Month: August 2014

Video . Ukraine: ‘Full scale invasion’ by Russia under way

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Revealed – Feds Issue Bulletin on Google Dorking

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An examples

A bulletin issued by the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the National Counterterrorism Center earlier this month warns law enforcement and private security personnel that malicious cyber actors can use โ€œadvanced search techniquesโ€ to discover sensitive information and other vulnerabilities in websites.ย  The bulletin, titled โ€œMalicious Cyber Actors Use Advanced Search Techniques,โ€ describes a set of techniques collectively referred to as โ€œGoogle dorkingโ€ or โ€œGoogle hackingโ€ that use โ€œadvanced operatorsโ€ to refine search queries to provide more specific results.ย  Lists of these operators are provided by Google and include the following examples:

allintext: / intext: Restricts results to those containing all the query terms you specify in the text of the page
allintitle: / intitle: Restricts results to those containing all the query terms you specify in the title
allinurl: / inurl: Restricts results to those containing all the query terms you specify in the URL
filetype:suffix Limits results to pages whose names end in suffix
site: Using theย site:ย operator restricts your search results to the site or domain you specify
Minus signย ย (ย โ€“ย ) to exclude Placing ย a minus sign immediately before a word indicates that you do not want pages that contain this word to appear in your results
Phrase searchย (using double quotes, โ€œโ€ฆโ€ ) By putting double quotes around a set of words, you are telling Google to consider the exact words in that exact order without any change

Here is an example of a query constructed from these operators:

โ€œsensitive but unclassifiedโ€ filetype:pdf site:publicintelligence.net

The bulletin warns that malicious cyber actors can use these techniques to โ€œlocate information that organizations may not have intended to be discoverable by the public or to find website vulnerabilities for use in subsequent cyber attacks.โ€ย  Hackers searching for โ€œspecific file types and keywords . . . can locate information such as usernames and passwords, e-mail lists, sensitive documents, bank account details, and website vulnerabilities.โ€ย  Moreover, โ€œfreely available online tools can run automated scans using multiple dork queriesโ€ to discover vulnerabilities.ย  In fact, the bulletin recommends that security professionals use these tools โ€œsuch as the Google Hacking Database, found at http://www.exploit-db.com/google-dorks, to run pre-made dork queries to find discoverable proprietary information and website vulnerabilities.โ€

Several security breaches related to the use of โ€œadvanced search techniquesโ€ are also referenced in the bulletin.ย  One incident in August 2011 resulted in the compromise of the personally identifiable information of approximately 43,000 faculty, staff, students and alumni of Yale University.ย  The information was located in a spreadsheet placed on a publicly accessible File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server and was listed in Google search results for more than ten months prior to being discovered.ย  Another incident in October 2013 involved attackers using Google dorking to discover websites running vulnerable versions of vBulletin message board software prior to running automated tools that created administrator accounts on the compromised sites.ย  As many as 35,000 websites were believed to have been compromised in the incident.

Video – Russiaโ€™s โ€˜Stealth Invasionโ€™ Of Ukraine The Opposite Of Stealthy – War

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“Tanks, artillery and infantry have crossed from Russia into an unbreached part of eastern Ukraine in recent days, attacking Ukrainian forces and causing panic and wholesale retreat not only in this small border town but also a wide section of territory, in what Ukrainian and Western military officials described on Wednesday as a stealth invasion.

The attacks outside this city and in an area to the north essentially have opened a new, third front in the war in eastern Ukraine between government forces and pro-Russian separatists, along with the fighting outside the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Exhausted, filthy and dismayed, Ukrainian soldiers staggering out of Novoazovsk for safer territory said Tuesday they were cannon fodder for the forces coming from Russia. As they spoke, tank shells whistled in from the east and exploded nearby.”* The Young Turks hosts Ana Kasparian, Ben Mankiewicz (Turner Classic Movies), and Jasmyne Cannick (Political Commentator) break it down.

*Read more here from Andrew E. Kramer and Michael R. Gordon / NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/wor…

Video Analysis – James Foley: Tragic Death Or Staged Propaganda?

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Fรผr die STASI war und ist die Schweiz ein Feindstaat

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Sie hรถrte Telefone ab und las plombierte Diplomatenpost: Die Stasi spitzelte jahrelang die Schweizer Botschaft in Ost-Berlin aus. Fazit eines Historikers: ยซDie DDR respektierte die Neutralitรคt der Schweiz nicht.ยป

Die Stasi hat die Schweizer Botschaft in der ehemaligen DDR wรคhrend 17 Jahren durch fรผnf Spitzel รผberwachen lassen. Sie hรถrte Telefonate ab, zeichnete interne Gesprรคche auf und รถffnete regelmรคssig die verschweisste und plombierte Schweizer Diplomatenpost. Damit hat sich die Stasi auch Zugang zu den Briefen des Botschafters an den Bundesrat verschafft.

Die STASI

Das Ministerium fรผr Staatssicherheit der DDR (MfS oder Stasi), auch Staatssicherheitsdienst (SSD), war der DDR-Geheimdienst im In- und Ausland. Er war auch Ermittlungsbehรถrde fรผr politische Straftaten und diente der SED als Machtinstrument gegen vermeintliche Oppositionelle und Regimekritiker.

Dies geht aus der Stasi-Akte รผber die ยซSchweizerische Botschaftยป hervor, welche die ยซTagesschauยป bei der Stasi-Unterlagen-Behรถrde in Berlin einsehen konnte. Die Akte wird von zwei Berliner Historikern in einem Buchprojekt aufgearbeitet. Diese umfasst mehrere Tausend Seiten und beinhaltet unzรคhlige Fotos mit Aussenaufnahmen des Gebรคudes und detaillierten Plรคnen vom Innern der Botschaft.

Der Chauffeur als Spion

Als Hauptspitzel agierte zwischen 1972 und 1989 der Chauffeur des Botschafters, Siegfrid Kringel. Sein Deckname war ยซNicolaiยป. ยซDa Kringel Zugang zur Botschaft hatte, war es fรผr die Stasi einfach, detaillierte Plรคne der Botschaft anzufertigenยป, erklรคrt Enrico Seewald von der Freien Universitรคt Berlin der ยซTagesschauยป.

Zusammen mit Historiker Jochen Staadt erforscht Seewald die umfassende Akte. Anhand von anderen Stasi-Akten konnten die beiden die restlichen vier Spitzel ausfindig machen.

Die SED-Spitzen interessierten sich vor allem fรผr die Wirtschaftsberichte des Botschafters, die er regelmรคssig nach Bern verschickte. Die DDR nutzte den Schweizer Finanzplatz als Kreditgeber und hatte in der Schweiz Briefkastenfirmen, รผber welche sie internationale Rรผstungsgeschรคfte abwickelte.

Versiegelter Brief? Kein Problem

Die Briefe des Schweizer Botschafters wurden aus Sicherheitsgrรผnden in ein Lederetui verpackt, verschweisst und plombiert zum Flughafen gebracht. Dennoch gelang es der Stasi diese Briefe wohl auf dem Weg zum Flughafen Schรถnefeld unbemerkt zu kopieren. ยซDie Stasi hatte Fรคlscherspezialisten, welche auch verschweisste und versiegelte Briefe รถffnen und wieder verschliessen konntenยป, erklรคrt der Historiker Jochen Staadt.

Schweizer Botschaft in Berlin Typ Plattenbau Pankow III 

Bildlegende: Das Objekt der Spionage: Die damalige Schweizer Botschaft in Ost-Berlin an der Esplanade 21 (1973). Bundesarchiv Berlin / Peter Koard

1981 notierte die Staatssicherheit eine ยซerhรถhte Kontaktaktivitรคtยป der Botschaft mit 49 Auslandschweizern. Aus 143 Briefwechseln interpretierte sie potentielle Spione und Fluchthelfer und schrieb in einem Bericht, ยซdass die Schweizerische Botschaft รผber gรผnstige Voraussetzungen zur Auswahl geeigneter Kandidaten fรผr eine Feindtรคtigkeit verfรผgt.ยป

Noch haben die Historiker die umfangreiche Akte รผber die Schweizer Botschaft nicht ganz ausgewertet, dennoch zieht Jochen Staadt erste Schlรผsse. ยซDie DDR respektierte die Neutralitรคt der Schweiz nicht. Sie betrachtete die Schweiz als Feind, wie jedes andere westliche Land, das mit einer Botschaft in Ost-Berlin vertreten war.ยป

Die Schweizer Botschaft an der Esplanade 21 in Pankow wurde am 3. Oktober 1990 infolge der Wiedervereinigung geschlossen. 25 Jahre nach dem Mauerfall zeugt nichts mehr von den Stasipraktiken. Die Schweizerische Botschaft von einst ist heute ein unscheinbares Wohnhaus.

 

Video – News and Response of Islamic State’s Barbaric Murder of James Foley

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News and Response of Islamic State’s Barbaric Murder of James Foley

NOTE: This video does NOT include any of the disturbing footage from the video posted by ISIS referenced.

On August 19 2014, the Islamic State posted a graphic and shocking video of the murder and beheading of James Foley, an American journalist that had been missing since November 2012. The video was sent as a warning to the United States to end military operations in Iraq and ended with a threat to kill Steven Sotloff, another journalist also held captive by ISIS.

The video was met with disgust and shock around the world, and prompted a strong response from President Barack Obama as shown in this video. Watch James Foley in his own words describe his experiences in Libya during the revolution and overthrow of the Qaddafi regime in this fascinating video.

World at War TV – Ukraine and Russia – Forever Linked By Chernobyl

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Ukraine and Russia have a long contentious history and perhaps no more significant event marks this history more than the catastrophic Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident that occured in 1986.

This fascinating video takes you to the infamous city of Pripyat, a town of 50,000 that was abandoned overnight in the hours after the accident. This eerie ghost town marks the passage of time with silent decay, uninhabitable for another 20,000 years.

After a visit to modern day Pripyat, a look back at that fateful day and the desperate measures that were taken to prevent even greater disaster and loss of life!

The National Security Archive – The United States, China, and the Bomb

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Washington, D.C. โ€“ The National Security Archive has initiated a special project on the Chinese nuclear weapons program and U.S. policy toward it. The purpose is to discover how the U.S. government monitored the Chinese nuclear program and ascertain what it knew (or believed that it knew) and thought about that program from the late 1950s to the present. Besides investigating U.S. thinking about, and intelligence collection on, the Chinese nuclear program as such, the Archive’s staff is exploring its broader foreign policy significance, especially the impact on China’s relations with its neighbors and the regional proliferation of nuclear weapons capabilities. Through archival research and systematic declassification requests, the Archive is working to collect key U.S. documents on important developments in Chinese nuclear history, including weapons, delivery systems, and strategic thinking. To put the nuclear issue in the broader context of the changing relations between the United States and China, the Archive is also trying to secure the declassification of key U. S. policy papers that elucidate changes in the relationship.

In particular, the Archive’s project is exploring Washington’s thinking about the Chinese nuclear weapons program in the context of U.S. nuclear proliferation policy. The Archive is probing Washington’s initial effort to brake the development of the Chinese advanced weapons program by encouraging allies and others to abstain from the shipment of products that could have direct or indirect military applications. Moreover, the Archive is seeking the declassification of materials that shed light on an important concern since the late 1980s, China’s alleged role as a contributor to the proliferation of nuclear capabilities in South Asia and elsewhere. To the extent possible, the Archive will try to document the U.S. government’s knowledge of, and policy toward, China’s role as a nuclear proliferator and its efforts to balance proliferation concerns with a policy of cooperation with Beijing.

