Given that the documentation purports to represent good practices, the reader might worry that our agent stories were varnished or fictionalized for the sake of officers’ personal reputation or to cover up their defective work. This is unlikely. Those with most at stake were the case officers with personal responsibility for individual agents. By contrast, all the agent stories in our sample were composed and signed off by KGB officers of higher rank. The authors were of similar seniority to the officers who compiled the critical surveys, already mentioned, that exposed the poor general state of the agent network in various localities in the same period. In fact, two senior officers (Gomyranov and Tumantsev) did both: they wrote half of our stories at the same time as they contributed critical surveys. If they did not cover up poor work in one context, it is not obvious why they should have invented good work in another.
What is described in our twenty-one reports? Twenty, written in the third person and signed off by a senior officer, are from the years 1961 to 1964. The subjects are agents (agenty). While the detail varies, they typically described the person’s background and the circumstances in which the person came to the attention of the KGB. (There are some gaps: four reports, all from the Kaunas KGB office, have a missing first page that probably listed significant personal data.) Each report went on to explain the manner of recruitment and, in most cases, what happened next: how the new informer adapted to the task, what problems arose, and by what means the issues were overcome. Thus, while the informer’s voice is not heard directly, each document attempts to represent the informer’s perspective.
The twenty-first story, that of Agent Ruta, has a different format. Dated 1975, a decade after the others, it was written for an internal limited circulation KGB magazine, the Sbornik.[345] A ghost writer has surely been at work, so we do not hear the subject’s uncensored voice. Two-thirds of the eighteen-page typescript are devoted to the informer’s inner path from
| table 6.2. Twenty-one effective KGB informers: Demographic statistics | ||
|---|---|---|
| Percent | N | |
| Male | 95 | 21 |
| Urban residence (if known) | 93 | 14 |
| Higher education (if known) | 82 | 11 |
| White-collar (if known)4' | 85 | 13 |
| Ethnic Lithuanian** | 76 | 21 |
| Compromised by past action or association | 67 | 21 |
| Party or Komsomol member at any time*** | 9 | 21 |
| * Includes one college student. ** Others were Russians, a Jew, and a likely Pole. One, a former party member, had been expelled; another was a Komsomol member in good standing.Notes: Because reports did not follow a common format, not all reports included the same information for each subject. Thus, the sample size varies across indicators. I give the sample size as 21 when every report gave this information or allowed it to be inferred (gender and ethnicity), or when the information would have been regarded as so significant that absence of evidence could be construed as evidence of absence (party status; compromised by past action or association). Dates given in the documentation are sometimes approximate or inferred from internal evidence. For birth date, only the year is given. For recruitment, the year, month, or exact date may be given. Where necessary, I fill in missing values by assuming midmonth or midyear. Source: As Table 6.1. | ||
active resistance to collaboration with Soviet rule. Hard biographical data are missing; circumstantial detail is limited. But the purpose is evidently the same: the KGB wanted to explain to itself how the opportunity arose to recruit an agent “from a hostile environment” and how the opportunity was exploited. That is why it is included here.
What kinds of people are found in our reports? Table 6.2 reports basic demographics. There are few surprises. Most agents were male, urbanized, college educated, and in white-collar employment (including one college student). Three-quarters were ethnic Lithuanians, a share close to that in the general population of the republic.
As the table shows, two-thirds of our sample lived under some shadow arising from their past conduct or associations. As discussed in Chapter 5, at best this meant family connections with Lithuania’s prewar elite or a record of noncommunist political activity before the war; at worst it meant wartime collaboration with the German occupation or
table 6.3. Twenty-one effective KGB informers: Age and service
| Median | Mean | N | |
| Birth year (if known) | 1931 | 1925 | 11 |
| Age at recruitment (if known), years | 28.0 | 34.2 | 11 |
| Year recruited | 1961 | 1960 | 21 |
| Years served | 1.2 | 2.7 | 21 |
| Source and notes: As Tables 6.1 and 6.2. | |||
armed rebellion against Soviet rule. It was such records that made these subjects useful as informers. Correspondingly, only two of the set had any record of Communist Party affiliation (one a former member, the other a Komsomol member). No doubt party members were more likely to be recruited as trusted persons than agents, as was the case in East Germany.[346]
Table 6-3 shows age and length of service. The median birth year of our informers, if known, was 1931, and their median age at recruitment was twenty-eight. Based on the dates of their reports, nine had been in service for less than one year. This cannot be typical of all agents: rather, the documents’ emphasis on the manner of recruitment has biased the sample to recent recruits. But, as the averages suggest, there was a tail of older, more experienced agents. Seven had served for more than two years, including two who had served up to a decade.
RECRUITMENT, REEDUCATION, REWARDS
The reports in our sample show wide variation in how the recruitment process worked out. Table 6.4 reports a few measurable aspects. Taking the reports at face value, most of the effective agents joined by consent. Only two were recruited under an explicit threat (agents Berzas-i and Genys).
This contrasts to the data in Table 6.2. Two-thirds of informers were recruited with compromising evidence held against them, but in most cases the evidence was not used.
Was recruitment an offer that could not be refused? None of the informers in our sample said no, but some needed persuasion. In other settings, we know, candidates for recruitment did sometimes refuse.[347]
table 6.4. Twenty-one effective KGB informers: Recruitment and performance
| Percent | N | |
| Recruited by consent (if known), percent | 90 | 20 |
| Initial compliance was full (if known), percent | 61 | 18 |
| Initial compliance was monitored, percent | 38 | 21 |
| Service was rewarded, percent | 29 | 21 |
| Source and notes: As Tables 6.1 and 6.2. | ||
347
In East Germany, Schmeidel, Stasi: Shield and Sword, 36; Dennis, Stasi: Myth and Reality, 104-6; Miller, Narratives of Guilt and Compliance, 48-49. In Romania, Verdery, Secrets and Truths, chapter 3. As for the Soviet Union, the author has received personal accounts in conversation.