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The KGB form confirms that sociability was highly valued, along with capacities for observation and recall. A section headed “characterization” asks a series of yes/no questions: “has exceptional memory”; “has exceptional observation”; “has the capacity to influence others”; “has exceptional capacity to make and develop acquaintance”; “has personal charm”; “has success with women”; “has success with men”; and, inevitably, “other distinctive qualities”. Later in the form, much attention is paid to categorizing the people in the informer’s social circle, and especially any foreigners.

Possible “negative propensities” are given detailed attention. Bad attributes and habits start from drug addiction, homosexuality, and lesbianism, continue via gambling and illicit trading, take in the status of “reemigrant,” “repatriate,” and “immigrant,” and move on to connections to foreign spy agencies and nationalist, religious, and other anti-Soviet groups, before turning to any criminal record, especially crimes against the state. Still under the heading of “negative propensities,” the form inquires about the informer’s experience of foreign travel and asks for more particular information based on a detailed breakdown of the possible indiscretions a Soviet citizen might have committed while travelling, such as private conversations and commercial and sexual transactions with foreign citizens, losing documents and papers, disclosing secrets, excessive drinking, and voicing comparisons unfavorable to the Soviet Union.

While all these things were classed as negatives, there is no suggestion that any of them would make the subject less desirable as an undercover collaborator of the security police. To the contrary, connections to the political underworld could be an advantage.

Of particular interest is the close attention that the KGB registration form pays to the informer’s cooperation. The readiness with which the informer accepts recruitment is distinguished from the quality of subsequent performance. At the recruitment stage, did the subject accept cooperation based on “patriotic” motives (by implication, shared values or common preferences), or based on “compromising evidence” (blackmail or threats such as prosecution)? Subsequently, did the subject carry out assignments in a wholehearted or enthusiastic way (in Russian, okhotno), or was cooperation limited by second thoughts or latent reservations?

As we will see, all combinations were possible. The reluctant recruit could go on to work productively, while the apparently eager volunteer could hesitate and fall at the first fence.

THE CASE OFFICER'S PROBLEM: ASSURING COMMITMENT

Managing every informer was a KGB case officer. The relationship between case officer and informer relied ultimately on vertical trust—not trust alone, and not too much, but a degree of trust was understood to be essential.

The need for vertical trust was implicit in the case officer’s goal. The goal was to learn more about the potential adversary. The means was deception: the informer had to win the target’s trust in order to betray it. There was nothing routine about the task. An informer was not an assembly-line worker performing a mechanical task that could be prescribed and monitored to the millimeter. For the informer, the quality of performance was everything—with “performance” meaning both to act out a role and to fulfil the task.

In fact, to be an effective informer required a high degree of personal commitment. The reluctant or ambivalent informer would surely either fail to elicit the necessary information or give themselves away. In the worst case, they would go on to hide the failure from the case officer, leaving the KGB in ignorance of the true picture.

The KGB had limited ways of controlling the risks. The case officer could (and did) try out new informers on assignments where the outcomes were already known or where the task could be observed or recorded. The officer could (and did) set well-tried informers to watch the informers that were new and untried. But the goal remained to gain entry to settings that the KGB could not penetrate without help. Only the informer could find out what the officer needed to know. The point would inevitably be reached where the KGB had to decide whether to trust the informer or not. If the agent’s information could not be believed at that point, there was no point to the collaboration.

To assure the agent’s commitment became the case officer’s fundamental problem. This formulation of the case officer’s problem also makes clear the relationship between commitment and trust: one party trusts the other by accepting some assurance of the other’s commitment.

Commitment was an issue for everyone, even the most apparently loyal people. To become an effective informer took time; it was not decided in a moment. The decision was not just political; it was also social and moral. The informer might be asked to put the interests of the Soviet state not only before the interests of other states, but also before those of colleagues, neighbors, intimate friends, and family members. Even the most loyal citizen might feel torn. For those recruited because their close relatives or they themselves were involved in anti-Soviet activities, the tug of loyalties could be acute.

Every agent was different, and the KGB needed more than one way to manage them. The one common element was a rite of passage: in the decisive moment, the subject chose a code name and signed an agreement with the security police. The code name was incorporated in the wording or was used to sign it. The wording typically obligated the agent to cooperate with the KGB; often, it bound the agent to maintain conspirativeness about their collaboration. Symbolizing the personal nature of the commitment, the agreement did not follow a standardized template and was usually handwritten by the new agent in Russian or Lithuanian, depending on those involved.[333]

The written terms of the agreement were silent on many matters. The obligations placed on the agent were completely general, and there was no terminal date, so there was never a point at which the agent could say: “I have fulfilled my part of the bargain.” The case officer made no written promise and offered no consideration in exchange. The informer’s expectation of acknowledgment, or reward, or protection, rested entirely on trust—that is, on assurance of the case officer’s unwritten promise.

Considered as a contract, the terms of the informer’s agreement were highly incomplete. In economics a contract is called incomplete when a party agrees to fulfil an assignment in return for a consideration, and qualities such as care and diligence are crucial to the task, and they cannot be fully specified in writing.[334] Everyday examples that readers maybe familiar with include contracts for employment, for teaching and learning, for publishing, and for marriage.

When a contract is incomplete, certain things follow. The contract itself turns out to be one moment in a process that necessarily begins long before and continues long after. Before the contract, there is a search for the best partner and there is due diligence. There are also implications for after the contract. Despite all the efforts made before the contract, only after it is signed does each side discover the true extent of the other’s commitment and come to understand the further investments that might be required to uphold the spirit in which the contract was signed.

The spirit in which the contract was signed could vary. When the subject’s own motivation was enough, recruitment was recorded as based on “patriotic” or “ideological” considerations. In other cases, coercion (or blackmail) could be applied. Given Lithuania’s troubled history, many citizens had something in their past that might provide leverage if the recruit was reluctant. When coercion was explicit, the agent’s recruitment was recorded as based on kompromat.

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From the last months of Soviet rule in Lithuania, for example, Agent Gin- taras (Amber) writes in Lithuanian: “I [name] promise to keep secret [my] cooperation with the security organs. I will sign further documents ‘Gintaras.’ 1989.03.01 [signed] Gintaras” (personal communication from Inga Zaksauskiené, 1 February 2019).

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Hart, Firms, Contracts and Financial Structure, 73-92.