Very effective.The Soviets provided the model for the weaponization of spy craft across a broad landscape that to this very day has been copied by the various enemies of the West.
Below is the picture of Klaus Fuchs, a theoretical physicist who was born in Germany but later on became a British citizen.
Klaus Fuchs source: pbr.org
His work on gaseous diffusion played a role in the Uranium enrichment necessary for the Manhattan Project. Fuchs worked under Hans Bethe (a Nobel Prize Winner in Physics - 1967) at Los Alamos and was a close friend of Richard Feynman. He was also a committed Communist/Stalinist who supplied valuable information to the Soviets that helped expedite their development of a Hydrogen bomb.
Fuchs was interrogated in 1949 and finally confessed in 1951 to having compromised both the American and British nuclear programs.. His confession helped to implicate Harry Gold who was the vital witness in the trial of two other master spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. For his efforts Fuchs would be granted sanctuary in East Germany where he died in 1988.
The Rosenbergs. They were executed for Espionage source: history.com
However Fuchs was far from the only pertinent fellow traveler to be effectively used by the Soviets. The Soviets had in fact developed a spy network targeting several Western countries whose origins go back to the 1920s. The networks were masterminded by the alphabet soup of spy agencies but in the Cold War era this largely fell under the jurisdiction of the NKVD, KGB and, GRU.
Key objectives usually involved the acquisition of scientific and weaponry technology however a considerable amount of effort was expended in obtaining intelligence regarding military tactics that would further Soviet aims in the Cold War proxy wars.
Soviet sleeper agents also targeted decision makers on the political front and it is now well established that there was a Soviet disinformation campaign to ferment culture and race wars in the United States in particular, as a way of undermining the entrenched infrastructure. All of this is encapsulated by the descriptor Active Measures which is still a feature of Russian intelligence today.
Here is an example of such a destabilizing technique as outlined in the Mitrokhin Archive and expanded on by the British historian Christopher Andrew.
Source: Goodreads
"The KGB ordered the use of explosives to exacerbate racial tensions in New York City. On July 25, 1971, the head of the KGB's FCD First (North American) Department, Anatoli Tikhonovich Kireyev, instructed the New York residency to proceed with the operation. The KGB was to plant a delayed-action explosive package in "the Negro section of New York.” Kireyev's preferred target was “one of the Negro colleges.” After the explosion the residency was ordered to make anonymous telephone calls to two or three black organizations, claiming that the explosion was the work of the Jewish Defense League.
These particular efforts were part of the notorious Operation Pandora.
How committed were the Soviets to long term subversion? A great deal according to the ex-KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov *.
“The main emphasis of the KGB is not in the area of intelligence at all. According to my opinion and the opinion of many defectors of my caliber only about 15 percent of time, money, and manpower is spent on espionage as such. The other 85 percent is a slow process, which we call either ideological subversion, or active measures, or psychological warfare.” https://www.nspirement.com/2021/07/14/former-kgb-agent-yuri-bezmenov.html (https://www.nspirement.com/2021/07/14/former-kgb-agent-yuri-bezmenov.html)
Source: BigThink
The Soviets also influenced the Peace Movement. The World Peace Council (WPC) was established as a vehicle by the Soviets to influence public opinion in the United States against nuclear weapons during a time when only the United States had them. The idea was to transform the narrative so that the populace would see the USSR as a peace loving nation at odds with a war mongering United States.
In this regard they were resolute and establishing well crafted spy networks that wove their way through the Western body politics. These included the Cambridge Five, the Silvermaster Spy Ring, the Golos Ring, the Petro group, the Ware group and arguably the most notorious of them all the Walker Ring, The latter was arguably the most damaging espionage ring from 1967 to 1985.
The Cambridge Five source: Vajiram & Ravi. The group comprised Donald Maclean (1913-83), Guy Burgess (1911-63), Harold ‘Kim’ Philby (1912-88), Anthony Blunt (1907-83) and John Cairncross (1913 – 1995).
Evidence supplied by Soviet defectors (such as the Mitrokin Archive) as well as spy taps and counter intelligence methods( eg. the Verona Project) have provided extensive information on how widespread these efforts were.
High ranking American officials such as Harry Dexter White (assistant secretary of the treasury and the second most influential official in the department) was shown to be a Soviet spy as was his underling Harold Glasser. So was the MI6 agent Kim Philip who was part of the Cambridge Five. For his service to Mother Russia Philby was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union and given the Order of Lenin.
There many more. Some worked as deep field plants in the State Department (David Salmon) and Army (William Weisbrand). Others plied their trade in the Sciences (Engelbert Broda and Alan Nunn May). The US Communist Party was dominated by pro-Soviet staffers who also held positions in journalism and Academia. Canadian MP, Fred Rose was a Soviet Spy as was US Democratic Party Congressman Samuel Dickstein.
Senator Joseph McCarthy did go too far with his so-called Anti-Communist ‘witch hunt’ but he was correct like Whittaker Chambers in expressing grave concerns regarding the extent of Soviet infiltration into American governmental institutions.
Senator Joseph McCarthy source: Britannica
The Kremlin would penetrate the CIA with Aldrich Ames and Edward Lee Howard and had an inside scoop into the NSA courtesy of David Sheldon Boone and Ronald Pelton.
Nor was the FBI immune thanks to Robert Hanssen and Earl Edwin Pitts. Even US embassy Marine Clayton J. Lonetree provided his services to the Soviets to become another tragic figure in a long line of useful idiots.
Countries like Canada and Australia were also not free from the prying paws of the Soviet bear. Igor Gouzenko operated a spy ring in Canada and Australia was infiltrated by the spy work carried out by Vladimir Petrov in the 1950s.
Spying, subversion was a serious business for the Soviets. Nothing was taboo and that included sexpionage. Targets trapped by the Soviets in this regard included the Indonesian President Suharto, the French Ambassador Maurice Dejean and British MP Anthony Courtney.
In 1987 the Washington Post wrote
"most westerners who have spent any length of time in Moscow have their favorite tale of an attempted seduction by a KGB swallow or raven."
The full scope of information that was compromised cannot be accurately quantified but it clearly helped the Soviets remain competitive in a time frame, when their own domestic system was rotting at the core.
The Russians very likely continue with this practice today. So do operatives working for China. Why wouldn’t they? It works.
Sources:
2. Espionage and the Manhattan Project, 1940-1945
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2VL0uhTH1s
4. Soviet Subversion of the Free World Press (Video 1984) - IMDb
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