In the spring of 1996, the Archive began a series of Freedom of Information and mandatory review requests to the CIA, State Department, Defense Department, National Archives, and other agencies to prompt the release of relevant documents. Although this will take time, the State Department’s own systematic declassification review of central files from the 1960s has already made available some very useful material. Moreover, previous declassification requests by the Archive are beginning to generate significant material. This makes it possible for the Archive to display, on our Web site, some newly released documents on U.S. policy toward the Chinese nuclear weapons program.

The documents that follow are from 1964 when U.S. government officials recognized that China would soon acquire a nuclear weapons capability. As this material indicates, the degree of apprehension varied, with some officials truly worried that a nuclear armed China would constitute a formidable threat to the security of China’s neighbors as well as the United States. Others, however, believed that Beijing’s orientation was fundamentally cautious and defensive and that the political and psychological implications would be more immediately consequential than any military threat. Although China’s attitude toward U.S.-Soviet nonproliferation efforts was hostile, as far as can be determined, no one anticipated a development of later decades: the PRC’s apparent role as a purveyor of nuclear weapons and delivery systems technologies.

* * *

This briefing book was prepared by William Burr, the Archive’s analyst for the China nuclear weapons project and for a related project on U.S. nuclear weapons policies and programs. Currently a member of Dipomatic History‘s editorial board, he has published articles there and in the Bulletin of the Cold War International History Project. He previously directed the Archive’s project on the Berlin Crisis, 1958-1962 (published by Chadwyck-Healey in 1992).

The National Security Archive thanks the W. Alton Jones Foundation for the generous financial support that made this project possible. Anthony Wai, Duke University, and Matthew Shabatt, Stanford University, provided invaluable research assistance for this project.

THE DOCUMENTS

Document 1: “Implications of a Chinese Communist Nuclear Capability”, by Robert H. Johnson, State Department Policy Planning Staff, with forwarding memorandum to President Johnson by Policy Planning Council director Walt W. Rostow, 17 April 1964.

Source: U.S. National Archives, Record Group 59, Department of State Records, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1964-1966, file DEF 12-1 Chicom.

Robert Johnson (now associated with the National Planning Association) was one of the Department’s leading China experts. Between 1962 and 1964, he directed a number of studies on the Chinese nuclear program and its ramifications, not only for the United States but also for China’s neighbors in East and South Asia. This document is a summary of a longer study which remains classified but is undergoing declassification review. In this paper Johnson minimized the immediate military threat of a nuclear China, suggesting instead that Chinese leaders were more interested in a nuclear capability’s deterrent effect and were unlikely to engage in high-risk activities. Consistent with his relatively moderate interpretation, Johnson ruled out preemptive action against Chinese nuclear facilities except in “response to major ChiCom aggression.” Johnson explored the issue of preemption in another study: “The Bases for Direct Action Against Chinese Communist Nuclear Facilities,” also April 1964. That study is unavailable but is discussed in document 5.

Document 2: Special National Intelligence Estimate, “The Chances of an Imminent Communist Chinese Nuclear Explosion” 26 August 1964.

Source: Lyndon B. Johnson Library

The timing of a Chinese atomic test was a controversial subject during the summer and fall of 1964. As this document shows, CIA officials believed that the Chinese would not test a weapon until “sometime after the end of 1964.” State Department China specialist Allen Whiting, an official at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, thought otherwise. Like his colleagues he was unaware that the Chinese had an operating gaseous diffusion plant which was producing weapons-grade material. Yet, he made more than the CIA of the fact that the Chinese had already constructed a 325 foot test tower at Lop Nur. Whiting was certain that the Chinese would not have taken the trouble to construct a tower unless a test was impending, although CIA technical experts were dubious. As other intelligence information becomes available, Whiting estimated a test on 1 October. (Interview with Whiting by William Burr, 13 December 1996).

Document 3: Memorandum for the Record, McGeorge Bundy, 15 September 1964

Source: Lyndon B. Johnson Library.

This report of a meeting between President Johnson’s top advisers discloses the administration’s basic approach toward the first Chinese nuclear test but nevertheless raises questions that have yet to be settled. Although it is evident that the administration had provisionally ruled out a preemptive strike, it is unclear whether Secretary of State Rusk ever had any substantive discussions of the Chinese nuclear issue with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin during the weeks after this meeting.

Until recently, paragraph 3 of this document was entirely excised but a successful appeal by the National Security Archive led the National Archives to release all but the date of the proposed “Chinat” overflight, presumably by a U-2. The date of the overflight is unknown although a number took place in late 1964 and early 1965 to monitor Chinese nuclear weapons facilities.

Document 4: “China As a Nuclear Power (Some Thoughts Prior to the Chinese Test)”, 7 October 1964

Source: FOIA request to State Department

This document was prepared by the Office of International Security Affairs at the Department of Defense, possibly by, or under the supervision of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Henry S. Rowen, who drafted other papers on the Chinese nuclear program during this period. It probably typified the “worst case” scenarios developed by those who believed that a nuclear China would become such a serious threat that it would be necessary to attack Chinese nuclear weapons facilities as a counter-proliferation measure.

Document 5: State Department Telegram No. 2025 to U.S. Embassy Paris, 9 October 1964

Source: U.S. National Archives, Record Group 59, Department of State Records, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1964-1966, file DEF 12-1 Chicom

This document provides one example of Washington’s efforts to get “hard” information on the PRC’s atomic test not long before it occurred on 16 October. In early September, several weeks before the State Department sent this cable, Allen Whiting saw a CIA report on a meeting earlier in the year between Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and President of Mali Modibo Keita, when Zhou was visiting West Africa. Zhou told Keita that China would be testing an atomic device in October and asked him to give political support to the test when it occurred. Whiting was sure that Zhou’s statement should be taken seriously and on the basis of this and other information he convinced Secretary of State Rusk to announce, on 29 September, that a test would soon occur. (Interview with Whiting). The CIA report is unavailable but this telegram suggests that Zhou’s statement or similar comments by PRC officials to friendly governments may have leaked to the press.

Document 6: “Destruction of Chinese Nuclear Weapons Capabilities”, by G.W. Rathjens, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 14 December 1964.

Source: FOIA request to State Department

George Rathjens, the author of this document, was an ACDA official serving on an interagency group, directed by White House staffer Spurgeon Keeny, that assisted the President’s Task Force on the Spread of Nuclear Weapons, better known as the Gilpatric Committee after its chairman, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric. Whether Rathjens prepared it as his own initiative or at the Committee’s request is unclear, but it may have been the latter because the Committee considered the possibility of recommending an attack on Chinese nuclear weapons facilities as part of a program to check nuclear proliferation. In this document, Rathjens summarized Roben Johnson’s still classified study of the costs and benefits of various types of attacks on the Chinese nuclear weapons complex. Apparently one of the possibilities, an “air drop of GRC [Government of the Republic of China] sabotage team” received serious consideration earlier in the year.

Taking a more bullish view of the benefits of attacking Chinese nuclear facilities, Rathjens took issue with Johnson’s conclusion that the “significance of a [Chicom nuclear] capability is not such as to justify the undertaking of actions which would involve great political costs or high military risks.” However confident Rathjens may have been that a successful attack could discourage imitators and check nuclear proliferation, that recommendation did not go into the final report, which has recently been declassified in full.

Before ACDA declassified this document in its entirety, a lightly excised version was available at the Johnson Library. Shane Maddock of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy’s History Department, published the excised version with stimulating commentary in the April 1996 issue of the SHAFR Newsletter.

Document 7: “As Explosive as a Nuclear Weapon”: The Gilpatric Report on Nuclear Proliferation, January 1965

Source: Freedom of Information Act request to State Department

Sections excised from previous releases are outlined in red.

Note: Since the Archive published this document, the Department of State has released Foreign Relations of the United States, Arms Control and Disarmament, 1964-1968, Volume XI, which includes the full text of the Gilpatric Report along with valuable background material.

Here the Archive publishes, for the first time, the complete text of the “Gilpatric Report”, the earliest major U.S. government-sponsored policy review of the spread of nuclear weapons. Largely motivated by concern over the first Chinese atomic test in October 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson asked Wall Street lawyer and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric to lead a special task force in investigating, and making policy recommendations on, the spread of nuclear weapons. Owing to his extensive connections in high-level corporate and governmental circles, Gilpatric was able to recruit a group of unusually senior former government officials, including DCI Allen Dulles, U. S. High Commissioner to Germany John J. McCloy, White House Science Adviser George Kistiakowsky, and SACEUR Alfred Gruenther. Johnson announced the formation of the committee on 1 November 1964. The committee completed its report in early 1965 and presented it to President Johnson on 21 January 1965.

The report came at a time when senior Johnson administration officials had important disagreements over nuclear proliferation policy. Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk were already heavily committed to a Multilateral Force [MLF] designed to give the Germans and other European allies the feeling of sharing control over NATO nuclear weapons decisions while diverting them from developing independent nuclear capabilities. This complicated negotiations with Moscow which saw the MLF as incompatible with a nonproliferation treaty; nevertheless, Johnson and Rusk gave the MLF priority on the grounds that it would secure West Germany’s non-nuclear status1. Further, some senior officials thought that nuclear proliferation was inevitable and, among the right countries, potentially desirable. Thus, during a November 1964 meeting, Rusk stated that he was not convinced that “the U.S. should oppose other countries obtaining nuclear weapons.” Not only could he “conceive of situations where the Japanese or the Indians might desirably have their own nuclear weapons”, Rusk asked “should it always be the U.S. which would have to use nuclear weapons against Red China?” Robert McNamara thought otherwise: it was “unlikely that the Indians or the Japanese would ever have a suitable nuclear deterrent2.

The Gilpatric Committee tried to resolve the debate by taking an unhesitatingly strong position against nuclear proliferation, recommending that the United States “greatly intensify” its efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons. Besides calling for an international treaty on “non-dissemination and non-acquisition of nuclear weapons”, the report included a range of suggestions for inhibiting proliferation in specific countries in Europe, the Near East, and Asia. The latter generally involved a carrot and stick approach: inducements to discourage independent nuclear programs but a more assertive policy if inducements failed. For example, with respect to Israel, Washington would continue to offer “assurances” against Egyptian-Syrian attack; however, “make clear to Israel that those assurances would be withdrawn if she develops a nuclear weapons capability.” With respect to the MLF controversy, the report questioned Johnson administration policy by suggesting the “urgent exploration of alternatives” to permanently inhibit German nuclear weapons potential.

Spurgeon Keeny, the Committee’s staff director, believes that the report “got to LBJ that the Establishment was really worried about nuclear proliferation and that steps could be taken to do something about it”3. Yet, however Johnson may have thought about the report’s line of argument and recommendations, his immediate response appears to have been skeptical because it challenged the Administration’s emphasis on the MLF as a means to manage the German nuclear problem. Unquestionably, this contributed heavily to his decision to bar circulation of the report except at the cabinet level. Dean Rusk fully agreed, according to Glenn Seaborg’s account of a briefing for Johnson, Rusk opined that the report was “as explosive as a nuclear weapon.” Like Johnson, Rusk worried about leaks; moreover, he opposed the report’s message on Germany as well as other countries that it singled out. Uncontrolled revelations about the report would have quickly complicated U.S. relations with France, Germany, and lsrael, among others4.

One important section of the report, on possible initiatives toward the Soviet Union and their relationship to nonproliferation goals, has been declassified for some time. In it (beginning on p. 16), the Committee called for a verified fissile material cutoff (although production of tritium permitted) and strategic arms control agreements. By recommending a strategic delivery vehicle freeze (misspelled “free” in text), significant reductions in strategic force levels, and a moratorium on ABM and ICBM construction, the report presaged (and went beyond) the SALT I agreement of 1972. Elsewhere (p. 8) the Committee called for U.S. efforts to work with the Soviets in building support for a comprehensive nuclear test ban. For the Committee, U.S.-Soviet cooperation in those areas were essential because they would help create an “atmosphere conducive to wide acceptance of restraints on nuclear proliferation.”

