The Real Anti-Soviet Russians?

Abstract

Chapter 9 examines Soviet defectors, citizens who fled Soviet rule, with a focus on Germany. The United States developed elaborate programs to utilize defectors as sources of unattainable information about the enemy, as recruits for psychological warfare or espionage operations, and as symbols of Western superiority in the clash of ideological systems. This chapter draws on previously unused sources to draw a collective portrait of Soviet defectors. Rather than committed cold warriors, most defectors were low-level soldiers or personnel who fled the Soviet bloc for non-political reasons and then experienced an isolated and fearful existence in West Germany. They constituted an unreliable cohort in American political-warfare efforts, as shown by the history of TsOPE, the CIA’s defector organization. They were also a problematic addition to the Russian political exiles in Germany, as the defectors blended into and even encouraged the internecine conflict that was the norm in Russian diaspora politics.