The third step assigns each keyword to one of three broad headings, “operational” (oriented toward external goals, such as the suppression of hostile activity), “organizational” (oriented toward internal goals, such as integration with other party and state institutions), and “procedural” (oriented toward compliance with internal norms of bureaucratic behavior). For general interest, Table 3A.2 lists the top ten keywords under each heading with their frequencies.
The fourth and last step involves determining the frequency of particular topics, based on the clustering of predetermined keywords in the file descriptions. In the spirit of quantitative text analysis, this amounts to supervised topic identification. Topics are identified by a stepwise procedure: first, files are identified by association with counterinsurgency and with secret file management (the category of interest for this chapter). This step generates the data for Table 3.2. Remaining files are assigned to police work (the identification and pursuit of state criminals), matters relating to foreigners, the study of complaints (including denunciations) and petitions, economic matters (surveillance of the economy and investigation of the causes of economic disruption), the suppression of anonymous circulars, matters relating to young people, preventive work (called profilaktika), and matters relating to Jewish people. In the outcome (shown in Table 3.3), more than 80 percent of management files are successfully assigned to one or more topics of KGB activity.
4. SECRECY AND FEAR
In March 1948, a new set of “Instructions to ensure the conservation of state secrets in institutions and enterprises of the USSR” appeared on the desks of government officials in Moscow and other cities.[168] The purpose of the new instructions was to provide for detailed implementation of the law “On responsibility for the disclosure of state secrets and for the loss of documents containing state secrets” enacted nine months previously.
Dissemination of the new instructions sent a wave of anxiety through the offices of the Soviet state. The most immediate cause was not so much the detailed provisions inside as the words on the outside: the top righthand corner of the cover page was marked “Top secret.” The provisions inside the document regulated the handling of all secrets, those classified “secret” as well as “top secret.” Clause no. 108 of the instructions obliged the secret department of every organization to issue the relevant extract of the rules to personnel responsible for handling correspondence classified at the level of merely “secret.” But a preceding clause, no. 87, “categorically” prohibited taking copies from secret government “decrees, decisions, and dispositions.” Thus, the top-secret classification on the outside of the instructions indicated that those qualified to work with documentation classified secret, but not more secret than that, should not be allowed to read the provisions that they were now obliged to follow. The fear was intensified because the law itself, now brought to life by the instructions, established heavy criminal penalties for negligent or thoughtless violations: to fall foul of the law, it was not necessary to be suspected of acting on behalf of a foreign power.
To work for Secret Leviathan in those years was frightening. At work you were bombarded with plans and priorities that were continually revised. You were supposed to achieve them while also showing compliance with a bewildering variety of political norms and administrative rules. You slipped up, and after that your fate was a matter of chance. Maybe no one would notice; or they might notice and do nothing now, but they might recall it months or years later. Once the matter was reported, you could suddenly find yourself under arrest, holding up your trousers because your belt had been removed, under interrogation, then under sentence, then in a cattle truck bound for the Far North or East.
The new law and the instructions that brought it into operation laid out a minefield of entrapments from which anyone would be lucky to escape unscathed. The instructions ran to 47 printed pages and 168 clauses. Anyone who has seen an organization develop knows how it works. You start out with a few simple rules, and you trust everyone to work to their spirit, not their letter. Inevitably, a few people set out to test the limits and cut corners. On each occasion, you respond by adding a new prohibition. Over time, the rules multiply.[169] Here are just two of the rules for typists:
§112. It is prohibited for typists to keep any kind of documents on their desks in nonworking time. All spoiled documents and sheets of paper interleaved to protect the typewriter roller should be handed at the end of work to the senior typist or to the chief of the secret department (secret unit) for storage or destruction.
§113. It is prohibited for typists to carry on conversation with any other person about their work. To clarify unclear wording in original documents, typists should turn to the senior typist or to the executive who submitted the secret document for typing.
Each new rule added to the number of things to be remembered and observed. It also increased complexity, heightening the risk that new rules would contradict old ones or that combinations of rules would have consequences that were unwanted and unexpected.
Among government officials it was a particular fear that matters such as plan figures, released a few months previously and already in the public domain, might now be considered secret, making it an offence under the law to repeat them in public.[170]
Heightened fear had economic consequences. Afraid of the law and the instructions, officials sought insurance against the new risks they faced. They looked for protection by various means. One way was to do as little work as possible, because if nothing was done no rules would be broken. But inaction was dangerous, too, because no one was paid to do nothing. If inaction carried risks, one compromise was to slow business down through postponement. Another was for middle managers to seek out the support of colleagues. Here the problem was to take advice from peers without creating the appearance of an organized conspiracy against the party. A more attractive workaround was to petition the superiors who depended on the middle managers to fulfil the party’s plans. Such appeals ensured that the superiors were fully informed of the issues and made the higher-ups coresponsible for the steps that the middle managers now had to take. In turn, the higher-ups were made to switch attention from their own core tasks to the reform of procedures that stood in the way of getting results.
169
And they did multiply. The previous edition of the instructions, dated 1929, was limited to 27 pages. The final edition, dated 1987, ran to 222 pages. Lezina, “Soviet State Security and the Regime of Secrecy,” 44.