The Library
Contracting for counterintelligence : the KGB and Soviet informers of the 1960s and 1970s
Tools
Tools
Tools
Harrison, Mark (2019) Contracting for counterintelligence : the KGB and Soviet informers of the 1960s and 1970s. Working Paper. Coventry: University of Warwick. Department of Economics, Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy Department of Economics. CAGE Online Working Paper Series (408). (Unpublished)
|
PDF
WRAP-contracting-counterintelligence-KGB-Soviet-informers-1960s-1970s-Harrison-2019.pdf - Other - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (890Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/c...
Abstract
The informer network was a part of the human capital of the communist police state, which had the property of dissolving the freestanding social capital of ordinary citizens. How was it built, and what was the agency of the informers in the process? A few documents from the archives of the Soviet security police allow us to see good practices as the KGB saw them. They show some of the routes by which informers came to the attention of the KGB, their varied motivations, and their social and psychological strengths and weaknesses. The pivot of the process was a contract for counter-intelligence services. The contract itself was partly written, partly verbal or implied, and highly incomplete. Before the contract, searching and due diligence were required to identify potential recruits. After the contract, to turn a recruit into a productive informer involved a further period of training and monitoring, often extending to renegotiation and further investments by both sides in the capabilities of the informer and the relationship of trust with the handler. Trust and deception were two sides of the informer’s coin.
| Item Type: | Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper) | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DK Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics J Political Science > JF Political institutions (General) |
||||||||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics | ||||||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Soviet Union -- History -- 1953-1985, Soviet Union. Komitet gosudarstvennoĭ bezopasnosti, Intelligence service | ||||||||||||
| Series Name: | CAGE Online Working Paper Series | ||||||||||||
| Publisher: | University of Warwick. Department of Economics, Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy Department of Economics | ||||||||||||
| Place of Publication: | Coventry | ||||||||||||
| Official Date: | March 2019 | ||||||||||||
| Dates: |
|
||||||||||||
| Number: | 408 | ||||||||||||
| Number of Pages: | 44 | ||||||||||||
| Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||||||||||
| Status: | Not Peer Reviewed | ||||||||||||
| Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||||||
| RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
|
||||||||||||
| Related URLs: |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year
