Boris Pasternak to pigs.
As KGB chief, Semichastny maintained close ties with Khrushchev and Shelepin. However, both Shelepin and Semichastny grew weary of Khrushchev’s leadership, especially after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Khrushchev’s Secret Speech
On February 25, 1956, Khrushchev shocked Soviet leadership with his Secret Speech to the Twentieth Party Congress. He dismantled Stalin’s godlike image and exposed his many crimes against the Soviet people. Khrushchev detailed Stalin’s purges, the Doctor’s Plot, and the widespread torture inflicted by the NKVD under Yagoda, Yezhov, and Beria. Khrushchev conveniently omitted his own complicity in these crimes.
His speech coincided with action. For example, the prison population was significantly reduced between 1953 and 1956; though the data is unreliable, and the Gulag system was never fully abolished. While some prisoner strikes led to improvements, others were violently suppressed—such as the 1954 uprising of Kengir in Kazakhstan where soldiers bayoneted women to death.
KGB Prisons
Overall, the Soviet government tried to significantly reduce the portion of political prisoners. According to information gathered by Ronald Hingley, there were 3 million prisoners in the USSR at the time of Stalin’s death and about half were political prisoners. Officials may have reduced the portion of political prisoners to 1 or 2% of the 8 or 9 hundred thousand total prisoners remaining in 1957. Take this with a grain of Soviet salt because it’s tough to sus out accurate data.
In December 1958, the penal code was liberalized retracted the ability of the political police to paint dissidents with such a broad brush. The KGB relinquished control of the Gulags on paper but they maintained supervision through localized networks of officers and informants. The KGB is probably best known for their informants and spy craft. What did it take to become a KGB agent and how were they recruited?
How KGB Recruitment Worked
The KGB recruited agents through various methods. They often selected individuals rather than a formal application process, as explained by ex-KGB agent Jack Barsky. Unlike the CIA, where you can apply, the KGB sought out recruits and selected candidates for specific missions.
Jack Barsky, a former student at the University of Jena in East Germany, provided a fascinating insight on KGB recruitment on Lex Fridman’s podcast in July 2022. Jack was an aspiring professor with no interest in espionage. He considered espionage to be the stuff of spy novels -- pure fiction. One weekend, a KGB agent visited him at his dorm, likely tipped off by the Stasi—the East German secret police—who kept meticulous records on its citizens. The agents’ visit wasn’t random. Jack speculated that a Soviet exchange student, and dorm neighbor, informed the KGB of his daily routine. Initially posing as a government worker, the agent subtly interviewed Jack before revealing his true purpose for the intrusion. Over the next year, Jack built relationships with KGB contacts before being formally recruited.
The KGB usually targeted specific individuals and built trust over time. Richard Sorge, recruited by the NKVD, followed a similar path when recruited at Comintern. The KGB also used blackmail and monetary incentives to recruit Western spies, but their most effective tactic remained forging ideological and personal connections over time. Retired KGB officer Mikhail Luybimov noted the importance of these relationships during Cold War operations.
Training varied with new recruits depending on the mission. Jack's training included Morse code, shortwave radio operations, manual encryption and decryption. He learned to use chemically treated notepads for secret writing and mastered counter-surveillance techniques. He learned how to create microscopic images; photos or text small enough to hide on stamps and coins. Language acquisition and immersion in Western culture were also essential. Jack read Western literature and watched West German television to absorb cultural nuances.
Training wasn’t always structured and rigid. Jack, for example, was often left to guide his own preparation. The KGB emphasized initiative, evaluating whether recruits could work independently. Agents submitted monthly reports but otherwise managed their own learning, a key part of their evaluation process.
Those who passed the KGB’s recruitment process graduated to playing spy games with American other Western agents. Let’s now examine other Soviet agents and their activities during the Cold War.
Notable KGB Agents
Colonel Rudolf Abel
Colonel Rudolf Abel was portrayed by Mark Rylance in Bridge of Spies. The real Abel was born William August Fisher in July 1903 in Newcastle upon Tyne in northern England to Russian emigrant parents. He later moved to Russia and served in the Red Army Radio Battalion in 1925. Abel was fluent in English, German, Russian, Polish, and Yiddish.
