Those Hollow Russian Dolls
Christopher Andrew's book on KGB spy Mitrokhin opens a few chapters on Indian history. But socialism was the ideology of the time, and not everything was part of KGB design.<a > Updates</a>
- Took Indira Gandhi on holiday in the early '50s to
the Black Sea with handsome Russians around her - Sent suitcases of money to her house when she was PM
- Book names L.N. Mishra as one who accepted money
- Funded the CPI
- Financed 21 non-communist leaders including four
ministers in the 1977 general election - Honey-trapped officials in Indian embassy in Moscow
- Persuaded Indira Gandhi about the CIA's plan to
overthrow and kill her
***
"The Indian diplomat PROKHOR was
recruited...with the help of a female swallow,
codenamed NEVEROVA, who presumably
seduced him. The KGB was clearly pleased
with the material which PROKHOR provided."
"The KGB's first prolonged contact with
Indira Gandhi...occurred...in 1953....
The Second Chief Directorate...
surrounded her with handsome, attentive
male admirers.... Indira was overwhelmed...."
"Andropov personally turned down an
offer from an Indian minister to provide
information...on the grounds that the
KGB was already well supplied with material....
'It seemed like the entire country was for sale'...."
"In the mid-'70s Soviet funds for the CPI
were passed by operations officers of the
New Delhi residency to a senior member of the
Party's National Council codenamed
BANKIR at a number of different locations."
***
"It was a sensational example of KGB subversion," he said. "Probably also the most successful attempt in that they are talking about placing thousands of articles in Indian newspapers and in establishing what they call a main residency in India, and it's to a large extent unknown." The other interesting thing, Bunyon said, "is that despite that they got it so wrong, they misjudged the political situation in India".
The two short chapters on India are based on the documents smuggled out by former KGB officer Vasili Mitrokhin, the spy who was exfiltrated to Britain in 1992. His documents are selected in turn from such KGB material that he may have had access to, and that is only a small part of the KGB's operations worldwide, which focused primarily on the West. Within Asia, "the country the KGB most wanted to penetrate was China, but it couldn't do it," author of the book Christopher Andrew told Outlook.
India supposedly proved easier. But the author doubts some of the successes claimed by the KGB. And the reader might well doubt some of the KGB successes endorsed by the author. "The KGB was more successful in India than in most other Asian countries because India is a democracy," Andrew said. "The irony of this operation is that the countries in Asia where the KGB found difficult to operate were actually the most Communist—China, but also Vietnam. It's the good side of India that makes it vulnerable, the democracy, but a democracy which has a strand of corruption running through it."
The India chapters in the book speak of a KGB warming up to Indira Gandhi, beginning with a grand vacation for her by the Black Sea with handsome Russians around her.Later, the KGB was sending suitcases stuffed with rupees to her house.It began to plant articles in Indian newspapers, peaking at 5,510 in 1975. It propped up leaders like Krishna Menon, and parties like theCPI. The KGB fanned Indira's paranoia about CIA plots to assassinate her, and planted exaggerated fears about Pakistani designs in Kashmir and in support of Khalistanis.
But the book offers a dubiously hazy view of necessarily murky business.It wasn't the handsome Russians who brought Indira Gandhi close to the Soviet Union."The main reasons are strategic common interests between India and the Soviet Union," Andrewacknowledges.But he adds that the KGB's influence on Indira Gandhi arose from the anti-American, anti-CIA conspiracy theories that were spreadout.Word went round that "the CIA is up to its old tricks and Pakistan is playing a part as well" in places like Punjab, Assam and the Northeast. The CIA was around, "but it was not in my view very active in these particular areas," Andrew said.
He significantly does not speak of Kashmir here; nor about the extensive CIA support to Pakistan-based mujahideen fighting in Afghanistan. To acknowledge that could make what he calls KGB-induced fears look like facts, its disinformation more like information.But Andrew argues that the KGB magnified these fears. "If you're out to make people anxious, you look at where they are already fearful, and you exaggerate those fears," he told Outlook. "So, of course, there was reason to bother about theISI, and you build on that."
There actually was little reason to fear the CIA because it was so incompetent, heclaims."The CIA attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro were so unsuccessful that it proves that unlike the KGB they never had any professional high-quality assassins." But the KGB still managed to convince Indira Gandhi that the people most likely to assassinate her were the CIA, he said.
Indeed, the flip side of the KGB expose in the book is this defence of the CIA: that the CIA may have been willing to get nasty, but didn't know how. It wouldn't be just the KGB laughing at that defence.
Andrew acknowledges that socialism was the prevailing ideology of the time, and tries to make some distinctions between ideologically inspired socialism and communist leanings secured by the KGB. How one differs from the other the book does not spell out. If it was money, then Indira Gandhi's special advisor P.N. Haksar was not a KGB agent. "Haksar was inspired by his socialist convictions, not because he was sitting around and somebody from the KGB whispered in his ear, would you kindly nationalise the banks," Andrew told Outlook.
By that yardstick, Indira Gandhi could be said to have been an agent. Suitcases stuffed with money were sent to her house, the book claims, though simultaneously asserting that she and her closest advisors weren't aware of who received the money. So, who was the beneficiary then? Much of this "said to be" and "reportedly" kind of information is really self-confessed rumour. Sample these lines from the book: "Suitcases full of banknotes were said to be routinely taken to the Prime Minister's house. Former Syndicate member S.K. Patil is reported to have said that Mrs Gandhi did not even return the suitcases."
L.N. Mishra, who was killed in a bomb attack, was named as the principal conduit. "Short and obese with several chins, Mishra looked the part of the corrupt politician he increasingly became," the Cambridge scholar writes. The famed university has clearly discovered a correlation between height, weight, chin count and corruption.
The book says on the basis of the claimed KGB record that 10 newspapers, a news agency and innumerable journalists were on the KGB payroll.The KGB boasted it planted on average 15 reports a day in 1975.But here again every report with a socialist slant could have been claimed by the KGB as a plant. The book is somewhat short of acknowledgement that socialist or capitalist views did not necessarily translate as KGB or CIA payrolls, and that Indians were quite capable of taking positions according to their conviction.
But there is a good deal of precise information on offer through those 28 pages on India.On the seduction of Indian officials at the embassy in Moscow through "swallows", on the KGB support to Krishna Menon, on its networking into India.But there is no certainty what part of the undoubtedly extensive KGB operations in India are represented by the set of documents this book is based on.
But the aim was never to "write a definitive history", says Andrew, but "to understand the history of the Cold War.The world was a global battleground in varying degrees between the two superpowers. And it was a global battleground at the secret as well as at the overt level." Until recently, this has been written with a focus on CIA operations, he said. "My view is that the only way to write the secret history of the Cold War is with two hands clapping."
"Obviously there are reports that the CIA was involved in India, and that's probably true," Stephen P.Cohen from the Brookings Institution in Washington told Outlook. "But clearly the Soviets were at the centre. The KGB revelations come as no surprise to me because we knew that there was a strong Soviet influence in academia, in the government and in other areas, and it certainly worked against US-India relations for a long time."
He doubted that the CIA tried as hard as the KGB to network intoIndia."There is no evidence that there was a significant attempt on the part of the Americans to do this. But we do know there was a lot of Soviet money pouring into India." The damage Soviet or KGB influence did to US-India relations was huge, Cohen said. "It apparently destroyed US academic contacts with India. American scholars were particularly singled out for abuse. Now we don't know who did it, whether it was Soviet-inspired or India-inspired, but clearly it inspired a lack of knowledge in America about India."
But the pendulum has now swung to the other extreme: Indo-US relations have been mended, and the links between the two countries in most areas, including academia, have deepened. So are we to assume the CIA has perhaps replaced the KGB in building a formidable covert network in India? No? Remember Rabindar Singh, the Indian spy who is supposed to have defected to America last year?