Cold War Spy Fiction in Russian Popular Culture: from Suspi- Cion to Acceptance Via Seventeen Moments of Spring

Cold War Spy Fiction in Russian Popular Culture: From Suspi- cion to Acceptance via Seventeen Moments of Spring Erik Jens Introduction In 1972, a classified CIA document (right) describing an episode of a novel that was serialized in Komsomolskaya Pravda during January and February 1969 was filed in CIA Headquarters. The episode involved a supposed Soviet intelligence operation early in 1945, in which a “Colonel Isayev” successfully “sabotaged” negotiations OSS officer Allen Dulles was then conducting with the Germans in Bern, Switzerland. Ac- cording to the report, Isayev also met two senior Germans, “Chancellor Bruening” and “Gestapo chief Mueller.” The report writer went on to conclude the account was “in all probability a fabrication”—although the Dulles negotiation was a fact— but in the interests of caution the report’s preparer recommended it be filed in Heinrich Muel- ler’s CIA file—where it remained at least until 2008, when it was declassified.1 As it turned out, the episode was neither a real operation nor a “fabrication,” but a synopsis of an episode in a Soviet spy thriller titled Seventeen Moments of Spring, which went on to become one of the USSR’s most popular and enduring television miniseries. That US intelligence analysts could mistake a work of Soviet-era spy fiction for reportable intelligence says much about the most famously, the 1973 television miniseries Seventeen opacity, to Western observers throughout the Cold War Moments of Spring.a, 2 The series, commissioned by then- and even afterward, of Soviet popular culture. The single KGB chief Yuri Andropov to burnish the reputation of most popular and venerable hero of Russian spy fiction, for nearly 50 years, has been Col. Maxim Maximovich Isaуev, known to every Russian of a certain age by his a. This essay will use the terms “Soviet” and “Russian” in- working cover name, Max Otto von Stierlitz, or simply terchangeably when discussing cultural attitudes, which had, as “Stierlitz,” the hero of several Soviet-era novels and, and retain, deep roots in the Russian motherland. The views, opinions, and findings should not be construed as asserting or implying US government endorsement of its factual statements and interpretations or representing the official positions of any component of the United States government. © Erik Jens, 2017 Studies in Intelligence Vol 61, No. 2 (Extracts, June 2017) 31 Seventeen Moments of Spring In the Soviet Union of the late 1940s and 1950s, espionage, as a genre of fiction, held little appeal for the Soviet The Russian literary world had reading and movie-going public. therefore, by the start of the Great War and later, abdicated the field the intelligence profession, was Soviet Espionage Fiction of espionage fiction to (primarily) hugely successful upon its broadcast Before the Cold War the English, with Rudyard Kipling premiere, and its annual broadcast leading the charge. Along with him thereafter until the 1990s remained In the Soviet Union of the late came the respective anti-German jer- a major pop culture event for Soviet 1940s and 1950s, espionage, as a emiads dressed up as popular fiction viewers. genre of fiction, held little appeal for of novelists Erskine Childers and the Soviet reading and movie-going William le Queux, who established Seventeen Moments of Spring public. This was partly a result of the spy thriller as a permanent fixture may even have played a role in the Tsarist Russia’s cultural affiliations in the English literary landscape.6 rise of Vladimir Putin. In his first job with European high society. Russian But, neither Kim, that pivotal novel following his 1991 resignation from political, cultural, and literary life of Great Game espionage, nor the the KGB, Putin, then a St. Petersburg had closely followed that of France later writings of T.E. Lawrence (who, city official, had himself featured in since the 17th century; the connec- if not the first British “political” to a local documentary reenacting, as tion strengthened throughout the don native garb, was surely the first “Stierlitz,” an iconic scene from the 19th century and persisted until the to lend a largely fictional glamour to miniseries. The episode, which also establishment of the Soviet Union the intelligence business by posing marked Putin’s “coming out” as a cut off, officially at least, most such in full regalia for the home newspa- former spy, helped launch his politi- Western influences.5 The 19th-cen- pers as “Lawrence of Arabia”) had cal career, and the subsequent decade tury European literary disdain for counterparts in or made any lasting of adoring media comparisons to fictional “spies” had therefore persist- impression on Russia or the Soviet Stierlitz helped him all the way to the ed in Russian literature and popular Union of the period. 