A selection that never says its name
How do you get into a KGB school? There is no real official exam, but modern language tests and interviews can be organized. Direct application not possible. If we ignore the parallel admissions for employees who already work in the “service sector” and want to move up or change their position, the selection process is an opaque path, which is to a large extent managed without the knowledge of the potential candidate and has been “under observation” placed.
Ideally, the future Chekist student's journey begins before birth: his family is modest, rather provincial, with a father who works in administration or in the military and a mother who is a housewife or teacher. After high school, he showed a weakness for the human sciences, which had a practical side, while giving a special place to Soviet ideology: economics, law, management, journalism. MGIMO (Moscow Institute of International Relations) is a vivarium known as an elite sector – it is not easy to get into it.
The future chekist joins the Komsomol (communist youth) – almost a necessary step in the 1960s. There it spreads its wings and becomes hyperactive. He manages the university newspaper and takes care of its publication and distribution. He organizes collections for the celebrations on May 1st and November 7th, the anniversary of the October Revolution. He oversees the hanging of posters and campaigning during the “elections” to the Supreme Soviet. He volunteers in schools to mentor young people and goes out to pick up trash.
In the summer he went to summer camp with the pioneers, took part in cultural rallies and completed an internship in a collective farm. To earn a little pocket money, he sometimes works night shifts in a factory. At the same time, he plays sports, a lot of sports, with a penchant for male activities: karate, weightlifting, skydiving, motorcycle competitions. How does he find the time to do everything? “I organized my day down to the minute,” says Colonel Iossif Légan in his memoirs.[1]. Today I wonder how I did it without sacrificing my studies.”
This eagerness is eventually noticed. His case is reported to those affected and a neighborhood investigation is discreetly initiated. Who are his friends? Does he go out late at night? Is he drinking?… Then we'll test him. One day on the train, a passenger in his compartment, who is easy to talk to, involves him in sensitive topics with provocative questions: Life is too expensive, the salaries are bad and we can no longer find certain basic needs. Is this normal? Land of victorious communism? Or he makes a joke: “What has four legs and forty teeth?” Answer: a crocodile. What has forty legs and four teeth? Answer: Brezhnev's Politburo, where there are only old people!” And he observes the reaction.
If all goes well, if the boy is serious and impervious to seditious thoughts, we make it clear to him that someone in a high position is interested in him, without specifying which one. He is then invited to a meeting with “someone important,” an official from the local KGB branch, a lieutenant colonel or a colonel in civilian clothes, in a friendly, relaxed atmosphere.
We chat, we chat for a long time. We discuss the young man's ambitions, his vision of the world, of the party, his hobbies, his friends, his fiancée. Suddenly he is asked a (at first glance) inappropriate question: “What do you think of abstract art?” Contrary to appearances, this is not an assessment of general knowledge, but a test of loyalty. In Soviet art of the 1960s and 1970s, anything that lies outside the framework of “socialist realism” is suspected of playing into the hands of the West; It is therefore necessary to control the candidate's inclinations to ensure that he can withstand the artistic casualness that he might encounter in Europe when traveling.
I can testify that this is not an idiotic precaution: when my father, then a young committed communist, discovered Picasso postcards immediately after the war, he saw his faith faltering in the face of the outrageous freedom of the compositions. When he tasted the forbidden fruit, he found himself in a difficult situation. He stopped reading Gorky and Aragon, took it upon himself to mock “socialist realism”, and then began to invent fantastic stories in which the main character is an alien who arrives in a communal apartment in Moscow… one led to the other, he took a pseudonym, sent his texts to the West, deceived the KGB sleuths who were looking for him for six years… In short, a complete collapse.
For the future Chekist student who is not aware of this: the tests take as long as necessary – no one is in a hurry. Some are sent to an Eastern Bloc country as an “internship” and subjected to an ingenuity test. For example, you are asked to find an “agent”, who is actually an accomplice of the recruiting service, and contact him to assess the candidate's hard work, talkativeness and talent.
Others have to search archives to find a “lost” document; we see them navigate an avalanche of documents and conflicting information. Others do tough military service in an elite combat unit. Finally, others are placed under house arrest while they prepare and take language tests that look like an official competition. There is no standard path, everything is tailored to the candidate based on their profile.
If all goes well, the recruitment process ends with a direct suggestion: “How about joining the security organs?” If the candidate agrees (and when we get to this point in the conversation, the answer is usually positive), let we have him sign a confidentiality paper and a few days later announce his assignment – to a school of border guards, operational technicians, criminology or to a more prestigious center, such as the School of Military Counterintelligence in Novosibirsk (School No. 311), the Andropov Academy for Foreign intelligence services (School No. 101) or the Vychka. He was admitted there with the rank of lieutenant and received a monthly stipend while being housed, fed and washed on site in buildings carefully isolated from the outside world, although they appeared absolutely mundane.
Of course, the student must never reveal anything about this trip. With retirement, the languages become a little more relaxed. This is how a KGB general remembers it[2], sober: “I studied at the Faculty of Journalism, I was invited to a discussion and was made an offer. I agreed because, as is easy to understand, the work of a journalist and an intelligence officer are psychologically close.” Let's move on.