Abel was recruited by the OGPU secret police in 1927 and worked abroad as a radio operator. He returned to the USSR in 1936 to train other radio operators to perform espionage abroad. He narrowly avoided the Great Purge, despite his British birth, due to his brother-in-law’s alleged Trotskyist ties. He remained loyal to the state even after narrowly escaping execution.
During WWII, Abel again trained radio operators for clandestine missions behind German lines. By 1946, he rejoined the would-be KGB and prepared to spy in the United States. He entered the US under a false identity using stolen passports and birth certificates. One US passport came from a traveler who fell ill and died in the USSR. Soviet officials kept the deceased’s documents for espionage purposes. The NKVD also obtained US birth certificates from captured or killed foreign fighters in the Spanish Civil War, again for the purpose of forging false documents.
In 1953, Abel moved to a studio apartment in Brooklyn, New York and posed as a painter and photographer. His choice of profession helped cover for his irregular hours and long absences from his apartment. He mingled within the New York art scene while secretly managing a Soviet spy ring that gathered sensitive US nuclear information. Abel was arrested on June 21, 1957, after an informant exposed his codename, “MARK.” The FBI raided his apartment, finding $19,000 in cash (over $200,000 today), a shortwave radio, cipher pads, encrypted microfilm, and tools for creating microdots. American agents also discovered hollowed-out screws that hid secret messages. In 1962, Abel was exchanged for a U2 pilot shot down over the USSR two years earlier, Francis Gary Powers.
The Cambridge Five
Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross were British students recruited by Soviet intelligence at University of Cambridge in the 1930s. Philby joined MI6 and leaked British intelligence. Burgess worked in the Foreign Office and shared sensitive documents with the Soviets. Maclean passed on British foreign policy details while Blunt shared MI5 intelligence. Cairncross focused on US intelligence activities. Together, they formed a network of extraordinary traitors.
The group used coded signals, secret meetings, and dead drops to avoid direct contact with Soviet officers. Dead drops are when messages are left at predetermined locations and received by another party. The Cambridge Five were caught when Soviet defector, Igor Gouzenko, revealed information that led the British MI5 to investigate potential leaks. Blunt confessed in exchange for immunity. Philby fled to the USSR where he lived until his death in 1988. Their exposure damaged British intelligence and prompted sweeping reforms.
Robert Lee Johnson
Robert Lee Johnson was a US Army sergeant who spied for the KGB from 1953 to 1964. He provided vital military secrets, including NATO code-breaking capabilities and missile deployment details. At Orly Airport in Paris—a hub for US courier operations—Johnson met KGB handlers and used dead drops to exchange information. He even smuggled samples of missile fuel for the KGB. His espionage ended after a Soviet defector tipped off US authorities to Johnson’s activities. He was arrested and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
One of the most terrifying aspects of the KGB was their ability to infiltrate on a global scale. Agents weren’t always Russian . . . they could be anyone—your neighbor, colleague, or friend. The KGB’s amorphous quality made them effective and difficult to root out.
Why would Westerners betray their nations? Factors included money, ideology, compromise, and ego—the “MICE” acronym. Financial incentives appealed to those in debt or craving a lavish lifestyle. Ideology worked on individuals who believed Communism was a path to utopia. Compromise involved using blackmail, such intimate photographs of a man with a family having a homosexual encounter, to coerce them into espionage. Ego motivated those seeking recognition or revenge. These factors varied, but as clinical psychologist Ilan Diamant noted, mature and well-adjusted individuals were less likely to break under these pressures.
KGB Assassinations
The KGB carried out multiple assassinations in the 1950s. In 1954, Georgi Okolovich narrowly avoided assassination thanks to a tip. The assassin planned to use a gun disguised as a leather cigarette case with three rounds: one made of lead, one with cyanide, and made of steel.
Lev Rebet, a Ukrainian government figure and editor of an anti-communist newspaper, wasn’t as fortunate. In 1957, an assassin killed him in a Munich office building with a spray gun loaded with cyanide. Two years later, in 1959, Ukrainian resistance leader Stepan Bandera met the same fate, via a cyanide gun, in Munich.
The KGB had a strong preference for cyanide, ricin, and later chemical agents like dioxin were to eliminate enemies. Strangulation and drowning were also popular methods, and the KGB remains a suspect in the Kennedy assassination.