Participants and close observers have offered conflicting analyses of the report’s impact. Some, such as Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Glenn Seaborg, downplay its significance noting that other political developments had more influence on Johnson administration policy. Others, such as Keeny and Raymond Garthoff (who represented the State Department on the Committee’s interagency staff) believe that even if the Gilpatric report did not quickly lead to tangible policy changes, it educated the President as well as its members on the significance of the nuclear proliferation issue. Keeny further argues that the report helped prepare Johnson to give strong support to a nonproliferation treaty in 1966 after the MLF approach to the German nuclear problem had lost momentum5.

No doubt owing to classification problems, the literature on the Gilpatric Committee and the early history of U.S. non- proliferation policy is sparse6. With the report fully declassified and other related information becoming available, it should now be possible for historians and social scientists to assess the Gilpatric Committee’s contribution to Lyndon Johnson’s nuclear proliferation policy. Whatever the Gilpatric report’s immediate impact may have been, the future turned out very differently than its critics anticipated. The slowing of nuclear proliferation has proven to be possible and a major goal of the Gilpatric committee–a nearly universal nonproliferation regime–came to pass. To the extent, however, that important measures supported by the Committee have yet to be acted upon–e.g., a fissile materials production cut off–or ratified, e.g., the CTBT–the report stands in harsh judgement of current international efforts to curb nuclear proliferation.

NOTES

1. For a useful overview of the MLF-NPT interrelationships, see George Bunn, Arms Control By Committee, Managing Negotiations with the Russians (Stanford University Press, 1992), 64-72.
2. Presumably, Rusk thought it better that Asians use nuclear weapons against each other rather than Euro-Americans using them against Asians. Quotations from memorandum of conversation by Herbert Scoville, ACDA, “Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons- Course of Action for UNGA – Discussed by the Committee of Principals”, 23 November 1964, National Archives, Record Group 359, White House Office of Science and Technology, FOIA Release to National Security Archive.
3. Telephone conversation with Spurgeon Keeny, 24 March 1997.
4. Glenn Seaborg with Benjamin S. Loeb, Stemming the Tide: Arms Control in the Johnson Years (Lexington, MA: 1987), 143-145. This is the only generally available account of Johnson’s meeting with the committee. Neither Dean Rusk’s nor Lyndon Johnson’s memoirs mention the report.
5. Seaborg, Stemming the Tide, 148-149, although he provides a dissent from Keeny. Herbert York, Making Weapons, Talking Peace: A Physicists odyssey from Hiroshima to Geneva (New York, 1987), also downplays the report’s significance. Telephone conversation with Keeny, 24 March 1997; conversation with Raymond Garthoff, 28 March 1997. George Bunn, Arms Control by Committee, 75-81, is useful on the negotiations but does not mention the report.
6. George Perkovich’s “India’s Ambiguous Bomb” (forthcoming Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia), explores the impact of the Gilpatric report on Johnson’s policy, among other subjects.

For further reading:

Willis C. Armstrong et al., “The Hazards of Single-Outcome Forecasting,” in H. Bradford Westerfield, Inside ClA ‘s Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency’s Internal Journal, 1955-1992 (New Haven, 1995), 238-254

Gordon H. Chang, Friends and Enemies: The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948-1972 (Stanford, 1990)

Rosemary Foot, The Practice of Power, U.S. Relations with China Since 1949 (Oxford, 1995)

John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai, China Builds The Bomb (Stanford, 1988)

Chris Pocock, Dragon Lady: The History of the U-2 Spyplane (Airlife, England, 1989), especially ch. 6, “Parting the Bamboo Curtain”

Matthew Aid – Changji: Chinaโ€™s Biggest SIGINT Site

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I have spent the last two days going over the latest satellite imagery for a huge Chinese signals intelligence (SIGINT) out in western China, which is located eight miles east of the nondescript city of Changji and about five miles north of the provincial capital of Urumqi. Tis a dustbowl of a place, but one filled with history.

The Changji station, which I listed in my recent list of Chinese SIGINT stations, is intriguing for a number of reasons. When the CIAโ€™s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) issued a report on the site back in 1984, there were only three parabolic satelite dish antennas on he station and a brand new operations building.

Today, there are 25 satellite dishes (none in radomes) on the station, and there ar now two separate and distinct intercept stations within the confines of the post, both of whom are intercepting communications traffic passing through U.S., Russian, and intrnational communications satellites parked in geosynchronous orbit 22,000 miles above the earth. This is a monster of a station. With 25 intercept antennas, the station can cover pretty much all of the major INTELSAT, ARABSAT etc. communications satellites parked over the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific orbital stations. If you want to take a gander at the stationโ€™s two main SATCOM intercept operations centers, see here for a site I have arbitrarily dersignated Changji #1, and here for Changji #2. There is also a big circularly-displayed antenna array (CDAA) just north of the station proper, which you can see here.

Video – The Islamic State: The Horrific Genocide and Eradication of Christians from Iraq

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The Islamic State: The Horrific Genocide and Eradication of Christians from Iraq

The Islamic State is on a relentless campaign to establish a Caliphate across the Middle East, showing no mercy or tolerance for “infidels” of other faiths. Christians have been given ultimatums in conquered villages to conver, pay, or die. Raping of women and beheading of children have become common in the Islamic State’s barbaric persecution of Christians. Systematic and ruthless destruction of churches, relics, manuscripts, and ancient holy sites are erasing centuries of culture and history. In this fascinating video, learn what becomes of Qaraqosh, considered the Christian capital of Ira, a city home to around 50,000 Christians.

Video – Ebola Outbreak 2014: From the Hot Zone of this Deadly Virus Raging Out of Control

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Ebola Outbreak 2014: From the Hot Zone of this Deadly Virus Raging Out of Control

Ebola is raging out of control in Western Africa! See how quickly we went from Patient Zero in December 2013 to over a 1000 fatalities across numerous countries in just over 8 months. Fear is growing of a worldwide pandemic outbreak if the virus is not contained. Ebola is one plane ride away from reaching other countries.

The World At War TV – Why Russia and Ukraine Fight for Crimea

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An informative look at Crimea’s nostalgic Russian ties and how Crimaea became a part of the Ukraine in 1954. Opening with riveting footage of the crisis in Ukraine over this small but strategic peninsula, a look back at the glory days of the Crimea and an interesting analysis of Russian strategy.

Video – The Inevitable Global Spread of Islam: How long before Sharia Law reaches our shores?

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Video – The Inevitable Global Spread of Islam: How long before Sharia Law reaches our shores?

 

A sobering analysis and news reports documenting the inevitable spread of Islam across Europe and the United States. Hear the Muslim bitter and vengeful perspective of Western society and imperialism, and the inevitable desire for Sharia Law in Europe.

TOP-SECRET โ€“ The Secret List of KGB Spies in Eastern Europe, 120.000 Spies, Part 11, AM,

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Secret from the National Archive for Security – The Alexeyeva File

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The Alexeyeva File

Soviet, American, and Russian Documents on the Human Rights Legend

Lyudmila Mikhailovna’s 85th Birthday Party Brings Together Generations, New Challenges

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 387

Compiled and edited by Svetlana Savranskaya, Tom Blanton and Anna Melyakova
Web production by Rinat Bikineyev and Jamie Noguchi.
Research and editorial assistance by Anya Grenier and Julia Noecker.
Special thanks to the Memorial Society, Archive of the History of Dissent, Moscow.

For more information: 202.994.7000, nsarchiv@gwu.edu

Sergei Kovalev with Alexeyeva, 2011.
Arsenii Roginsky of the Memorial Society with Alexeyeva.


Kovalev and Alexeyeva.


Roginsky toasting Alexeyeva.


Alexeyeva with colleagues of the Helsinki Group.


Alexeyeva discussing the Helsinki Final Act with Ambassador Kashlev, one of the Soviet negotiators, at an Archive summer school in Gelendzhik.

Photos by Svetlana Savranskaya.

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The Moscow Helsinki Group 30th Anniversary
From the Secret Files

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 Moscow, Russian Federation, July 20, 2012 โ€“ Marking the 85th birthday of Russian human rights legend Lyudmila Alexeyeva, the National Security Archive today published on the Web a digital collection of documents covering Alexeyeva’s brilliant career, from the mid-1970s founding of the Moscow Helsinki Group (which she now heads) to the current challenges posed by the Putin regime’s crackdown on civil society.

Today’s posting includes declassified U.S. documents from the Carter Presidential Library on Soviet dissident movements of the 1970s including the Moscow Helsinki Group, and KGB and Soviet Communist Party Central Committee documents on the surveillance and repression of the Group.

With the generous cooperation of the Memorial Society’s invaluable Archive of the History of Dissent, the posting also features examples of Alexeyeva’s own letters to officials (on behalf of other dissidents) and to friends, her Congressional testimony and reports, scripts she produced for Radio Liberty, and numerous photographs. Also highlighted in today’s publication are multiple media articles by and about Alexeyeva including her analysis of the current attack on human righters in Russia.

As Alexeyeva’s colleagues, friends, and admirers gather today in Moscow to celebrate her 85th birthday, the illustrious history documented in today’s posting will gain a new chapter. The party-goers will not only toast Lyudmila Alexeyeva, but also debate the appropriate responses to the new Putin-inspired requirement that any civil society group receiving any international support should register as a “foreign agent” and undergo frequent “audits.” No doubt Alexeyeva will have something to say worth listening to. She has seen worse.

 

Biography

Lyudmila Mikhailovna Alexeyeva was born on July 20, 1927 in Yevpatoria, a Black Sea port town in the Crimea (now in Ukraine). Her parents came from modest backgrounds, but both received graduate degrees; her father was an economist and her mother a mathematician. She was a teenager in Moscow during the war, and she attributes her decision to come back and live in Russia after more than a decade of emigration to the attachment to her country and her city formed during those hungry and frozen war years. Alexeyeva originally studied to be an archaeologist, entering Moscow State University in 1945, and graduating with a degree in history in 1950. She received her graduate degree from the Moscow Institute of Economics and Statistics in 1956. She married Valentin Alexeyev in 1945 and had two sons, Sergei and Mikhail. Already in the university she began to question the policies of the regime, and decided not to go to graduate school in the history of the CPSU, which at the time would have guaranteed a successful career in politics.

She did join the Communist Party, hoping to reform it from the inside, but very soon she became involved in publishing, copying and disseminating samizdat with the very first human rights movements in the USSR. In 1959 through 1962 she worked as an editor in the academic publishing house Nauka of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1966, she joined friends and fellow samizdat publishers in protesting the imprisonment and unfair trial of two fellow writers, Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel. For her involvement with the dissident movement, she lost her job as an editor and was expelled from the Party. Later, in 1970, she found an editorial position at the Institute of Information on Social Sciences, where she worked until her forced emigration in 1977. From 1968 to 1972, she worked as a typist for the first dissident periodical in the USSR, The Chronicle of Current Events.

As the 1960s progressed, Alexeyeva became more and more involved in the emerging human rights movement. Her apartment in Moscow became a meeting place and a storage site for samizdat materials. She built up a large network of friends involved in samizdat and other forms of dissent. Many of her friends were harassed by the police and later arrested. She and her close friends developed a tradition of celebrating incarcerated friends’ birthdays at their relatives’ houses, and they developed a tradition of “toast number two” dedicated to those who were far away. Her apartment was constantly bugged and surveilled by the KGB.

