Jonathan Haslam, Near and Distant Neighbors: A New History of Soviet Intelligence (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015)
The study of intelligence history is fraught with problems. An apparatus that most governments wish to remain secret in a field of study only recently separating itself from diplomatic and military history makes any study of intelligence difficult. Secrecy is especially problematic when studying the former Soviet Union, one of the 20th centuries most enigmatic regimes. These factors make Jonathan Haslam’s Near and Distant Neighbors: A New History of Soviet Intelligence all the more impressive. Haslam is the George F. Kennan Professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. He is a renowned scholar on the history of thought in international relations and the history of the Soviet Union, particularly Soviet foreign policy. The author works to bridge historical studies and contemporary phenomena by examining the role of ideology—a methodological approach evident in Near and Distant Neighbors.
Haslam’s principal argument is that, because Russia stood substantially alone, secret intelligence operations became critical for safeguarding national security. He argues that the country’s status as both “European backwater and Eurasian hodgepodge” led to a “primitive political culture originating in medieval despotism buttressed by a sense of identity antithetical to the west” (pp. 7–8). This primitive culture combined with revolutionary fervor to develop a secret intelligence service more concerned with counter-revolutionary movements than foreign governments. It also developed a paranoid behavior set that permeated the Soviet government’s culture. The KGB and GRU develop alongside each other, each perfecting its craft, specifically in the realm of human intelligence.
Soviet preoccupation with elaborate schemes and paranoia meant that during the 1920s, Soviet intelligence services wasted valuable time and resources countering British plots that did not exist. This pattern exacerbated itself by the 1930s and 40s, culminating in an utter failure to decipher Hitler’s intentions. Stalin’s mental condition contributed to his complete distrust of many in his government, which made gathering human intelligence difficult, especially in the late 1930s. The author does give a bit of counterfactual history on this point, however, when he claims that “Russia would never have suffered such horrendous casualties in the ensuing war…had Stalin been truly prepared for the worst” (p. 100). While it is fair to speculate what might have been, war by its very nature is too complicated to pontificate casualty numbers based on the personality of one man and his intelligence services failures.
A second theme permeates the book: the juxtaposition of humans and technology. Stalin’s utter disdain for all things technological and appreciation for the human element of war gave the Soviet intelligence services an ingrained focus on humans. Because of their closed society and fundamental distrust of the mathematics required to advance their cryptologic capabilities, Soviet codebreakers were unaware of the innovations in statistics in the mid 20th century. Whatever early advances, Soviet intel services made in codebreaking quickly atrophied due to hubris and ignorance. Those who believed in the use of statistics found themselves persecuted throughout the Soviet Union. This phenomenon is perhaps best exemplified in a story Haslam articulates about an operative that received documents on the latest developments in cybernetics—an ostensibly useful piece of information—and refused to send it to Moscow (p. 165). Suffice to say, when Stalin died, mathematics research increased exponentially, and cryptanalysis improved, at least until the next technological breakthrough—computers.
Corruption runs as a sub-theme throughout the book that takes off in the post-Stalin era. Under Leonid Brezhnev, many members of the Soviet intelligence agencies experienced a loss of faith, rendering them easy targets for British and American agents looking to find defectors. As Haslam also points out, Soviet intelligence depended more on loyalty to communist ideology and personal ties than on talent. KGB and GRU ineptitude during this time made defections and betrayals a much more significant problem for the Soviets than for NATO intelligence services. By the time the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan—an action carried out by an elaborate, joint, KGB and GRU covert action operation—the once-mighty communist bulwark was already on a steep decline only hastened by its waste of blood and treasure in Central Asia.
Haslam provides excellent detail on Russian efforts to recruit assets throughout the Cold War. He draws a striking divide between early converts driven by idealistic intentions to help develop a communist world order, and later recruits driven by the promise of financial gain. Regardless, counterintelligence, as Haslam describes, has always been the Russians’ strong suit compared to foreign intelligence. The ability of the Soviet intelligence services to recruit assets while themselves suffering from a glut of defections is interesting, and Haslam could do more to tease this out. Nevertheless, when counterintelligence techniques are applied outward, at foreign governments by former counterintelligence operatives, the Soviet Union enjoyed success. The Russian predilection for human intelligence, particularly in counterintelligence, resonates in today’s Russian Federation. In a country controlled by a former counterintelligence agent, modern Russian disinformation and propaganda capabilities have a clear lineage to the origins of Soviet secret intelligence.
Finding sources, as every intelligence historian seems to decry in their prefaces and prologues, is inherently tricky. Haslam does well to use what is available while incorporating new revelations from former KGB and GRU agents (xvi). Former KGB Lieutenant Colonel Vasili Mitrokhin’s files, along with other former Soviet agents, are housed at the Archives Center, Churchill College, Cambridge University, but have been subjected to British censorship. Those materials made available to the public do not include the most sensitive of operations, nor do they allow the author to definitively conclude whether some individuals were working for the KGB or the GRU. As the author points out, during the Putin presidency, the various security apparatuses were encouraged to provide evidence of their contribution to Russia’s patriotic past by releasing carefully controlled documents from their archives. The author religiously cross-checked claims within Russian sources through the CIA and MI5s vast archives. This book is, therefore, an imperfect, yet necessary and as comprehensive as possible, history.
Despite the inherent problems with sources in the field of intelligence history, this book is surprisingly detailed. Immensely readable, well organized, and most importantly, thorough, this book contains eleven well-thought-out chapters—some only ten pages. Its narrative tone tells the story from multiple perspectives. Organized chronologically, the reader embarks on a journey from the Bolshevik’s establishment of the Cheka to the fall of the Soviet Union and, as described above, includes the post-Soviet and Putin eras. The conclusion serves as an excellent summary of the entire book and does well to connect the history of Soviet intelligence to the modern Putin state.
This work adds to the early works on modern Russian intelligence such as George Leggett’s The Cheka, and Christopher Andrew’s two collaborative works, KGB, and Sword and Shield. However, before this book, there had been no comprehensive analyses that explored “all of Soviet intelligence: the KGB and the GRU, human and communications intelligence, foreign and counterintelligence operations” (xvi). It is an especially important work for scholars of Russian or Soviet history, as well as current intelligence operations. This book would fit well in an undergraduate course on intelligence, or even a Soviet history course to help students grasp the complexity and complicity of secret intelligence and its impact on the Soviet Union.