KGB Operations against the USA and Canada in Soviet Ukraine, 1953-1991

Sergei I. Zhuk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000580662
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Oriented for a general reading audience, this book gives a unique and rare perspective on the KGB special operations, in Soviet Ukraine using the issues related to Soviet Ukrainian identity and cultural diplomacy of Soviet Ukraine after Stalin's death in 1953 until the perestroika of the 1980s.

Part I Creating the Models for the Special KGB Operations against the USA and Canada after WWII

DOI: 10.4324/9781003212522-1

“All KGB operations against the United States and Canada were influenced directly by Stalin's politics during and immediately after the Great Patriotic War,” noted one retired KGB officer. “How to deal with the displaced people (many of whom were the residents of Soviet Ukraine) in Europe, how to trace and punish the Nazi collaborators and war criminals,” he continued, “these were major problems for Stalin's administration, which became his legacy for the organs [KGB] work through the entire 1950s.”¹

After Stalin's death in 1953, the KGB of Soviet Ukraine still continued working with the criminal cases, related to this legacy of WWII: the problems of displaced people after the war, collaboration with Nazis of some residents of Ukraine. At the same time, the old problems took the new forms, such as Ukrainian and Jewish nationalism, and the dangerous American influences inside the Soviet geo-political space shaped the entire framework of Soviet intelligence practices during the beginning of the Cold War, as early as 1945. During this early Cold War, under Stalin, the United States, the former major Soviet political ally in the war against Nazi Germany, gradually had become a main political and ideological enemy of the Soviet Union by the end of 1947.²

In this new geo-political confrontation, the most important target (#1) of the KGB was Ukrainian nationalism, connected to and funded by the Americans. For the Ukrainian KGB (according to the archival materials), from 1953 until 1991, almost 50% of all criminal cases were devoted to this topic of “dangerous” Ukrainian nationalism. The second target of the Ukrainian KGB was another type of nationalism, Jewish one: Judaism and Zionism (more than 30% of all criminal cases). The third target of the Ukrainian KGB was religious sects (10%). American espionage and foreign visitors as agents of Western intelligence took fourth place as a threat for the KGB (almost 10%). As a general-major V. Nikitchenko, a head of the Ukrainian KGB, noted on March 12, 1954, “the major threat for Soviet Ukraine consists of Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists, Zionists, and religious sectarians, – all of them are funded and organized by intelligence services of the United States and England … Many of these people belong to 16,000 suspected foreign spies, who still live in Soviet Ukraine.”³

1 Legacy of the World War II: Ukrainian Nationalists in Diaspora and the Spy Schools in West Germany

DOI: 10.4324/9781003212522-2

The First Target of the KGB – The Ukrainian Nationalism

According to the KGB official reports, the so-called Ukrainian nationalist “Banderovite underground” (OUN-UPA, etc.), based in West Germany, with its connections to the American intelligence and to the Ukrainian diaspora in the United States and Canada, was a major concern of the Ukrainian KGB through the entire 1950s and the 1960s.⁴ Almost every year the KGB reported to the Soviet Ukrainian political leadership about “a usage by American and British intelligence of the organizations of Ukrainian nationalists in the conspiratorial anti-Soviet activities against the Ukrainian SSR.” In August 1952, the KGB analysts explained that

The leaders of Ukrainian nationalist organizations in West Germany try to activate anti-Soviet activities, popularizing the actions of Banderovite underground in Ukraine. Relying on a possible rebellion in Ukraine against the Soviet Army in a case of the possible military conflict between the USSR and the USA, [the Ukrainian immigrant nationalist organization] intended to publish a special appeal to the population of Ukraine to begin the rebellious actions in the rear against the Soviet Army, if the war will start between the USSR and the USA. The Americans continue recruiting the Ukrainian nationalists for using them in the acts of subversion against the Soviet Union. The recruited nationalists were sent to the USA, and now around 300 of those emigrants returned to West Germany ready for the anti-Soviet actions, sponsored by the Americans.⁵