 

Founding the Moscow Helsinki Group

In the spring of 1976, the physicist Yuri Orlov โ€“ by then an experienced dissident surviving only by his connection to the Armenian Academy of Sciencesโ€“ asked her to meet him in front of the Bolshoi Ballet. These benches infamously served as the primary trysting site in downtown Moscow, thus guaranteeing the two some privacy while they talked. Orlov shared his idea of creating a group that would focus on implementing the human rights protections in the Helsinki Accords โ€“ the 1975 Final Act was published in full in Pravda, and the brilliant idea was simply to hold the Soviet government to the promises it had signed and was blatantly violating.

Orlov had the idea, but he needed someone who could make it happen โ€“ a typist, an editor, a writer, a historian โ€“ Lyudmila Alexeyeva. In May 1976, she became one of the ten founding members of the Moscow Helsinki Group with the formal announcement reported by foreign journalists with some help from Andrei Sakharov, despite KGB disruption efforts. The government started harassment of the group even before it was formally announced, and very quickly, the group became a target for special attention by Yuri Andropov and his organization โ€“ the KGB.

Alexeyeva produced (typed, edited, wrote) many early MHG documents. One of her early โ€“ and characteristically remarkable โ€“ assignments was a fact-finding mission to investigate charges of sexual harassment against a fellow dissident in Lithuania. Several high school boys who would not testify against their teacher were expelled from school. She arranged a meeting with the Lithuanian Minister of Education, who did not know what the Moscow Helsinki Group was but anything from Moscow sounded prestigious enough to command his attention, and convinced him to return the boys to school. It was only when some higher-up called the Minister to explain what the Helsinki Group really was that he reconsidered his decision.

As one of ten original members of the Moscow Helsinki Group, Alexeyeva received even greater scrutiny from the Soviet government, including the KGB. Over the course of 1976, she was under constant surveillance, including phone taps and tails in public. She had her apartment searched by the KGB and many of her samizdat materials confiscated. In early February 1977, KGB agents burst into her apartment searching for Yuri Orlov, saying “We’re looking for someone who thinks like you do.” A few days later, she and her second husband, the mathematician Nikolai Williams, were forced to leave the Soviet Union under the threat of arrest. Her departure was very painful โ€“ she was convinced that she would never be able to return, and her youngest son had to stay behind.

 

Alexeyeva in Exile

Alexeyeva briefly stopped over in the UK, where she participated in human rights protests, before she eventually settled in northern Virginia, and became the Moscow Helsinki Group spokesperson in the United States. She testified before the U.S. Congressional Helsinki Commission, worked with NGOs such as the International Helsinki Federation, wrote reports on the CSCE conferences in Belgrade, Madrid and Vienna, which she attended, and became actively involved in the issue of political abuse of psychiatry in the USSR.

She soon met her best-friend-to-be, Larisa Silnicky of Radio Liberty (formerly from Odessa and Prague), who had founded the prominent dissident journal Problems of Eastern Europe, with her husband, Frantisek Silnicky. Alexeyeva started working for the journal as an editor in 1981 (initially an unpaid volunteer!). Meanwhile, she returned to her original calling as a historian and wrote the single most important volume on the movements of which she had been such a key participant. Her book, Soviet Dissent: Contemporary Movements for National, Religious and Human Rights, which was published in the United States in 1984 by Wesleyan University Press, remains the indispensable source on Soviet dissent.

The book was not the only evidence of the way Alexeyeva’s talents blossomed in an atmosphere where she could engage in serious research without constant fear of searches and arrest. She worked for Voice of America and for Radio Liberty during the 1980s covering a wide range of issues in her broadcasts, especially in the programs “Neformalam o Neformalakh” and “Novye dvizheniya, novye lyudi,” which she produced together with Larisa Silnicky. These and other programs that she produced for the RL were based mainly on samizdat materials that she was getting though dissident channels, and taken together they provide a real encyclopedia of developments in Soviet society in the 1980s. The depth and perceptiveness of her analysis are astounding, especially given the fact that she was writing her scripts from Washington. Other U.S. institutions ranging from the State Department to the AFL-CIO Free Trade Union Institute also asked her for analyses of the Gorbachev changes in the USSR, among other subjects. In the late 1980s-early 1990s, she was especially interested in new labor movements in the Soviet Union, hoping that a Solidarity-type organization could emerge to replace the old communist labor unions.

 

Back in the USSR

The Moscow Helsinki Group had to be disbanded in 1982 after a campaign of persecution that left only three members free within the Soviet Union. When the Group was finally reestablished in 1989 by Larisa Bogoraz, Alexeyeva was quick to rejoin it from afar, and she never stopped speaking out. She had longed to return to Russia, but thought it would never be possible. She first came back to the USSR in May 1990 (after being denied a visa six times previously by the Soviet authorities) with a group of the International Helsinki Federation members to investigate if conditions were appropriate for convening a conference on the “human dimension” of the Helsinki process. She also attended the subsequent November 1991 official CSCE human rights conference in Moscow, where the human righters could see the end of the Soviet Union just weeks away. She was an early supporter of the idea of convening the conference in Moscow โ€“ in order to use it as leverage to make the Soviet government fulfill its obligations โ€“ while many Western governments and Helsinki groups were skeptical about holding the conference in the Soviet capital.

In 1992-1993 she made numerous trips to Russia, spending more time there than in the United States. She and her husband Nikolai Williams returned to Russia to stay in 1993, where she resumed her constant activism despite having reached retirement age. She became chair of the new Moscow Helsinki Group in 1996, only 20 years after she and Yuri Orlov discussed the idea and first made it happen; and in that spirit, in the 1990s, she facilitated several new human rights groups throughout Russia.

When Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, Lyudmila Alexeyeva agreed to become part of a formal committee that would advise him on the state of human rights in Russia, while continuing her protest activities. The two did not go well together in Putin’s mind, and soon she was under as much suspicion as ever. By this time, though, her legacy as a lifelong dissident was so outsized that it was harder to persecute her. Even state-controlled television felt compelled to give her air-time on occasion, and she used her standing as a human rights legend to bring public attention to abuses ranging from the mass atrocities in the Chechen wars to the abominable conditions in Russian prisons.

When the Moscow Helsinki Group celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2006, with Lyudmila Alexeyeva presiding, Yuri Orlov came back from his physics professorship at Cornell University to join her on stage. Also paying tribute were dozens of present and former public officials from the rank of ex-Prime Minister on down, as well the whole range of opposition politicians and non-governmental activists, for whom she served as the unique convenor and den mother.

 

The Challenge in Russia Today

In 2009, Alexeyeva became an organizer of Strategy 31, the campaign to hold peaceful protests on the 31st of every month that has a 31st, in support of Article 31 of the Russian constitution, which guarantees freedom of assembly. Everyone remembers the protest on December 31, 2009, when Lyudmila Alexeyeva went dressed as the Snow Maiden (Snegurochka in the fairy tales) where dozens of other people were also arrested. But when officials realized they had the Lyudmila Alexeyeva in custody, they returned to the bus where she was being held, personally apologized for the inconvenience and offered her immediate release from custody. She refused until all were released. The video and photographs of the authorities arresting the Snow Maiden and then apologizing went viral on the Internet and made broadcast news all over the world. The “31st” protests have ended in arrests multiple times, but that has yet to deter the protesters, who provided a key spark for the mass protests in December 2011.

The darker side of the authorities’ attitude was evident in March 2010, when she was assaulted at the Park Kultury metro station where she was paying her respects to the victims of the subway bombings a few days earlier. She had been vilified by the state media so often that the attacker called himself a “Russian patriot” and asserted (correctly, so far) that he would not be charged for his actions.

In 2012, the chauvinistic assault became institutional and government-wide, with a new law proposed by the Putin regime and approved by the Duma, requiring any organization that received support from abroad to register as a “foreign agent” and submit to multiple audits by the authorities. The intent was clearly to stigmatize NGOs like the Moscow Helsinki Group that have international standing and raise money from around the world. Earlier this month, Lyudmila Alexeyeva announced that the Group would not register as a foreign agent and would no longer accept foreign support once the law goes into effect in November 2012.

Other Russian human righters say they are used to being tagged as foreign agents. In fact, humorous signs appeared at the mass protests in late 2011 asking the U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Hillary! Where’s my check? I never got my money!” So the debate over strategy, over how best to deal with and to push back against the new repression, will likely dominate the conversation at Lyudmila Mikhailovna’s 85th birthday party today (July 20). Yet again, when she is one of the few original Soviet dissidents still alive, she is at the center of the storm, committed to freedom in Russia today, and leading the discussion about how to achieve human rights for all.

Documents

Document 1: Lyudmila Alexeyeva, “Biography,” November 1977.

This modest biographical note presents Alexeyeva’s own summary of her life as of the year she went into exile. She prepared this note as part of her presentation to the International Sakharov Hearing in Rome, Italy, on 26 November 1977, which was the second in a series named after the distinguished Soviet physicist and activist (the first was in Copenhagen in 1975) that brought together scholars, analysts and dissidents in exile to discuss human rights in the Soviet bloc.

[Source: Memorial Society, Moscow, Archive of History of Dissent, Fond 101, opis 1, Box 2-3-6]

Document 2: Lyudmila Alexeyeva to Senator Jacob K. Javits, 4 July, 1975.

Even before she co-founded the Moscow Helsinki Group, Lyudmila Alexeyeva actively worked to defend dissidents and political prisoners in the USSR. In this 1975 letter preserved in the Archive of the History of Dissent, the irreplaceable collections of the Memorial Society in Moscow, she is writing from Moscow to a prominent U.S. Senator, Jacob Javits, a Republican from New York and himself Jewish, who was outspoken in supporting not only the right of Jews to emigrate from the USSR to Israel, but also the Soviet dissident cause in general. The case she presents to Javits is that of Anatoly Marchenko, who asked for political emigration (not to Israel) and as punishment was sent to Siberia for four years’ exile โ€“ on top of the 11 years he had already spent as a political prisoner on trumped-up charges. Tragically, Marchenko would die in prison in the fall of 1986, just as Gorbachev began releasing the political prisoners.

[Source: Memorial Society, Moscow, Archive of History of Dissent, Fond 101, opis 1, Box 2-3-6]

Document 3: Yuri Andropov, Chairman of the KGB, Memorandum to the Politburo, 29 December, 1975.

Yuri Andropov gives the Politburo an alarming report on dissent in the USSR in connection with criticism of Soviet human rights abuses by the French and Italian Communist parties. The main thrust of Andropov’ report is how to keep the internal opposition in check in the aftermath of the signing of the Helsinki agreement and the following increase of international pressure on the USSR. He gives the number of political prisoners as 860, people who received the “prophylactic treatment” in 1971-74 as 63,108 and states that there are many more “hostile elements” in the country, and that “these people number in the hundreds of thousands.” Andropov concluded that the authorities would have to continue to persecute and jail the dissidents notwithstanding the foreign attention. This document sets the stage and gives a good preview of what would happen after the Moscow Helsinki Group was founded in May 1976.

[Source: U.S. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Dmitrii A. Volkogonov Papers, Reel 18, Container 28]

Document 4: Moscow Helsinki Monitoring Group, “Evaluation of the Influence of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe on the Quality of Human Rights in the U.S.S.R.,” 1 August 1975-1 August 1976. (Summary of the document)

This document was written during a time of relative calm, when surprisingly, for the first six months of the existence of the MHG, the authorities did not undertake any repressions against members of the group, and allowed it to function. The document sounds more positive and optimistic than the group’s subsequent assessments of the effect of the Helsinki Accords. The report points out that the Soviet government was sensitive to pressure from foreign governments and groups and that several other objective factors such as the end of the war in Vietnam and increasing Soviet grain purchases made the USSR more open to external influences. Under such pressure, the Soviet government released the mathematician Leonid Plyusch, allowed some refuseniks to emigrate and generally relaxed the restrictions somewhat. The report also lists continuing violations of human rights but concludes that the Helskinki Accords did and probably would play a positive role. [See the Russian page for the original]

[Source: Memorial Society, Moscow, Archive of History of Dissent, Fond 101, opis 1, Box 2-3-6]

Document 5: KGB Memorandum to the CC CPSU, “About the Hostile Actions of the So-called Group for Assistance of Implementation of the Helsinki Agreements in the USSR,” 15 November 1976.

