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Authors: Christopher Andrew
Tags: Espionage, History, Military, 20th Century, Biographies & Memoirs, Europe, Ireland, World, Intelligence & Espionage, Russia, True Accounts, Modern (16th-21st Centuries)
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in Ethiopia, had America not been perceived to have collapsed in Indochina, to have become demoralized by Watergate, and to have afterward retreated into a cocoon. 80
But while Washington was stricken by self-doubt, Moscow was in economic denial. The severe structural problems of the Soviet economy and the military might which depended on it were far more serious than the transitory loss of American self-confidence which followed Vietnam. In June 1977 the Soviet government was forced to purchase 11.5 million tonnes of grain from the West. In August it concluded that another 10 million tonnes would be needed to meet the shortfall in Soviet production. Yet at the celebration three months later of the sixtieth anniversary of the October Revolution, Brezhnev declared to thunderous applause, ‘This epoch is the epoch of the transition to Socialism and Communism . . . and by this path, the whole of mankind is destined to go.’ Though the naive economic optimism of the Khrushchev era had largely evaporated, the ideological blinkers which constricted the vision of Brezhnev, Andropov and other Soviet true believers made it impossible for them to grasp the impossibility of the increasingly sclerotic Soviet command economy competing successfully with the market economies of the West.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Andropov passionately believed that, ‘Everything that has been achieved here [in the Soviet Union] has long put socialism far ahead of the most democratic bourgeois states.’ 81 While the Soviet system would solve its problems, those of the capitalist West were insoluble. The onward march of socialism in the Third World pointed to the inevitability of its ultimate global triumph. In the confident words of Karen N. Brutents, first deputy head of the International Department: ‘The world was going our way.’ 82 The CIA feared that Brutents might be right. It reported to the White House in June 1979 that, ‘Part of the Soviet mood is a sense of momentum in the USSR’s favour in the Third World.’ Brezhnev and the Soviet leadership, it concluded, ‘can view their position in the world with considerable satisfaction’. 83
How the KGB set out to win the Cold War in the Third World, and with what consequences, is the subject of this book.
Latin America
2
Latin America: Introduction
President Ronald Reagan was fond of quoting what he claimed was Lenin’s description of the Soviet master-plan to take over the Western hemisphere:
First, we will take over Eastern Europe, then we will organize the hordes of Asia . . . then we will move on to Latin America; once we have Latin America, we won’t have to take the United States, the last bastion of capitalism, because it will fall into our outstretched hands like overripe fruit. 1
Reagan was so impressed by this quotation that he repeated it twice in his memoirs. Lenin, however, said no such thing. His only published reference to Latin America, in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism , was to cite approvingly a German economist who claimed that ‘South America, and especially Argentina, was under the financial control of London’ and was ‘almost a British commercial colony’. 2
For over forty years after the Bolshevik Revolution, Moscow doubted its own ability to challenge American influence in a continent which it regarded as the United States’ backyard. By far the most important Soviet intelligence operation in Latin America during the Stalin era was aimed not at subverting any of the ruling regimes but at assassinating the great Russian heretic Leon Trotsky, who had taken refuge near Mexico City. 3 In 1951, two years before Stalin’s death, he scornfully dismissed the twenty Latin American republics, most of them traditionally anti-Communist, as the ‘obedient army of the United States’. 4 For the remainder of the decade the Soviet Union
But while Washington was stricken by self-doubt, Moscow was in economic denial. The severe structural problems of the Soviet economy and the military might which depended on it were far more serious than the transitory loss of American self-confidence which followed Vietnam. In June 1977 the Soviet government was forced to purchase 11.5 million tonnes of grain from the West. In August it concluded that another 10 million tonnes would be needed to meet the shortfall in Soviet production. Yet at the celebration three months later of the sixtieth anniversary of the October Revolution, Brezhnev declared to thunderous applause, ‘This epoch is the epoch of the transition to Socialism and Communism . . . and by this path, the whole of mankind is destined to go.’ Though the naive economic optimism of the Khrushchev era had largely evaporated, the ideological blinkers which constricted the vision of Brezhnev, Andropov and other Soviet true believers made it impossible for them to grasp the impossibility of the increasingly sclerotic Soviet command economy competing successfully with the market economies of the West.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Andropov passionately believed that, ‘Everything that has been achieved here [in the Soviet Union] has long put socialism far ahead of the most democratic bourgeois states.’ 81 While the Soviet system would solve its problems, those of the capitalist West were insoluble. The onward march of socialism in the Third World pointed to the inevitability of its ultimate global triumph. In the confident words of Karen N. Brutents, first deputy head of the International Department: ‘The world was going our way.’ 82 The CIA feared that Brutents might be right. It reported to the White House in June 1979 that, ‘Part of the Soviet mood is a sense of momentum in the USSR’s favour in the Third World.’ Brezhnev and the Soviet leadership, it concluded, ‘can view their position in the world with considerable satisfaction’. 83
How the KGB set out to win the Cold War in the Third World, and with what consequences, is the subject of this book.
Latin America
2
Latin America: Introduction
President Ronald Reagan was fond of quoting what he claimed was Lenin’s description of the Soviet master-plan to take over the Western hemisphere:
First, we will take over Eastern Europe, then we will organize the hordes of Asia . . . then we will move on to Latin America; once we have Latin America, we won’t have to take the United States, the last bastion of capitalism, because it will fall into our outstretched hands like overripe fruit. 1
Reagan was so impressed by this quotation that he repeated it twice in his memoirs. Lenin, however, said no such thing. His only published reference to Latin America, in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism , was to cite approvingly a German economist who claimed that ‘South America, and especially Argentina, was under the financial control of London’ and was ‘almost a British commercial colony’. 2
For over forty years after the Bolshevik Revolution, Moscow doubted its own ability to challenge American influence in a continent which it regarded as the United States’ backyard. By far the most important Soviet intelligence operation in Latin America during the Stalin era was aimed not at subverting any of the ruling regimes but at assassinating the great Russian heretic Leon Trotsky, who had taken refuge near Mexico City. 3 In 1951, two years before Stalin’s death, he scornfully dismissed the twenty Latin American republics, most of them traditionally anti-Communist, as the ‘obedient army of the United States’. 4 For the remainder of the decade the Soviet Union
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