Moreover, the KGB officials discovered the CIA plans to use the Ukrainian emigrants, recruited by US intelligence for the spy operations in the industrial areas of Eastern Ukraine. The overwhelming majority of those spies of Ukrainian origin were trained in the special US “spy schools” in West Germany.⁶

As early as 1953–1954, the KGB leadership worried about a creation of a new Ukrainian nationalistic organization in the US, a replacement of the old “nationalist leader” Stepan Bandera (1909–1959) with the new “more energetic and dangerous for Soviet Ukraine” leaders and “the Ukrainian nationalist center's moving from Europe, Munich, into the US and, especially, about a total control by the US intelligence over this Ukrainian nationalistic organization – “Soyuz uchastnikov ukrainskoi vyzvol’noi borot’by” [The Union of the Participants of the Ukrainian Struggle for Liberation] (in the KGB officer's wording). According to the KGB reports, in the summer of 1953 Stepan Bandera, a legendary leader of the Ukrainian diaspora in Europe, was replaced with the new Ukrainian emigrants from Germany (Munich), where they were recruited by the US intelligence.⁷ For the KGB agents, who worked abroad (in Germany and the US), a major goal was to “compromise and discredit” those pro-American Ukrainian nationalists. They built the “special plans of discrediting of them” with various strategies of developing of the “convincing kompromat against each of those leaders.”⁸

According to the first Ukrainian KGB report after Stalin, its operatives tried to use various counter-intelligence actions to prevent recruiting the Ukrainian nationalists in Europe by the American intelligence against not only Soviet Ukraine, but also against the countries of the Soviet bloc, such as Poland. At the end of 1953, the KGB sent their own agents to study the Ukrainian nationalist connections with the US spies in Poland and West Germany, trying to divide Ukrainian nationalist groups, used by Americans, and eventually to “discredit those Ukrainian agents or even to re-recruit them for the needs of Soviet Ukraine.” The KGB agents planned to establish their connections to and tried to control of Maksim Skorupskii, a former OUN member, an agent of German intelligence, who was hired by the American intelligence in Munich and pursued the active intelligence actions (razvedrabota) in Soviet Ukraine. As it turned out, in 1946–1948, Skorupskii had already brought a special group of the “trained US spies” into Poland, helping them in their intelligence activities, establishing connections with Ukrainians who lived there.⁹ In 1950 he visited the United States, and in June 1952 he returned to Munich, where he established connections with another activist of PUN (Provod ukrainskikh natsionalistov) [The Leadership of Ukrainian Nationalists] Stepan Suliatitskii, who was also involved in instructing the American agents and sending them to other countries of “people's democracy” (socialist countries). The KGB used their own agents among the Ukrainians and Poles to infiltrate Skorupskii's and Suliatitskii's spy groups. The major goal of the KGB counter-intelligence operations was to create the special “perepravochnye punkty” (locations of transfer) on the border of Poland and Ukraine for arrest, liquidation and “pereverbovka” (re-recruiting) of the American agents, for capture of their material and technical tools and to “play a ‘game’” against US intelligence, “by giving them falsified information.” Soviet agents were infiltrated into a spy net, created by Skorupskii and Suliatitskii, for spreading misinformation, monitoring and controlling their actions in Ukraine.¹⁰

The KGB always monitored a situation in the Ukrainian emigrants’ centers abroad. The KGB agents tried to use their active measures to prevent any serious effort to unite the Ukrainian emigrant groups against Soviet Ukraine.¹¹ They always supported those Ukrainian leaders who demonstrated in public their loyalty to the Ukrainian SSR. For example, in 1959, the KGB agents organized “the positive reaction in the foreign press” to the election of Anton Melnyk (nephew of Andrii Melnyk) as a new PUN secretary, explaining that “despite his position for Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union, Melnyk was always loyal to and supportive of Soviet Ukraine.”¹²

