Surveillance

   For the Russian and security services, physical and technical surveillance was a critical tool. The Okhrana conducted surveillance of dissidents by intercepting mail and through close physical surveillance of suspects and their associates. In St. Petersburg, the Okhrana recruited cab drivers because of their ability to travel anywhere in the capital without raising suspicion. Surveillance allowed the Okhrana to keep careful and generally accurate files on dissidents in both radical and moderate parties.

   The Cheka expanded surveillance of known and suspected enemies of the infant Bolshevik regime. Along with mail interception and physical surveillance, the service perfected the use of audio surveillance. Joseph Stalin read reports of surveillance of both political enemies and poets. He decided on Solomon Mikhoels’s murder when he read in surveillance reports that the actor had made denigrating statements about the Communist Party to Americans. When Stalin read a detailed surveillance report on the great poet Anna Akhmatova, he reportedly said: “Our little nun is now receiving foreign spies.” Akhmatova had met with the British philosopher and diplomat Isaiah Berlin.

   The KGB and its predecessors developed a number of technical tools to make surveillance easier. Metka, or spy dust, was used to allow KGB dogs to follow suspected intelligence officers. The KGB also planted electronic devices in the shoes of NATO diplomats and small radio transmitters in the cars of diplomats and intelligence officers. The KGB’s Seventh Directorate was specifically established to conduct surveillance in cars and on foot. A team of 50 surveillants was dedicated to covering the British embassy. Three cars were assigned to follow the British chief of station Roderick Chisolm wherever he went. His wife was followed too: it was surveillance of Mrs. Chisolm that gave the KGB their first lead to Oleg Penkovskiy. Surveillance had two important benefits for the regime. It provided necessary information on a host of counterintelligence and domestic security issues. It also served to intimidate the opponents of the regime, forcing them to consider their powerlessness in the struggle with the state.