The KGB informed the Politburo about the activities of the MHG for the first time six months after its founding. The report gives a brief history of the human rights movement in the USSR as seen from the KGB. Andropov names each founding member of the group and charges the group with efforts to put the Soviet sincerity in implementing the Helsinki Accords in doubt. The document also alleges MHG efforts to receive official recognition from the United States and reports on its connections with the American embassy.

[Source: U.S. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Dmitrii A. Volkogonov Papers, Reel 18, Container 28]

Document 6: Helsinki Monitoring Group, “Special Notice,” 2 December, 1976.

This notice, one of a series by the MHG publicizing official misconduct, testifies to the increasing harassment of members of the group by the KGB. This time it is the son of Malva Landa who has been warned that he might lose his job.   The document is signed by Alexeyeva, Orlov and other leading MHG members.

[Source: Memorial Society, Moscow, Archive of History of Dissent, Fond 101, opis 1, Box 2-3-6]

Document 7: KGB Memorandum to the CC CPSU, “On the Provocative Demonstration by Antisocial Elements on Pushkin Square in Moscow and at the Pushkin Monument in Leningrad,” 6 December, 1976.

This KGB report informs the Politburo about silent rallies in Moscow and Leningrad to celebrate Constitution Day by dissidents including members of the MHG. Nobody was arrested.

[Source: U.S. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Dmitrii A. Volkogonov Papers, Reel 16, Container 24]

Document 8: Moscow Helsinki Monitoring Group, “On the Exclusion of Seven Students From the Vienuolis Middle School (Vilnius),” 8 December, 1976.

This is a report of the first fact-finding mission undertaken by Lyudmila Alexeyeva with Lithuanian human rights activist and member of the Helsinki Group Thomas Ventslov to investigate charges of sexual harassment against a member of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group Viktoras Petkus. Seven boys were expelled from the school and pressured by the KGB to say that they had spent time at Petkus’ apartment, where he engaged in illegal activities with them. The boys’ families were told that they were expelled on the basis of a school board decision that the parents were not allowed to see. The report concludes that the KGB was behind the charges and that the only reason for the expulsions was the refusal of the boys to give false testimony against their teacher. Alexeyeva met with the Lithuanian Minister of Education to discuss the situation, and he initially agreed to remedy it but then changed his mind upon finding out who his visitor was.

[Source: Memorial Society, Moscow, Archive of History of Dissent, Fond 101, opis 1, Box 2-3-6]

Document 9: Memo from Andropov to CC CPSU, “About Measures to End the Hostile Activity of Members of the So-called โ€œGroup for Assistance in the Implementation of the Helsinki Agreements in the USSR,” 5 January, 1977.

After the two informational reports above, the KGB started to get serious about terminating the activities of the MHG. This report charges that the group was capable of inflicting serious damage to Soviet interests, that in recent months group members have stepped up their subversive activities, especially through the dissemination of samizdat documents (and particularly the MHG reports), undermining Soviet claims to be implementing the Helsinki Final Act. The Procuracy would later develop measures to put an end to these activities.

[Source: U.S. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Dmitrii A. Volkogonov Papers, Reel 18, Container 28]

Document 10: Resolution of Secretariat of CC of CPSU, “On Measures for the Curtailment of the Criminal Activities of Orlov, Ginsburg, Rudenko and Ventslova,” 20 January, 1977.

Following the recommendations of the KGB report above, and another report submitted by Andropov on January 20, the CC CPSU Secretariat decides to “intercept and curtail the activities” of Orlov, Ginzburg, Rudenko and Ventslov of the MHG, Ukrainian and Lithuanian Helsinki groups. All four would be arrested soon after the resolution.

[Source: The Bukovsky Archive, Soviet Archives at INFO-RUSS http://psi.ece.jhu.edu/~kaplan/IRUSS/BUK/GBARC/buk.html, Folder 3.2]

Document 11: Extract from CC CPSU Politburo Meeting, “About the Instructions to the Soviet Ambassador in Washington for His Conversation with Vance on the Question of “Human Rights,” 18 February, 1977.

After Orlov and Ginzburg are arrested and Lyudmila Alexeyeva goes into exile, and anticipating the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance to Moscow in March, the Politburo discusses a rebuff to the Carter administration on human rights issues. Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin is instructed to meet with Vance and inform him of Soviet “bewilderment” regarding Carter administration attempts to raise the issue of Ginsburgโ€™s arrest. Dobrynin should explain to administration officials that human rights is not an issue of inter-state relations but an internal matter in which the United States should not interfere.

[Source: TsKhSD (Central Archive of Contemporary Documents) Fond 89, Opis list 25, Document 44]

Document 12: “Dignity or Death: How they Plant Dirty Pictures and Dollars on Men Who Fight for Freedom,” The Daily Mail, London, 21 March, 1977, by Lyudmila Alexeyeva and Nicholas Bethell.

Documents 12-16 comprise a series of articles in the Western media printed soon after Lyudmila Alexeyeva’s emigration from the USSR. In interviews she described the deteriorating human rights situation in the Soviet Union, including the increased repression and arrests of Helsinki groups members in Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania and Georgia, and calls on the West to put pressure on the Soviet government to comply with the Helsinki Accords.

Document 13: “Dignity or Death: My Phone was Dead and All Night the KGB Waited Silently at My Door,” The Daily Mail, London, 22 March, 1977, by Lyudmila Alexeyeva and Nicholas Bethell.

Document 14: “Why Brezhnev Must Never be Believed,” The Daily Mail, London, 23 March, 1977, by Lyudmila Alexeyeva and Nicholas Bethell.

Document 15: “Soviet Human Rights from Mrs. Lyudmila Alexeyeva and others,” The Times, London, 26 April, 1977, by Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Andrey Amalrik, Vadimir Bukovsky.

Document 16: “Soviet Dissidents on the Run,” The Washington Post, 2 June, 1977, by Joseph Kraft.

Document 17: “Basket III: Implementation of the Helsinki Accords,” Hearings before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe; Ninety-Fifth Congress, First Session; on the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords; Volume IV: Soviet Helsinki Watch Reports on Repression June 3, 1977; U.S. Policy and the Belgrade Conference, 6 June, 1977.

Document 18: National Security Council, Global Issues [staff], to Zbigniew Brzezinski, U.S. National Security Advisor, “Evening Report,” June 7, 1977.

This report to their boss by the staff of the Global Issues directorate of the National Security Council on their daily activities includes a remarkable initial paragraph describing internal U.S. government discussions of the Moscow Helsinki Group (called here “the Orlov Committee”). Staffer Jessica Tuchman says a State Department-hosted group of experts all agreed that “the hidden bombshell in the whole human rights debate with the USSR” was the fact that the nationalist movements in the Soviet Union all saw human rights activism as just the “first step” to autonomy – thus the real threat to the Soviet government.

[Source: Carter Presidential Library, FOIA case NLC 10-3-2-7-8, 2008]

Document 19: Central Intelligence Agency, “The Evolution of Soviet Reaction to Dissent,” 15 July, 1977.

This document traces the Soviet government’s response to dissident activity especially in light of their agreement to the human rights provisions outlined in Basket III of the Helsinki Accords. The CIA notes that the Soviet Union signed the accords assuming it would not result in an increase in internal opposition, but that instead the Basket III provisions have provided a rallying point for dissent. It also suggests that internal protests sparked by food shortages and open criticism of the Eurocommunists, including the French and Spanish communist parties, are further causes for the current Soviet crackdown on the opposition. It also mentions political unrest in Eastern Europe and the Unites States new human rights campaign, which has prompted dissidents to make their appeals directly to the U.S. government as reasons for Soviet anxiety. Next, it outlines the Soviet government’s much harsher measures against dissidents in the wake of the Helsinki Accords. These include arrests of members of the Helsinki group, cutting off Western access, and accusing dissidents of espionage. Further, it concludes that the Soviet government’s increased apparent anxiety over dissent is the result of a variety of factors, including the approach of the Belgrade conference and their general fears of increased Western contact leading to discontent and a variety of social vices.

[Source: The Carter Presidential Library]

Document 20: American Embassy Belgrade to Cyrus Vance, Secretary of State, Text of Speech Given by Ambassador Arthur Goldberg at the Belgrade Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe Meeting, November 1977 (excerpt).

This text, the second half of the U.S. Embassy Belgrade cable reporting the speech made by U.S. ambassador Arthur Goldberg to the Belgrade review conference, specifically raises the cases of Orlov, Scharansky and Ginsberg – three of the founding members, with Alexeyeva, of the Moscow Helsinki Group – in the face of major objections from the Soviet delegation, and no small amount of disquiet from other diplomats present. While considered “timid” by the outside human righters like Alexeyeva, this initiative by the U.S. delegation created a breakthrough of sorts that would heighten the human rights dialogue at upcoming Helsinki review conferences and in the media.

[Source: The Carter Presidential Library]

Document 21: Secretary of State, to American Embassy Moscow, “Statement on Orlov,” 18 May, 1978.

This public statement from the State Deparment’s noon press briefing, sent by cable to the U.S. Embassy Moscow and Consulate Leningrad, uses the strongest language to date on the Orlov case, no doubt informed by Alexeyeva and other Orlov colleagues in exile. Here, the U.S. “strongly deplores” Orlov’s conviction and calls it a “gross distortion of internationally accepted standards,” since the activities for which he was being punished were simply the monitoring of Soviet performance under the Helsinki Final Act.

[Source: The Carter Presidential Library]

Document 22: Joseph Aragon, to Hamilton Jordan, “Carter on Human Rights,” 7 July, 1978.

This memorandum from White House staff member Joe Aragon to the president’s chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, discusses the Soviet Union’s treatment of dissidents, as monitored by another White House staffer, Joyce Starr. Aragon notes that the overall Soviet campaign against dissidents continues despite Carter’s forceful public stance on human rights. He notes that if anything dissidents have become further shut out of Soviet society since Carter came to office. He specifically mentions the Helsinki group, and Slepak, Orlov, Scharansky, Nadel and Ginzburg as dissidents in need of United States help. He goes in depth into the Slepak case and the state of his family, characterizing Slepak as the Soviet equivalent of a Martin Luther King Jr. However, he writes that the administration so far has made public statements in support of the dissidents, but failed to act on the diplomatic level. Aragon concludes that Carter cares deeply about human rights, but that his reputation is at risk due to the failure of low-level officials to follow through the initiatives outlined in the Helsinki Final Act. Aragon calls for a meeting in which he and other will discuss a course of action for the president.

[Source: The Carter Presidential Library]

Document 23: Central Intelligence Agency, “Human Rights Review,” 18-31 August, 1978.

This document contains a general overview of human rights throughout the world, but begins with a discussion of the condition of dissidents in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It notes that the most recent dissident activity has been in their statements of support for the Czech Charter 77 dissident movement. It also discusses the Soviet Union’s fear of East European and Soviet dissidents forming a united front of opposition. It also mentions an incident in which dissident Aleksandr Lyapin attempted to commit suicide by self-immolation in protest of Helsinki group leader Yuri Orlov’s court sentence, and that he has since been confined to a mental institution.

[Source: The Carter Presidential Library]

Document 24: Senator Henry M. Jackson, Remarks at the Coalition for a Democratic Majority Human Rights Dinner, September 30, 1978.

Document 25: “Basket III: Implementation of the Helsinki Accords,” Hearings before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe; Ninety-Fifth Congress, First Session; on the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords; Volume X: Aleksandr Ginzburg on the Human Rights Situation in the U.S.S.R., 11 May, 1979.

Document 26: “A Helsinki Clue to Moscow’s Salt II Intentions,” The New York Times, June 18, 1979, by Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Aleksandr Ginzberg, Petr Grigorenko, Yuri Mnyukh, and Valentin Turchin.

Document 27: Jimmy Carter and Cyrus Vance, “Major Executive Statements on Behalf of Anatoliy Scharanskiy,” 16 July, 1979.

Document 28: Peter Tarnoff, Department of State, to Zbigniew Brzezinski, “U.S. Government Initiatives on Behalf of Human Rights in the U.S.S.R.” 17 April, 1980.

This memorandum from State Department Executive Secretary Peter Tarnoff to Zbigniew Brzezinski contains a list of actions and statements by the U.S. government on human rights and protection of dissidents in the USSR. The list covers the years 1977 through 1980. The actions include reports on the Soviet Union’s implementation of the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Final Act, as well as discussions of these matters at international conferences. Another area of action has to do with investigating denials of exit visas to Jews and prisoners of conscience attempting to leave the Soviet Union. It also comprises various efforts to help imprisoned dissidents by sending observers to attend their trials and providing special aid to some families, including the Ginzburg/Shibayev and Sakharov/Yankelevich families. The document also includes a list of Carter’s addresses in which he voices concerns over human rights or the treatment of Soviet dissidents.

Document 29: Helsinki Monitoring Group [members of the Moscow Helsinki group in exile], “On the Madrid Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe,” c. summer 1980.

These recommendations were prepared by members of Helsinki groups in exile before the Madrid review conference of November 1980. The dissidents call the efforts of Western delegations at the earlier Belgrade conference “timid” and chide the lack of pressure on Moscow to observe the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Accords. The report describes the worsening human rights situation in the USSR after the Belgrade conference of 1977-78, arrests of the Helsinki Group members, persecution of religious believers, and restrictions on emigration. Recommendations include that the Madrid conference delegates demand that political prisoners, including Helsinki group members, be released, and that an international commission be created consisting of representatives of member-states to keep the pressure on the Soviets between the review conferences. Similar concerns, the report indicates, were raised by the MHG in its recommendations for the Belgrade conference in 1977.

Document 30: Lyudmila Alexeyeva, letter to friends in Moscow, undated, circa summer 1984.

This extraordinary personal letter provides a unique vista of Alexeyeva’s life in exile and her thinking about dissent. Here she describes how she found her calling as a historian (a “personal harbor” which is essential for enduring exile), came to write the book on Soviet dissent, and struggled to reform the radios (Liberty, Free Europe, Voice of America) against the nationalist-authoritarian messages provided from “Vermont and Paris” – meaning Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Vladimir Bukovsky, respectively – or, the Bolsheviks versus her own Mensheviks within the dissident movement, in her striking analogy. Also here are the personal details, the open window in the woods for the cats, the ruminations on the very process of writing letters (like cleaning house, do it regularly and it comes easily, otherwise it’s never done or only with great difficulty). Here she pleads for activation as opposed to liquidation of the Helsinki Groups, because “we have nothing else to replace them.”

[Source: Memorial Society, Moscow, Archive of History of Dissent, Fond 101, opis 1, Box 2-3-6]

Document 31: Liudmila Alexeyeva, edited by Yuri Orlov, Documents and People, “What Gorbachev took from samizdat.”

In this draft script prepared for a Radio Liberty show in 1987 together with Yuri Orlov, Alexeyeva traces the roots of Gorbachev’s new thinking to samizdat materials as far back as the 1960s. She finds an amazing continuity in terms of ideals and goals, especially in foreign policy-thinking about the primacy of human rights and an interdependent world.

[Source: Memorial Society, Moscow, Archive of History of Dissent, Fond 101, opis 1, Box 2-3-2]

Document 32: Lyudmila Alexeyeva’s handwritten draft paper on informal associations in the USSR.

This unique handwritten draft written for Alexeyeva on the emergence of informal organizations โ€“ the first NGOs โ€“ in the Soviet Union. The draft is undated but was most likely written in 1990 or early 1991. The main question is whether Gorbachev will stay in power and therefore whether the changes he brought about will stick. She sees the importance of informal organizations in reviving civil society in the Soviet Union and creating conditions for democratization.

[Source: Memorial Society, Moscow, Archive of History of Dissent, Fond 101, opis 1, Box 2-3-2]

Document 33: Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Trip to Nizhny Novgorod, 9 November, 1992.

Lyudmila Alexeyeva visited Nizhny Novgorod on August 29, 1992, and met with members of Dialogue Club and the independent trade union at the ship-building plant Krasnoe Sormovo. Semen Bulatkin, her main contact, talked to her about the political club they founded at the plant, whose outside member was governor Boris Nemtsov, and the difficulties of organizing a free trade union there. The independent trade union was founded in February 1992, with an initial membership of about 250-300 people. Two weeks later, threatened by the plantโ€™s administration with the loss of jobs or social benefits, membership declined to 157. Alexeyeva also met with Governor Nemtsov โ€“ a radical reformer and close supporter of President Boris Yeltsin โ€“ who told her he had read her book on Soviet dissent and was an active listener of Radio Liberty.

[Source: Memorial Society, Moscow, Archive of History of Dissent, Fond 101, opis 1, Box 2-3-2]

Document 34: Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Trip to Moscow Report, 10-20 December, 1992.

Alexeyeva visited Russia in December 1992, just a year after the Soviet collapse, at the behest of the AFL-CIO Free Trade Union Institute, which had been a key international backer of Solidarity in Poland and sought to support similar independent union development in post-Soviet Russia. Alexeyeva’s trip report does not provide much cause for optimism. In it, she describes democratic reformersโ€™ complaints about President Yeltsin and the lack of alternative progressive leadership; the resistance to change by older Party-dominated union structures; the lack of access to television by new, more democratic unions to make their case; and the effective transformation of Communist Party elites into quasi-capitalist owners and managers of the means of production โ€“ not because they are true reformers or effective producers, but because they know how to boss. Dozens of intriguing details and provocative conversation summaries fill the report, including a newspaper story alleging that Yeltsin was now privatizing his own appointment schedule with an outside company, selling access at $30,000 per meeting.

[Source: Memorial Society, Moscow, Archive of History of Dissent, Fond 101, opis 1, Box 2-3-2]

TOP-SECRET โ€“ The Secret List of KGB Spies in Eastern Europe, 120.000 Spies, Part 10, AL,

