↬❝CH one-shots, headcanons and ideas❞

*sigh*

here we go again...

The KGB was the main security/spy agency of the USSR from 1954 until its break-up in 1991. For much of these 37 years, the KGB was more influential globally than its American counterpart, the CIA.

Vasili Mitrokhin was a senior officer in the KGB from 1948 to 1984. From 1972 to 1984, he supervised the transfer of all of FCD’s archives from the KGB HQ in Central Moscow to Yasenevo. He defected to the UK in 1992. The MI6 helped in extracting his family from Russia, along with 25,000 pages of files hidden under the floors of his house.

Together with eminent British professor Christopher Andrew, historian of the UK’s domestic counterintelligence and security agency MI5, Mitrokhin wrote five books, collectively referred to as the Mitrokhin Archives, which became a global sensation with the disclosure of a priceless treasure trove of the KGB’s secrets since the 1930s.

Chapters 17 and 18 of The Mitrokhin Archive II—The KGB in the World exclusively deal with “The Special Relationship with India”. I present here some excerpts from these sensational chapters, to demonstrate how the Congress and the CPI/CPM,  then the main opposition, were under the influence of foreign powers during the Nehru-Indira era.

“The Third World country on which the KGB concentrated most… during [1947-1989] was India… secret correspondence from Moscow to CPI was frequently intercepted by Intelligence Branch (IB) in New Delhi.” [CPM had not split from CPI. Intelligence Branch was later split into the Intelligence Bureau, India’s internal intelligence agency; and RAW, the external intelligence agency].

“Until the early 1950s, every instruction from Moscow expressed the necessity and importance for CPI to overthrow the ‘reactionary’ Nehru government. Neither Nehru nor the IB realized how thoroughly the Indian embassy in Moscow was penetrated by the KGB, using… the honey trap. As KGB operations in India expanded in the 1950s and 1960s, the ‘Centre’ [KGB HQ] discovered… the extent of IB’s penetration of CPI… By the 1960s KGB penetration of the Indian intelligence community and bureaucracy enabled it to turn the tables on the IB. After KGB became the main conduit for both money and secret communications from Moscow, high-level IB penetration of CPI became more difficult. In 1959, CPI General Secretary Ajoy Ghosh agreed with the Delhi residency to found an import-export business for trade with the Soviet bloc… whose profits would be creamed off for [CPI] Party funds. In little more than a decade its profits grew to over three million rupees [>₹13 crore]. Soviet news agency Novosti provided further subsidies by paying CPI’s publishing house 50% above its normal rates.” [(1) A honey trap is where a spy (usually a woman) seduces another country’s spy to blackmail him/her; (2) In communist parties, General Secretary is the highest post, equivalent to President in other parties; (3) A ‘residency’ is a secret office of KGB and its successors, operating within Russian embassies or consulates].

“KGB set out to cultivate left-wing firebrand and Nehru’s close advisor, Krishna Menon, who became Minister of Defence in 1957. In May 1962 the Presidium which under Khrushchev replaced the Politburo authorized the Delhi residency to conduct active-measures ops to strengthen Menon’s position and enhance his popularity, probably in the hope that he would become Nehru’s successor. During Menon’s tenure… India’s main source of arms imports switched from the West to the Soviet Union. The decision in 1962 to purchase Soviet MiG-21’s rather than British Lightnings was chiefly due to Menon.” [(1) The Soviet Presidium was a body of Parliament which served as the collective head of state of USSR from 1938 to 1991, when it was succeeded by the President of Russia; (2) Politburo is the highest policy-making authority in a communist party; (3) Nikita Khrushchev was Premier of the USSR from March 1958 to Oct 1964; (4) Active-measures are acts of political warfare conducted by most spy agencies to influence world events; (5) MiG-21 was the IAF’s principal combat aircraft from 1964 to 2004. Over half of the 840 aircraft built between 1966 and 1984 were lost due to crashes].