Letter to CWIHP from Vasiliy Mitrokhin on the submission of the KGB in Afghanistan Manuscript. This letter places the KGB in Afghanistan entry into further context. Please read this before using the materials.

Short biography of Vasiliy Mitrokhin, which provides context for the materials in the Mitrokhin Archive collection.

CWIHP note on the Mitrokhin sources, first published in the introduction of Mitrokhin's working paper, "The KGB in Afghanistan."

This text is an edited version of a manuscript outlining the KGB's operational activities in Afghanistan between 1978 and 1983, authored by Vasiliy Mitrokhin, a former KGB archivist who defected to Britain in 1992. Mitrokhin tells us that the KGB was deeply involved with Soviet Afghan policies from the very beginning. The piece deals with events in and around Afghanistan and the activities of the Bolshevik nomenklatura in the region between 1962 and 1983. It is based exclusively on information from the KGB archives to which Vasily Mitrokhin had access to. Please read the note on sources under the collection listing to understand the limitations of this material.

Materials provided by former KGB archivist Vasiliy Mitrokhin to CWIHP, following the publication of the Working Paper No. 40, "The KGB in Afghanistan." As with all Mitrokhin’s notes, his compilation on Soviet “active measures” in South and Southwest Asia is based on other smuggled-out notes and was prepared especially for CWIHP. Please read the Notes on Sources for information on the nature and limitations of these documents.

This compact German-Russian dictionary came to light in 1967. The dictionary is anonymous: it has no indication of title, authorship, publisher, place and date of publication - there are no indications at all. On reading through it, it is clear that it contains Cheka terminology, and was compiled after 1954. When translated into Russian, these terms were to assist operational officers working in the USSR KGB Establishment attached to the GDR MfS [Ministerium für Staatssicherheit] - helping them to read secret German-language materials supplied in great quantities by the GDR MfS [2], sent on to the Centre with a cover note, and to carry on conversations on Chekist themes with their German colleagues.

A note on sources contextualizing the Mitrokhin Archive. Please READ THIS FIRST' in order to understand the nature of the material.

Mitrokhin describes KGB reports on slanderous and politically harmful material disseminated in Kaluga Oblast.

This folder includes information on Cheka operations against the Evangelical Christian Baptist Church, (EHB) between 1917 and 1984.

In this entry Mitrokhin provides a history of the Cheka’s creation and its missions in Europe between 1918 and 1925.

In this entry, Mitrokhin expresses the KGB’s views on the threat of organized oppositionist nationalism within the Soviet bloc.

Vasiliy Mitrokhin provides a detailed account of the KGB active measures in the case of Vladimir Dremluga, codenamed “Osot.”

In this entry Mitrokhin describes dissidents’ activities in the Soviet Union and KGB attempts to stop them.

Drawing upon KGB files, Mitrokhin presents a profile of Marcel Laufer “Ref,” a Uruguayan citizen of Jewish ancestry and a special agent of the KGB.

In this entry Mitrokhin describes the history of chilly diplomatic relations between the KGB and Vatican City from the 1960s through the mid 1980s.

In this folder Mitrokhin provides the KGB plan to limit the influence of “The Kontinent” magazine on the dissidents’ movement in the West and in the Soviet Union.

In 1976, Leningrad KGB Directorate initiated active measures against “Plushkin,” laboratory director, and “Monarkhist,” employee of a suburban forestry, both of whom were intending to establish an anti-Soviet organization.

In this folder Mitrokhin provides a detailed history of Andrei Sakharov and Yelena Bonner’s anti-socialist activities in the Soviet Union as well as their achievements and failures.

Mitrokhin provides an overview of several corrective labor camps in different parts of the Soviet Union. He selectively describes the state of these facilities, the kinds of prisoners, disciplinary measures, difficulties, etc.

In this entry, Mitrokhin draws upon KGB files to describe “Kardinal” (formerly “Lord”)-Lothar Schwartz (b. 1928), a member of the Socialist Democratic Party of Germany, and a citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG).