Exposing ‘the illegals’: how KGB’s fake westerners infiltrated the Prague Spring | Czechoslovakia

dIn the spring of 1968, revolutionary sentiments began to grow in communist Czechoslovakia, so a group of friendly foreigners arrived in Prague and began arriving by flights from Helsinki and East Berlin, or by car from West Germany.

Among them were 11 Western European men, a Swiss woman named Maria Weber, and a Lebanese carpet dealer known as Oganez Sarajian. They were all supporters of what became known as Prague Springs. This is an ultimately doomed attempt to build a more liberal and free version of socialism and escape the choking embrace of Moscow. Many of the visitors approached the main light of the movement and sought to provide support in the fight to reform communist rule.

However, these visitors were not what they thought. They were spies for the KGB “illegal” program. Soviet citizens spent many years training to pose with convincingness as Westerners. Previously, illegals were used to dig holes in western society and expel Moscow’s secrets. But now the KGB fears that the Prague movement could end Soviet influence domestically, and has decided for the first time to deploy the most respected spies within the eastern bloc on a mission called Operation Progression. To this day, the Russian intelligence agency has never admitted that it had happened.

The unpublished document on the mission, along with interviews with participants, shed new light on how Moscow used spies to monitor reformers in Prague. You can get men who notify their leaders, plant false evidence, and plan dramatic autoimmunity, men who protest before carrying out mental science facilities before he does.

The Prague Spring, which was eventually crushed by a massive Soviet invasion in August 1968, reflected a huge desire for change in Czechoslovak society. The reform movement was supported by local Communist leader Alexander Dubucek, who coined the term “socialism with the human face,” but it was also a grassroots movement as Prague became the busiest city in the eastern region.

“Blue jeans and long hair are everywhere,” wrote the American correspondent at the time. Western European students traveled to Prague where they sang songs, strummed guitars, and smoked joints with new friends.

Openness terrified Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and his KGB chief Yuri Andropov, but at the Open Andropov also saw the opportunity for his spies to infiltrate. They were able to easily pass through the liberal Czechoslovak border regime with fake western passports.

Five new arrivals were told to visit restaurants, museums, galleries and hotels and find anti-oriented Czechs. If necessary, they can pay for useful political information, gently implying that the money may come from Western intelligence.

Some were tasked with making friends with Czech newspaper editors and making anti-Soviet statements printed to further expand tensions. Others filled in fake caches of American weapons to “prove” that the reform movement was supported by the United States.

In 1969, the Soviet Union continued to crack down on post-invasion reform movements, allowing more illegals to infiltrate. One Yuri Linov traveled to Prague, pretending to be Austrian businessman Karl Berto Motl. Eventually, he recalled interacting with state television student leaders and progressive journalists in the bar. In the evening he drank “a river of cheap red wine” with protesters. In the morning he wrote reports on their plans and passed them on to his handler.

The spy was treated to the ground by Dmitry Betrov, a male timber giant in his early 50s.

Vetrov warned that he was overthinking Linov and other illegals. He clearly likes to remember the tactics he took part in, neutralizing the Berlin rebels, where he disguises himself as a man of removal, unconsciously knocks on the target, rolls him up onto the carpet and sends him back to the Soviet Union. “Carpet. Airplanes. Siberia,” he repeatedly emphasized that he believes Czechoslovak rebels should be treated the same way.

Among Linov’s new friends was Jan Kūšzek, awful, 25-year-old, tall, with a mop of messy blonde hair. Kushajik is engrossed in Yang Parachy, a student who committed suicide by his own imagination and became a hero of resistance. He told Linov that he planned to burn himself on August 21 to commemorate the first anniversary of the Soviet invasion.

“Parach is now a Czech hero and everyone knows his name. Everybody will soon know Kūūūūūūūūūūūūūūūūūūūūūūūūū, too,” he boasted. Linov reported the plan to Betrov, but he later told him that Kushizek was taken into custody and committed to a psychiatric institution.

Operation progress was first revealed in 1999. Historian Christopher Andrew released the book based on a copy of the KGB file, created by the dissident archivist Vasily Mitrokin, who fled to the UK in 1992.

Andropov was very pleased with how advances in the operation helped the Soviets manage the objections in Prague that he expanded it to cover the entire socialist bloc.

In Hungary, the KGB envisioned the influence of “Zionists” between the party and the intellectual elite. In Yugoslavia, illegals traveled to Kosovo to investigate tensions between Serbs and Albanians. In Poland, they became interested in the Catholic Church and tried to approach several influential religious figures, including the circle of Krakow’s archbishop Karol Wotiwa.

Ultimately, the KGB began using illegals within the Soviet Union and served as Western provocates to test the loyalty of suspicious opposition.