KGB Interrogations
Arrest by the KGB likely meant an extended stay in their care. The KGB outlined each prisoner’s attributes such as social status, openness to cooperation, the information that needed extraction, and the crimes being charged. The plan was then submitted to superiors for review and critique. Interrogations almost always happened during the night. Prisoners were repeatedly woken up after falling asleep to compound their physical and psychological discomfort. Prisoners were forced to stand for 18 to 24 hours or endure stress positions for extended periods. Some interrogators used good cop/bad cop tactics, where one officer acted friendly to gain trust while the other was openly hostile. For prisoners of high social standing, addressing them by their first name was an intentional show of disrespect.
Psychological torture was common in places like the KGB Corner House in Riga, Latvia, now the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia. Cells designed for four inmates were crammed with over forty inmates. Guards used peepholes in the thick concrete walls to monitor prisoners and would wake anyone who dared to fall asleep.
The KGB used extended solitary confinement when they wanted to utterly break a person. Prisoners were placed in a concrete cell, with less than 1 by 1 meter of space, and no window or toilet. These upright tombs confined inmates for at least three days while clicks, taps, or buzzing echoed into the cell without pause. Prisoners had just 10 minutes to stand outdoors in a steel cage. The distant sounds of urban activity teased and mocked the prisoner’s ears. The prison also had an execution chamber designed with a slanted floor so that blood seeping from gunshots flowed into a drain.
KGB Infiltration
According to Merriam-Webster, infiltration involves surreptitiously placing agents or troops into enemy positions with hostile intent, often unnoticed at first. The goal is to strategically position agents before an attack like a chess master arranging their pieces. Infiltration can be human or electronic such as embedding an agent into a group or hacking a system to upload malware. The Okhrana infiltrated labor groups using fake organizations. The NKVD infiltrated German and Japanese high command via Richard Sorge. Soviet spies penetrated the Manhattan Project. If there were an Olympics of espionage, the KGB would win the gold.
The 7th Department of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate handled activities in Japan, India, Indonesia, and other Asian nations. In Japan, Hirohide Ishida, codenamed “Hoover,” was a key agent. Serving as Chief Cabinet Secretary and later as Minister of Labor, Ishida published a paper in 1960 predicting Japan’s Socialist Party would rise by 1970. He pressured the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to act on his concerns. Ishida also chaired the Japan-USSR Friendship Parliamentarians' Union but was outed as a KGB agent by defector Stanislav Levchenko.
In India, the KGB infiltrated government and media, planting over 5,000 journal articles in the 1960s. Historian Christopher Andrew describes India as a test case for Soviet influence in non-aligned nations. Operational lessons learned in India were later implemented in Africa and Latin America. India never fully embraced Communism but maintained strong ties with the Soviet Union.
North Korea also benefited from Soviet support. Archives reveal the KGB trained North Korean agents in criminalistics, radio technology, and wiretapping. North Korea even operated Siberian labor camps for harvesting lumber while the KGB providing security and returned escapees to their North Korean handlers.
In Africa, the KGB supported liberation movements against colonial powers. They saw political change as a chance to gain allies. The KGB helped new African nations establish security services, trained officers, and sent advisors to assist the Angolan army.
Latin America saw similar KGB efforts. The USSR backed left-wing movements to counter U.S. influence following Khrushchev’s policy to expand socialism in the developing world. Nikolai Leonov noted that the Soviets never treated any Latin American nation as an enemy including Chile during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Instead, they sought to weaken American dominance through espionage and alliances.
In the U.S., in addition to stealing nuclear secrets, the KBG exploited racial tensions. The Civil Rights Movement sought to end segregation and discrimination. While some people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. advocated for non-violence, groups like the Black Panthers and the Klu Klux Klan represented more extreme elements. The KGB initiated Operation Pandora to spark a race war to destabilize America. The KGB exploited moments like the 1957 Little Rock crisis, using global media to portray American democracy as hypocritical. Soviet papers ran headlines like “Troops March Against Children,” to weaken U.S. credibility abroad, particularly in Africa.
The KGB also targeted Martin Luther King Jr., pressuring him to frame his movement as anti-imperialist. King resisted and emphasized that, in his view, civil rights are a part of the American dream. Frustrated, the KGB tried to discredit King by painting him as a puppet of the federal government. The KGB also infiltrated the Black Panthers; evidence of KGB infiltration of the Klan is elusive.
Cold War Hotspots
Berlin was the hotspot of post-war tension between East and West. The division of Germany into occupation zones dates back to the 1943 Tehran Conference when plans were drawn to divide post-war Germany into several occupation zones. At the 1945 Yalta Conference, the Allies couldn’t agree on specifics until Germany’s surrender, but the division was finalized at the Potsdam Conference that July. Germany was split into four zones controlled by the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. Berlin, deep inside the Soviet-controlled East Germany, was also divided into four sectors.
Why did the USSR agree to a Western enclave inside East Germany? Likely because the division was negotiated before it was clear whether Soviet or Western forces would capture Berlin first. Additionally, Stalin needed Allied cooperation against Japan to secure territorial concessions in Asia.
In 1947, the U.S. and Britain merged into an economic zone and introduced the Deutschmark. In response, the Soviets staged a blockade of West Berlin in an effort to force an Allied withdrawal of their sectors. The blockade failed as the U.S. and Britain airlifted supplies for over a year. Lacking atomic weapons until 1949, the Soviets didn’t risk shooting down supply planes.
In 1949, the French zone joined the Anglo-American union to form West Germany, while the Soviets established East Germany into a one-party Communist state with a centrally planned economy. West Germany, by contrast, flourished with U.S. economic aid and democratic governance. Berlin became a flashpoint as East Germans crossed freely into the more prosperous West which prompted East Germany to build a wall.
The 1956 Hungarian Uprising
Hungary was absorbed into the Soviet sphere after WWII and fell under Stalinist rule by Mátyás Rákosi, whose secret police terrorized dissenters. After Stalin’s death, Imre Nagy took over, promoting liberalization and independence. Rákosi returned briefly in 1955 but was ousted by the Politburo the following year.
Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization emboldened Hungarians to criticize the Soviet regime. Protests in October 1956 escalated into full rebellion and Soviet troops faced active resistance. Statues of Stalin were torn down, and Nagy, reinstated as prime minister, introduced free elections and announced Hungary’s withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact—a step too far for Khrushchev.
In November 1956, Soviet forces crushed the revolution in two weeks. They installed János Kádár as Hungary’s leader. Nagy was captured and executed. Ironically, Khrushchev, the de-Stalinizer, sent tanks named after Stalin (IS tank family) to suppress the uprising.
Khrushchev in the Cold War Spotlight
While managing tensions in the Eastern Bloc, Khrushchev propelled the USSR into the space race. In 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first ever artificial satellite. By 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space.
Remarkably, Khrushchev was the first Soviet leader—and likely the first Russian leader in history—to visit the U.S. In early 1959, Vice President Richard Nixon toured the American National Exhibition in Moscow, sparking the famous "kitchen debate" with Khrushchev over their respective economic systems. Later that year, both nations announced Khrushchev’s U.S. visit.
Khrushchev’s U.S. Tour
Khrushchev’s visit was carefully orchestrated to display Soviet power, starting with his flight to Washington aboard a Tupolev TU-114—the only Soviet aircraft capable of flying from Moscow to the United States non-stop. Khrushchev’s tour included Washington, New York City, Los Angeles, Iowa, and Pennsylvania. Security was intense. The FBI estimated that over 20,000 Americans wished to assassinate him. The KGB warned that any attempt on Khrushchev’s life, successful or not, would provoke an immediate Soviet nuclear strike.
Khrushchev was denied a trip to Disneyland due to security concerns. Even Walt Disney, a staunch anti-Communist, was prepared to host him. Khrushchev wasn’t pleased, but he continued his tour, mingled with Americans, and tried various local foods. Despite his reputation as a bombastic leader who threatened to “bury” Western diplomats, he was photographed smiling and shaking hands.
Perhaps the highlight was Khrushchev’s visit to Iowa, where he reunited with Roswell Garst, a corn farmer he had met years earlier. Garst sold hybrid seed corn to the Soviet Union making both a fortune and a friend in Khrushchev.
The tour concluded with a visit to Camp David, where Khrushchev and President Eisenhower attempted to negotiate on key Cold War issues. While no agreements were reached regarding Berlin or nuclear disarmament, the visit temporarily eased tensions and created optimism for improved relations.