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IPN BU 001121/2481 AL KADHI GAWA
IPN BU 00277/255 AL. KADHI GAWA
IPN BU 00275/372 AL. KHOURI FARAJ
IPN BU 00448/503 AL. SAHAF MOHAMMED
IPN BU 001134/223 AL.-KHOURI FARAJ
IPN 00 1052/1531 AL.-SAAD HUSAIN-IDAN
IPN BU 001134/5479 AL.-SAHAF MOHAMMED RIDHA
IPN BU 00750/7 ALABA MIECZYSลAW
IPN BU 00966/371 ALABA STANISลAW
IPN BU 698/21 ALABRUDZIลƒSKI JAKUB
IPN BU 01133/400 ALABRUDZIลƒSKI STANISลAW
IPN BU 0901/199 ALAMA HIERONIM Jร“ZEF
IPN BU 002085/328 ALAME MOHAMAD HASSAN
IPN BU 002081/262 ALAME MOHAMED
IPN BU 01133/401 ALBEKIER TADEUSZ
IPN BU 00415/182 ALBERA EDMUND
IPN BU 00283/991 ALBERA KRZYSZTOF
IPN BU 00768/681 ALBERA KRZYSZTOF
IPN BU 00415/463 ALBERA ZDZISลAW
IPN BU 00768/420 ALBERSKI ANDRZEJ
IPN BU 00283/560 ALBERSKI ANDZREJ
IPN BU 001134/2948 Alberski Jan
IPN BU 00611/851 ALBERSKI MARIAN
IPN BU 001198/1292 ALBERSKI MARIAN
IPN BU 0993/669 ALBERSKI TADEUSZ
IPN 00 1043/1173 ALBIN KAZIMIERZ
IPN BU 00277/1391 ALBINIAK Jร“ZEF
IPN BU 001121/3541 ALBINIAK Jร“ZEF
IPN BU 02042/362 ALBINIAK MARIA
IPN BU 00168/330 ALBINOWSKI STANISลAW
IPN BU 01434/40 ALBINOWSKI STANISลAW
IPN BU 00945/1887 ALBINOWSKI STANISลAW – Jร“ZEF
IPN BU 00275/596 ALBOSZTA JAN
IPN BU 001134/531 ALBOSZTA JAN
IPN BU 0305/479 ALBOSZTA ZBIGNIEW
IPN BU 748/168 ALBRECHCIลƒSKI ROBERT
IPN BU 698/22 ALBRECHCIลƒSKI STANISลAW
IPN BU 002086/1195 ALBRECHT ANDRZEJ TADEUSZ
IPN BU PF 125/148 ALBRECHT DANUTA
IPN BU 0772/2090 ALBRECHT HELENA
IPN BU 01000/1708 ALBRECHT HENRYK
IPN BU 01133/402 ALBRECHT JAN
IPN BU 00611/514 ALBRECHT JAN
IPN BU 001198/918 ALBRECHT JAN
IPN BU 698/23 ALBRECHT JANUSZ
IPN BU 01000/1699 ALBRECHT JOANNA
IPN BU 0604/568 ALBRECHT KRZYSZTOF
IPN BU 001102/1933 ALBRECHT STANISลAW
IPN BU 698/24 ALBRECHT STEFAN
IPN BU 00611/2016 ALBRYCHT LEONARD
IPN BU 00257/369 ALCHIMOWICZ ANDRZEJ WOJCIECH
IPN BU 001102/1436 ALCHIMOWICZ ANDRZEJ WOJCIECH
IPN BU 0218/667 ALCHIMOWICZ STEFAN
IPN BU 0193/125 ALCHIMOWICZ WACลAW KAZIMIERZ
IPN BU 0604/888 ALCZYSZYN ZYGFRYD
IPN BU 0806/3196 ALDONA EKIERT
IPN 00 1043/2984 ALDRIDGE KONOPASEK KRYSTYNA BARBARA
IPN BU 698/25 ALEF GUSTAW
IPN BU 00244/58 ALEF-BOLKOWIAK GUSTAW
IPN BU 00945/1687 ALEJSKI ANTONI
IPN BU 00168/237 ALEJSKI STANISลAW
IPN BU 00945/1687 ALEJSKI STANISลAW – WACลAW
IPN BU 0891/171 ALEKS ZYGMUNT
IPN BU 0193/128 ALEKSADROWICZ WACลAWA
IPN BU 0951/1936 ALEKSANDER HELENA
IPN BU 0901/2337 ALEKSANDER LUBOMIR JERZY
IPN BU 00283/2128 ALEKSANDEREK DARIUSZ
IPN BU 0951/1943 ALEKSANDEREK STANISลAWA
IPN BU 0329/1 ALEKSANDROW PIOTR
IPN BU 0772/2091 ALEKSANDROWICZ GENOWEFA
IPN BU 00277/326 ALEKSANDROWICZ ALICJA
IPN BU 001121/2548 ALEKSANDROWICZ ALICJA KAMILA
IPN BU 0193/126 ALEKSANDROWICZ ANASTAZJA
IPN BU 0993/1037 ALEKSANDROWICZ ANNA
IPN BU 0287/329 ALEKSANDROWICZ CZESลAW
IPN BU PF 251/155 ALEKSANDROWICZ DARIUSZ
IPN BU PF 251/189 ALEKSANDROWICZ DARIUSZ
IPN BU 00283/1027 ALEKSANDROWICZ EWA
IPN BU 00191/632 ALEKSANDROWICZ FRANCISZEK
IPN 00 1052/23 ALEKSANDROWICZ FRANCISZEK
IPN BU 00169/137 ALEKSANDROWICZ GRZEGORZ
IPN BU 001102/2009 ALEKSANDROWICZ GRZEGORZ
IPN BU 0193/127 ALEKSANDROWICZ HENRYK
IPN BU 698/65 ALEKSANDROWICZ IRENA
IPN BU PF 251/194 ALEKSANDROWICZ IZABELA
IPN BU 980/190 ALEKSANDROWICZ JANINA
IPN BU 00277/885 ALEKSANDROWICZ JANUSZ
IPN BU 001121/3072 ALEKSANDROWICZ JANUSZ
IPN BU 01133/403 ALEKSANDROWICZ JERZY
IPN BU 0864/3 ALEKSANDROWICZ Jร“ZEF
IPN BU 00611/1538 ALEKSANDROWICZ KAZIMIERZ
IPN BU 001198/2864 ALEKSANDROWICZ KAZIMIERZ
IPN BU 0218/2428 ALEKSANDROWICZ KRYSTYNA
IPN BU 1161/89 ALEKSANDROWICZ PIOTR
IPN BU 0891/44 ALEKSANDROWICZ ROMAN
IPN BU 0833/649 ALEKSANDROWICZ WANDA
IPN BU 01133/444 ALEKSANDROWICZ WIESลAWA
IPN BU 001134/2329 ALEKSANDROWICZ WลADYSลAW
IPN BU 0958/59 ALEKSANDROWICZ ZYGMUNT
IPN BU 644/719 ALEKSANDROWICZ ZYGMUNT
IPN BU 0806/949 ALEKSANDROWSKA BARBARA
IPN BU 0194/2265 ALEKSANDROWSKA TERESA
IPN BU 0193/1279 ALEKSANDROWSKI LEON
IPN BU 00249/1564 ALEKSANDROWSKI WACลAW
IPN BU 001121/2165 ALEKSANDROWSKI WACลAW
IPN BU 0591/3 ALEKSANDRUK WOJCIECH
IPN BU 0891/276 ALEKSANDRZAK Jร“ZEF
IPN BU 0951/1932 ALEKSIEJCZUK MARIA
IPN BU 002082/451 ALEKSIEJEW GRZEGORZ
IPN BU 002086/1268 ALEKSIEJEW GRZEGORZ
IPN BU 001121/244 ALEKSIEJEW GRZEGORZ
IPN BU 0329/2 ALEKSIEJEW WIACZESLAW
IPN BU 0951/1791 ALEKSIEJUK ELลปBIETA
IPN BU 01000/1707 ALEKSIEWICZ STEFAN
IPN BU 0902/8 ALEKSIN JEFREM
IPN BU 0957/567 ALEKSIลƒSKI AUGUSTYN
IPN BU 001075/271 ALEKSIUK MAREK
IPN BU 00234 p.249 ALEKSNIN CZESลAW
IPN BU 0604/535 ALEKSY ANDRZEJ
IPN BU 0287/133 ALEKSY MARIANNA
IPN BU 0193/6247 ALENOWICZ EDWARD
IPN BU 0218/1952 ALESZCZYK ROBERT
IPN BU 710/239 ALETUROWICZ RYSZARD
IPN 00 1052/1643 ALEXANDROWICZ MAลGORZATA MARIA
IPN BU 001198/850 ALF RYSZARD
IPN BU 644/720 ALGIERT RYSZARD
IPN BU 002085/297 ALI ZUHIR
IPN BU 0833/12 ALICH MARCELI
IPN BU 001121/3709 ALICKI TADEUSZ
IPN BU 0194/3714 ALIลƒSKA PELAGIA
IPN BU 093/5 ALIลƒSKA ST
IPN BU 0772/2092 ALIลƒSKI ALEKSANDER
IPN BU 0193/8209 ALIZARCZYK MIKOลAJ
IPN BU 002086/522 AL-JAWACHIRI IBRAHIM-KADHIM
IPN BU 00169/38 ALLGEYER MARIA
IPN BU 00945/646 ALLGEYER MARIA
IPN BU 00170/852 ALLINA FELIKS
IPN 00 1043/992 ALLINA FELIKS
IPN BU 00688/83 ALOKSA WลADYSลAW
IPN BU 0951/1938 ALPERT RUTA
IPN BU 0806/1875 ALSTER HELENA
IPN BU 0855/2935 ALSZER LIDIA
IPN BU 0194/1110 ALTENBERG HELENA
IPN BU 645/16 ALTENBERGER INGEBORGA
IPN BU 00334/692 ALTERMAN BOGDAN
IPN BU 00200/18 ALTMAN Jร“ZEF
IPN 00 1052/279 ALTMAN Jร“ZEF
IPN BU 0242/1023 ALTRYCH JANUSZ
IPN BU 698/26 ALUCHNA IRENA
IPN BU 01133/404 ALWIN HIERONIM
IPN 00 1052/775 ALWIN HIERONIM
IPN BU 0870/312 ALZAK KAZIMIERZ
IPN BU 001198/410 ALZAK WACลAW

Putin’s War: Riveting Raw Footage from the Front Lines – Video

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Front line footage from Ukraine as brave civilians stand up to tanks and gunfire. Warning! Some footage can be disturbing!

Putin’s World War IIII started already in Ukraine – more to come

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The Shevardnadze File by The National Security Archive

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Eduard Shevardnadze. (photographer unknown)

 

Compiled and edited by Svetlana Savranskaya and Thomas Blanton

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202/994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu

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“Masterpieces of History:” The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Europe, 1989
A National Security Archive Cold War Reader
By Svetlana Savranskaya, Thomas Blanton and Vladislav Zubok

Eduard Shevardnadze, Foreign Minister Under Gorbachev, Dies at 86
By Douglas Martin, New York Times, July 7, 2014

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Eduard Shevardnadze (seated second from right, next to George Shultz) listens to conversation between President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev at Geneva, November 20, 1985. (Source: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)

Washington, DC, July 24, 2014 โ€“ Former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze, who passed away on July 7, brought a new diplomatic style and candor to bear in changing U.S.-Soviet relations in the late 1980s and ending the Cold War, according to Soviet and U.S. declassified documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).

The posting includes the 1985 Politburo minutes of Shevardnadze’s surprise selection as foreign minister, contrasted with the behind-the-scenes account from senior Central Committee official Anatoly Chernyaev in his diary. The e-book also includes the transcripts of Shevardnadze’s remarkable first conversations with his American counterparts, George Shultz (in the Reagan administration) and James Baker (in the George H.W. Bush administration); other memcons featuring Shevardnadze’s leading role in summit meetings between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and American presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and Shevardnadze’s last conversation with Bush before the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.


President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in the Oval Office, September 23, 1988. (photographer unknown)

Shevardnadze’s rise to leadership of the Foreign Ministry in 1985, only months after Gorbachev became general secretary, was a “bolt from the blue,” in Chernyaev’s words. Shevardnadze’s talks with Shultz brought a whole new tone to U.S.-Soviet discourse, while the Soviet minister’s growing friendship with Baker, including 1989’s fly-fishing outing in Wyoming, led to actual partnership between the former Cold War adversaries by the time of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. But the memcons also reflect Shevardnadze’s frustration with American “pauses” and missed opportunities for dramatic arms reductions across the board, and for earlier domestic political transformation in the Soviet Union.

The National Security Archive obtained the Shevardnadze documents through Freedom of Information Act requests to the Reagan and Bush presidential libraries and to the U.S. State Department, and through generous donations from Anatoly Chernyaev. Additional material comes from the files of the Gorbachev Foundation, the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, and the former Communist Party (SED) archives in Germany.


General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze at a meeting of European leaders, November 21, 1990. (photographer unknown)

Two key aides to Shevardnadze played leading roles in developing the new Soviet foreign policy during the 1980s, and deserve mention for helping scholars afterwards understand the end of the Cold War. Experienced diplomat Sergei Tarasenko had already served in the Soviet embassy in Washington and provided Shevardnadze with expert advice on relations with the U.S., including in most of the U.S.-Soviet meetings transcribed here. Tarasenko also participated in the seminal 1998 Musgrove discussion published in the award-winning book, Masterpieces of History: The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Europe, 1989 (Budapest/New York: Central European University Press, 2010). Teimuraz Stepanov-Mamaladze served as Shevardnadze’s chief of staff, having come with him from Georgia to the Foreign Ministry, and subsequently donated his invaluable diaries and notes of the period to the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University.

 

THE DOCUMENTS

DOCUMENT 1: Excerpt of Official Minutes of the Politburo CC CPSU Session, June 29, 1985

Source: Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI), Fond 89. Translated by Svetlana Savranskaya.

Perhaps the most audacious personnel change made by Gorbachev came very early, only four months into his leadership, when longtime Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko (known to the Americans as “Mr. Nyet”) retired upwards to the job of chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet โ€” the titular head of stateโ€” as part of the deal that earlier had featured Gromyko advocating for Gorbachev’s election as general secretary. Gromyko understood that his successor would be his carefully-groomed deputy, Georgi Kornienko โ€” so there was shock-and-awe throughout the Central Committee and the Foreign Ministry when Gorbachev instead proposed as foreign minister the ambitious first secretary of the Georgian Communist Party, Eduard Shevardnadze. During the Politburo session on June 29, 1985, Gorbachev stepped down from his position as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, which he held together with his position as general secretary (Leonid Brezhnev had merged the two jobs in 1977). By kicking Gromyko upstairs, Gorbachev opened a key position-Minister of Foreign Affairs โ€” where he wanted to place his close ally, whom he already knew shared his reformist thinking on both international and domestic policy. This official record of the Politburo session shows Gorbachev nominating Shevardnadze, ostensibly after discussing several alternative candidates with Gromyko and jointly coming to the conclusion that Shevardnadze was the best choice. All Politburo members express their full support for Gorbachev’s candidateโ€” testament to the power of the general secretary.

 


Secretary of State James Baker and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze fly-fishing in Wyoming, September 24, 1989. (photographer unknown)

DOCUMENT 2: Diary of Anatoly Chernyaev, July 1, 1985

Source: Diary of Anatoly S Chernyaev, donated to the National Security Archive.

Translated by Anna Melyakova.

Anatoly Chernyaev, who at the time was first deputy head of the International Department of the Central Committee (CC CPSU), describes in his diary the nominations of Gromyko and Shevardnadze as they were announced at the CC CPSU Plenum. The Plenum had to approve the nominations that the Supreme Soviet would confirm the next day. Shevardnadze’s nomination was like a “bolt from the blue,” Chernyaev writes. The diary relates how Boris Ponomarev, head of the International Department, told Chernyaev what had actually happened at the Politburo, an account that differs substantially from the official minutes (see Document 1). According to Ponomarev, the Shevardnadze nomination was a total surprise to other Politburo members, and Gromyko and Ponomarev tried to protest by suggesting career diplomat Yuli Vorontsov as a candidate, but Gorbachev disregarded their protest completely. Chernyaev concludes that Gorbachev’s nomination of Shevardnadze is “very indicative of the end of Gromyko’s monopoly and the power of the MFA’s staff over foreign policy.”

