The party fat cats

behind the bogeymen
Inside the KGB by Vladimir Kuzichkin (Andre Deutsch, E14.99).
Mark Rogers POOR old Mr Kuzichkin has been comprehensively scooped by the other KGB book — published by the former KGB station chief in London, Oleg Gordievski — but his own is worth a look. Kuzichkin was head of the political intelligence line in the Soviet Embassy in Teheran when he defected in 1982, and his book is a convincing, amusing and highly detailed account of KGB operations in post-revolutionary Iran.
The light Kuzichkin throws on the outcome of the struggle going on in the Soviet Union at the moment lies in his analysis of the relationship between the KGB, the GRU, the military and the party. It is a cliche, now, but it is probably worth repeating that the KGB served as the university of the reformers.
The KGB are the only people in Soviet society whose access to information about the state of the Soviet Union is uncluttered by an attachment to the status quo. Any new settlement would need the KGB — it wouldn't necessarily need the party fat cats. This book is filled with fulminating attacks on the routine corruption and mismanagement of the country by the party. In Kuzichkin's account, all the KGB's denounciations of party corruption were ignored by the central committee.
The KGB rank-and-file and the party have a suspicious relationship, since the party fills all the important posts in the KGB with its own men, in order to keep an eye on the watchers. The party keeps the GRU (military intelligence) in constant competition with the KGB, and it keeps its own trusties in key positions in the GRU and Red Army too. The party reserves all patronage to itself.
One weekend in the early eighties, Gorbachev and some of his close associates asked Andropov for, and got, access to the most recent financial records of the economy: defence spending, hard currency reserves, foreign trade, manufacturing figures. They imagined that it would make pretty reading, but what they found was worse than they might have imagined. One quarter of all spending was going on defence.
The other sectors of the economy, starved of investment, were tottering to doom. The only buoyant sector of the economy was the state distilling monopoly. Reform, they thought, reform. Cut defence spending, devolve economic planning, close down the distilleries. Five years later the results are clear. It is hard to plan one's way out of the chaos created by central planning. The campaign against alcohol practically destroyed the perfectly good wine export industry. The defence cutbacks have produced factories which used to make tanks but now stubbornly refuse to make washing machines. The devolution of planning has produced another tier of party bureaucrats who are lining their pockets with the proceeds of local initiatives. The only thing Gorbachev has succeeded in doing with any success is getting the Soviet in the street to the level of awareness of the problems that Mr Kuzichkin had before he defected and Mr Gorbachev himself had on that long ago weekend *in the Kremlin.
Kuzichkin's account is selfserving, naturally, and, even more naturally, wise after the event. It is of interest to anyone wanting to understand the politics of the Iranian revolution (and the mass assassination by the Mullahs of the Fedayin and Mujahadin who had brought them to power) and the functioning of an intelligence agency. At close quarters the KGB lose their status as bogeymen, and one's attention shifts to their political masters.