The Calm Before the Storm
Despite the goodwill generated by his U.S. visit, Khrushchev’s temper flared in later years. In 1960, he clashed with Filipino delegate Lorenzo Sumulong at the UN, accusing him of being a lackey of U.S. imperialism. This was also Khrushchev’s infamous alleged act of slamming his shoe on the podium at the UN. By 1962, relations with the U.S. soured further. After a U-2 spy plane was shot down over Soviet territory, Khrushchev canceled Eisenhower’s planned visit to the USSR and denounced him at the UN. Around this same time, Khrushchev allied with Fidel Castro which set the stage for a nuclear crisis.
Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuba emerged as a socialist state in early 1959 when Fidel Castro took power. Initially, Moscow paid little attention to Cuba, but Castro’s prominence in the Socialist movement soon made him a valuable ally. Not to mention Cuba was the first Soviet partner in the Western Hemisphere and just 90 miles from U.S. shores. In April 1961, President John F. Kennedy authorized an invasion of Cuba in the hopes of sparking an uprising against Castro. The Bay of Pigs operation, involving 1,400 CIA-supported Cuban exiles, was a disastrous failure and damaged Kennedy’s image.
For the Soviets, aligning with Cuba wasn’t just about spreading Communism. It addressed a critical gap in their nuclear strategy. The U.S. stationed roughly 15 medium-range Jupiter missiles in Turkey which were capable of striking Moscow. The USSR lacked comparable reach to directly threaten the United States. Khrushchev wanted to level the playing field and Cuba was the perfect place.
Americans panicked; we historically have little experience with direct threats to U.S. soil. People stocked up on canned goods and utilized fallout shelters. Meanwhile, Khrushchev argued that Americans should experience a taste of their own medicine. In September 1962, Soviet ships began transporting ballistic missiles to Cuba. By October, U-2 reconnaissance flights confirmed the construction of missile sites, capable of striking half the U.S., including most major East Coast cities.
Kennedy Responds
Kennedy and his advisors scrambled for options. The Administration was shocked at the discovery of additional long-range SS-5 missiles which were capable of reaching nearly every U.S. city . . . except Seattle. With 40,000 Soviet troops already stationed in Cuba and an estimated 150 nuclear warheads, any strike risked full-scale nuclear war. Kennedy opted for a naval blockade to prevent further shipments and addressed the nation.
The U.S. military mobilized to DEFCON 2, one step from nuclear war. American troops mobilized to Florida and Georgia, anti-aircraft defenses lined the coast, and marines practiced amphibious landings in preparation for an invasion. Havana prepared for war, fortifying beaches and calling upon every able-bodied man to defend Cuba.
Tensions peaked when a U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba by a Soviet missile, killing pilot Major Rudolph Anderson. It’s incredible that this incident didn’t lead to a catastrophe because a single mistake could have triggered nuclear war. For instance, a Soviet submarine, mistakenly believing it was under attack, nearly launched a nuclear torpedo at an American ship. Soviet officer Vasily Arkhipov refused to authorize the submarine’s attack.
The KGB’s Role
Amid this chaos, the KGB worked through back channels to resolve the conflict. Alexander Feklisov, the Soviet station chief in Washington, met with ABC journalist John Scali at The Occidental, a restaurant near the U.S. Treasury Building. Feklisov proposed a deal: the Soviets would remove missiles from Cuba if the U.S. withdrew its missiles from Turkey. Scali relayed the message, and after internal deliberations, Khrushchev publicly announced the Soviet withdrawal. Nuclear war was narrowly avoided. There’s a plaque at The Occidental commemorates the meeting, crediting the proposal with helping to avoid global catastrophe.
Khrushchev’s Downfall
Not everyone welcomed the resolution to the crisis. Fidel Castro was excluded from the negotiations despite Cuba’s risk of being caught in the crossfire. In the Soviet Union, Khrushchev’s position was weakened. His handling of agricultural policies and internal reforms fueled discontent. By October 1964, while Khrushchev vacationed in Georgia, Leonid Brezhnev and KGB-backed conspirators seized control of the government. Khrushchev was summoned to Moscow, where he resigned without fanfare. There was no trial or execution; Khrushchev was quietly forced into retirement until his death on September 11, 1971.
Agents dismissed.
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Disclaimer: This post was edited with the assistance of ChatGPT-4