 

DOCUMENT 3: Record of Conversation between George Shultz and Eduard Shevardnadze in Helsinki, July 31, 1985

Source: Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Department of State.

This U.S. State Department memcon records the meeting with the U.S. secretary of state during Shevardnadze’s first foreign trip in office โ€” to Helsinki for a meeting of CSCE foreign ministers on the tenth anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act. In this first meeting with George Shultz, the Soviet foreign minister mainly reads from his notes, giving the American a tour d’horizon of the Soviet positions on arms control. However, his tone is strikingly different from previous meetings when Andrei Gromyko had represented the Soviet side. Even on questions of human rights, Shevardnadze reacts not with “indignation or rage” (as Shultz comments in his memoirs) but asks Shultz jokingly, “When I come to the United States, should I talk about unemployment and blacks?” In the second part of the conversation, where Shultz and Shevardnadze are accompanied only by translators, Shevardnadze urges his counterpart to move fast on arms control, indicating that the Soviets are willing to reassess their positions โ€” “there is no time now to postpone solutions.” He ends the conversation with the statement: “you have experience but we have the truth,” a remark that would win him some positive points from the Politburo.

 

DOCUMENT 4: Minutes of Politburo discussion of Shultz-Shevardnadze talks in Vienna, November 13, 1986

Source: Archive of the Gorbachev Foundation. Translated by Svetlana Savranskaya.

Shevardnadze was an active participant at the historic summit between Gorbachev and Reagan in Reykjavik in October 1986, where the two leaders almost agreed to abolish nuclear weapons. Just after the summit, the Soviets, trying to build on the momentum of Reykjavik, tried to offer the U.S. side concessions on laboratory testing for the missile defense program so close to Reagan’s heart – a change in position that might have made a difference at Reykjavik. But it was too late. Enmeshed in the growing Iran-contra scandal and under attack from allies like Margaret Thatcher for nuclear heresy, the Reagan administration had already retreated from the Reykjavik positions. Here the Politburo reviews the results of the November Shevardnadze-Shultz talks in Geneva, where Shultz refused even to discuss Shevardnadze’s new proposals concerning what testing would be allowed and not allowed under the ABM treaty. Shultz’s position notwithstanding, Gorbachev emphasizes the need to press the U.S. to move forward on the basis of Reykjavik. He stresses that “we have not yet truly understood what Reykjavik means,” referring to its significance as a new level of disarmament dialogue and reduction of the sense of nuclear threat.

 

DOCUMENT 5: Record of Shultz-Shevardnadze Conversation in Moscow, April 21, 1988

Source: FOIA request to the Department of State.

This State Department memorandum of conversation records the third set of negotiations between the U.S. secretary of state and the Soviet foreign minister leading up to the 1988 Moscow summit (February in Moscow, March in Washington, now April back in Moscow). Shevardnadze presses for progress on the START treaty aimed at reducing nuclear weapons, but Shultz responds that still-unresolved issues like sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs) would not “reach full closure during the next month,” so agreement would be unlikely for the summit. Arguments over these nuclear-armed cruise missiles would hold up START negotiations for years, pushed by the parochial interests of the U.S. Navy rather than a consideration of the national interest, but by 1991 their lack of strategic value would lead to President George H. W. Bush’s unilateral decision to withdraw all tactical nuclear weapons from U.S. ships.

The bulk of the discussion here concerns human rights issues, including an interesting exchange about the Vienna follow-up meeting on the Helsinki Final Act. Shultz raises his “disappointment with the performance of the Soviet delegation” at Vienna, which “was not prepared to go as far in its statements as what the Soviet leadership was saying in Moscow.” Shevardnadze responds, “We have a hard delegation” in Vienna; we tell them one thing, “They do something different.”

 

DOCUMENT 6: Minutes of the Politburo discussion of Mikhail Gorbachev’s United Nations speech, December 27-28, 1988

Source: RGANI. Published in “Istochnik” 5-6, 1993. Translated by Vladislav Zubok.

The December 27-28 Politburo meeting was the first following Gorbachev’s return from the United States after his historic announcement at the United Nations of massive unilateral Soviet withdrawals of forces from Eastern Europe. Observers in the United States ranging from Sen. Daniel Moynihan to Gen. Andrew Goodpaster hailed the speech as marking the end of the Cold War; but incoming Bush administration “hawks” such as Brent Scowcroft did not agree (as Gorbachev would only find out later, with the 1989 “pause”). Part of the context here in the Politburo for Gorbachev’s lengthy monologues and Shevardnadze’s proposals for a “businesslike” withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern Europe is the growing bewilderment of certain military and KGB leaders who were not fully informed in advance about the scale and tempo of Gorbachev’s announced unilateral arms cuts.

Still, there is no trace of real opposition to the new course. The Soviet party leader has learned a lesson from the military’s lack of a strong reaction to previous discussions of “sufficiency” as a national security strategy, and he is now ramming change down their throats. Ever obedient, Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov states, “everyone reacted with understanding,” even after Shevardnadze’s aggressive attacks against the military for retrograde thinking, for directly contradicting the U.N. speech, and for proposing only “admissible” openness rather than true glasnost. Ironically, however, when Shevardnadze and Ligachev suggest announcing the size of Soviet reductions “publicly,” it is Gorbachev who objects: if the Soviet people and party learn how huge Soviet defense expenditures really are, it will undermine the propaganda effect of his U.N. speech.

 

DOCUMENT 7: Record of Conversation between Erich Honecker and Eduard Shevardnadze, June 9, 1989

Source: Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR-Bundesarchiv, SED, ZK, JIV2/2A/3225. Translated by Christiaan Hetzner.

This is one of many documents that became available in the Communist party archives of the former East Germany (GDR) after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany. Less than a week after Solidarity had swept the Polish elections, to the dismay of the Polish Communists, the hard-line GDR leader Erick Honecker is rapidly becoming a dinosaur on the verge of extinction. At this moment in mid-1989, only Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania surpasses Honecker in his resistance to Gorbachev’s perestroika and the new thinking in Moscow represented in this meeting by Shevardnadze. Honecker has even banned some of the new Soviet publications from distribution in the GDR. The conversation reveals Honecker’s deep ideological concerns, and his understanding of the geostrategic realities in Central Europe. He reminds Shevardnadze that “socialism cannot be lost in Poland” because through Poland run the communications lines between the Soviet Union and the Soviet troops in the GDR facing NATO’s divisions.

This same consideration led Honecker and his predecessor, Walter Ulbricht, to urge Soviet military intervention to suppress previous East European uprisings such as the Prague Spring in 1968 or the strikes in Poland in 1980-1981. But here Honecker is most dismayed by Gorbachev’s upcoming trip to West Germany (FRG), which threatens Honecker’s own political “balancing act,” which in turn depends on poor relations between the Soviets and the West Germans. Shevardnadze has an impossible mission here, to assuage the East German leader’s concerns about all the changes taking place in Poland, Hungary and inside the Soviet Union. Shevardnadze’s opening words โ€” “our friends in the GDR need not worry” โ€” sound more than ironic today. In fact, Shevardnadze does not believe in Honecker’s concept of East German “socialism,” and in only a few months, the Moscow leadership would signal to Honecker’s colleagues it was time for him to go.

 

DOCUMENT 8: Memorandum of Conversation between George Bush and Eduard Shevardnadze in Washington, September 21, 1989

Source: FOIA request to the George H.W. Bush presidential library.

This meeting in Washington marks the start of Shevardnadze’s trip to the United States that will culminate with his fly-fishing expeditions with James Baker in Wyoming, where the two men established a close personal connection. This was also Shevardnadze’s first meeting with George H.W. Bush as president of the United States. He tells Bush about the progress of domestic perestroika and democratization in the Soviet Union, the work on economic reform, and the new tenor of U.S.-Soviet relations. However, Shevardnadze laments that the desired progress toward a 50% reduction in strategic nuclear weapons is not on the horizon, and he urges his U.S. counterparts to pick up the pace. He also enumerates other Soviet arms control proposals, including banning fissionable materials and eliminating short-range nuclear weapons.

 

DOCUMENT 9: Memorandum of Conversation between George Bush and Eduard Shevardnadze in Washington, April 6, 1990

Source: FOIA request to the George H.W. Bush presidential library.

Shevardnadze is in Washington for this meeting, working out arrangements for the long-planned summit meeting between Bush and Gorbachev that will take place at the end of May. The Lithuania crisis has created a rift in U.S.-Soviet relations, “lost momentum” in Bush’s phrase, as the independence demands of Lithuanian nationalists build on the long-standing American position of non-recognition of Soviet incorporation of the Baltics, as well as domestic U.S. political pressures from รฉmigrรฉ groups. Gorbachev’s own lack of understanding for Baltic nationalism has produced an inconsistent Soviet policy alternating between crackdowns, threats of an embargo, and attempts at dialogue. Shevardnadze tries to explain to the Americans why the Soviets needed “Presidential authority” to deal with the problems between ethnic groups in Lithuania, not to mention Soviet claims to ownership of the factories there. But when Bush says the Soviets have backtracked on arms control agreements (such as how to count air-launched cruise missiles, or ACLMs), Shevardnadze is quick to point out how the Americans have reneged on their on-site inspection pledges.

Perhaps most remarkably, Shevardnadze describes the Soviet argument for a nuclear test ban as based on domestic political pressures from mass demonstrations (such as in Kazakhstan against the Semipalatinsk test range). The Soviet foreign minister also makes a plea for partnership in international financial institutions such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, saying the Soviets are “not looking for your help.” This would change within a year. On the American side, the conversation reveals a clear expression of Bush’s vision when he reports he is often asked, “Who is the enemy?” Bush’s answer: “unpredictability.” And perhaps it is just diplo-speak, but it is all the same music to Shevardnadze’s ears, when the American president combines his own “Europe whole and free” phrase with Gorbachev’s “common European home” and remarks that the latter idea is “very close to our own.”

 

DOCUMENT 10: Memorandum of Conversation between George Bush and Eduard Shevardnadze in Washington, May 6, 1991

Source: FOIA request to the George H.W. Bush presidential library.

This is Shevardnadze’s last meeting with President Bush, and he appears only in his unofficial capacity as president of the Moscow-based Foreign Policy Association. Shevardnadze resigned as foreign minister in December 1990, warning against the coming dictatorship, and protesting Gorbachev’s turn toward the hard-liners. But here Shevardnadze comes to Washington asking for support for the embattled reform still underway in the Soviet Union. He describes the dismal situation in his country, pointing specifically to economic instability, the nationalities crisis, and the rising conservative opposition. He regrets delays on every important issue, especially the Union treaty that would precipitate the hard-line coup in August 1991: “if we had offered this treaty in 1987 or even 1988, all would have signed it.” But most of all, the former foreign minister is “concerned, indeed frightened, by the pause in our relations.” He urges Bush not to delay the planned Moscow summit (it would ultimately happen at the very end of July) and to keep engaging with Gorbachev. In effect, progress in U.S.-Soviet relations has become the only strong card Gorbachev has left to play in the context of his domestic crises.

Bush and Shevardnadze talk about Gorbachev’s relationship with Russian leader Boris Yeltsin and wonder why they cannot find a way to work together. Shevardnadze appeals to Bush to move fast on reductions in conventional forces (CFE) and in nuclear weapons (START) because “demilitarization is the best way to help the Soviet Union.” For Bush, however, completing these two treaties remains a precondition for even holding the 1991 summit. Shevardnadze’s plea for farm credits is especially poignant; a year earlier, he sought economic partnership, but now he says, “We must let people [in the Soviet Union] feel something tangible. I know it is hard, but if it is possible, give the credits.” Prophetically, Shevardnadze remarks, “Even if we can’t maintain a single Soviet Union, reform will continue.”