Since 1946 the KGB had been collecting the data about the Ukrainian immigration abroad. Every month the KGB officers in Kyiv analyzed this information and reported it to the political leadership of Soviet Ukraine. According to this information, by 1957, there were 18,000 ethnic Ukrainians in West Germany, 2,500 of whom lived in the city of Munich and its neighborhood, the less numerous groups of Ukrainian immigrants lived in other West German cities such as New Ulm, Augsburg, Regensburg, Stuttgart, and Hannover. As the KGB agent reported, “the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians lived miserably, having a support that could only compensate their unemployment. Only those, who had a job, could manage to survive. Only those Ukrainians, who worked for the Ukrainian Anti-Soviet nationalistic organizations had the best way of living there.”¹³

According to the KGB estimates, another foreign Ukrainian “nationalist center for the anti-Soviet activities” was located in British Columbia, Canada, especially in the city of Vancouver, “where 10,000–12,000 Ukrainians resided.” KGB analysts had calculated, that one-third of them were representatives of the so-called new post-war emigration from European countries.¹⁴ The KGB officials complained that they had no the detailed information about the Ukrainian organizations in Vancouver and their leaders. But they noted that the main centers of the Ukrainian nationalistic organizations, besides Vancouver, were located in the major cities of Canada, such as Toronto, Winnipeg and Edmonton. They reported that these nationalistic centers triggered their activities among the Ukrainian emigration living in Canada “using their connections to the foreign intelligence in their hostile actions against the USSR.” As a result, a leadership of the KGB in Soviet Ukraine ordered “(1) to implement the active measures about organizing of the special study of the persons [of Soviet citizens], who are in correspondence with Ukrainians, residing in Canada and (2) to pay a special attention to revealing of those who used their addresses for such a correspondence and (3) to activate our pre-war agents’ infrastructure in Canada and (4) to work actively with those persons who prepared their documents to travel to Canada and returning to the USSR.”¹⁵

At the same time, the KGB officers emphasized that their major goal was to monitor the creation and development of the organization of the “Ukrainian nationalists in the USA,” SUUVB “Soyuz uchastnikov ukrainskoi vyzvol’noi borot’by,” which was publicly announced at “Ukrainskii narodnyi dim” [The Ukrainian People's House] in New York City on November 6, 1954.¹⁶ As KGB report noted, “the main goal of this organization [was] an active involvement into the nationalistic activities of those American Ukrainians who used to distance themselves from the nationalistic work, transforming nationalistic activities in the USA into anti-Soviet acts of liberation of Soviet Ukraine [from Russian oppression], maintaining their connections with the nationalistic underground in Soviet Ukraine and activation of its anti-Soviet work, composing the goals of the political platform of the so-called liberation movement [in Soviet Ukraine].”¹⁷ The KGB leadership noted that American intelligence not only tried to weaken the position of Bandera and his followers in the Ukrainian emigration, moving its center of anti-Soviet action from Europe to the USA after 1954, but also to conceal the facts of the collaboration with the Nazi of the new leaders of this emigration. The KGB administration's major recommendation for the new KGB active measures was “the necessity of revealing and working out of the relatives’ and other connections of the above-mentioned members of the SUUVB preparing committee [in Ukraine], to use these connections for influencing [the Ukrainian emigrants] abroad.”¹⁸

These recommendations worked: all family connections of the Ukrainian diaspora and its American organizations in Soviet Ukraine were under the KGB surveillance and were “compromised” after 1954. By 1958, almost all the major groups of Ukrainian nationalists, employed as American spies, were “destroyed” by the special KGB measures in Ukraine and abroad. Soviet counter-agents were recruited among local Soviet Ukrainians, who tried to “compromise and discredit” Ukrainian (“Banderite”) leaders and instructors of those American spy groups, who worked against Soviet Ukraine. Those KGB agents were sent to Poland and Germany and succeeded in undermining of the Ukra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction: Rise and Fall of the KGB in Soviet Ukraine after Stalin
• Acknowledgments
• PART I: Creating the Models for the Special KGB Operations against the USA and Canada after WWII
• PART II: The KGB vs. Politicians and Tourists from “Capitalist America”
• PART III: The KGB of Soviet Ukraine in the Cultural Cold War against Capitalist America
• Epilogue: “Learning from the Main Adversary” and Returning to the Soviet Anti-American and Anti-Fascist Scenario
• Selected Bibliography
• Index