3 Russian presidency in 2000. Vladi- attitudes far longer than it did in the The Soviet Union’s own early mir Putin, thus, like Schwarzenegger, West.a And, at the turn of the 20th history created a second, more imme- rode the coattails of a fictional perso- century, the decade-long machina- diate and visceral, source of Russian na to political leadership. tions of the sorry Dreyfus affair, cultural antipathy toward espionage perpetrated by mendacious French Yet Stierlitz, “one of the central as a genre of entertainment. By the intelligence officers, gripped Russian characters in Soviet [and present-day start of the Cold War, “intelligence” readers and helped to solidify their Russian] grassroots mythology,” in the collective Russian memory image of “intelligence” as, by defini- remains almost entirely unknown meant spies, informers, and secret tion, wicked and, at best, a necessary outside the former Soviet Union.4 For murder, from the revolution through evil.b the intelligence historian, the back- years of purges culminating in the ground and production of Seventeen Great Terror of the mid-1930s. Moments of Spring provide worth- a. One of the few 19th-century novels while glimpses into Russian popular dealing directly with spies was American: The Soviet intelligence services attitudes, informed by their national James Fenimore Cooper’s 1821 tale of also emerged from the Great Patri- history and temperament, toward Revolutionary War espionage, The Spy. otic War with few, if any, sweeping, Cooper took pains to assure the reader that ready-for-fiction espionage or coun- intelligence work as a subject of even though the hero is spying, he is still a fiction. worthy person, as good as a soldier.—Brett F. Woods, “Revolution and Literature: Cooper’s The Spy Revisited,” varsityturos. eventual exoneration amid revelations of com (accessed 3 February 2017). the French military’s anti-Semitism and other perfidy, the “Dreyfus affair” was per- b. In 1894, French intelligence officers—as haps the first media-friendly global (or at was eventually proved—framed Jewish least Europe-wide) scandal and, incidental- army captain Alfred Dreyfus for treason. ly, helped to launch the espionage genre, at Throughout his trial, conviction, and least in Western Europe, as an established imprisonment on Devil’s Island until his category of popular fiction. 32 Studies in Intelligence Vol 61, No. 2 (Extracts, June 2017) Seventeen Moments of Spring A tipping point in overcoming Soviet popular disdain for terintelligence exploits. In contrast, fictional espionage was the 1961 elevation of Vladimir the wartime American and British Semichastny to the head of the KGB. intelligence and counterintelligence services had made critical, dramatic, Japanese fleet’s location and defeat it later Russian war films have ever had and well-publicized contributions at Midway. much use for happy endings. in breaking German and Japanese ciphers and otherwise helping to Yet another primary obstacle to What few spy-protagonists ap- militarily defeat the Axis powers on the emergence of fictional hero-spies peared on page or screen in postwar the ground and at sea. Soviet intelli- was the Russian obsession with de- settings had to be free from the taint gence could boast of no comparably fense. This long predated the USSR, of Stalin-era repression. One solu- dramatic contributions to their coun- but the Soviet Union could not be tion was to make the fictional spy a try’s grinding war of attrition against portrayed, even in fiction, as an NATO officer who sees the light and German invaders. Whether for lack aggressor; its mighty military and se- defects to the party, as in the popular of imagination or opportunity, the curity forces were wholly for the peo- 1968 spy film, Oshibka Rezidenta Soviet spymasters never executed ple’s protection. But espionage, by (The Resident’s Mistake). In the grad- operations with the inherent drama definition, is something that a state ually burgeoning field of Russian spy of such British operations as Double does primarily to other states, usually fiction of the mid- and late 1960s, the Cross or Mincemeat.a on their territory. Indeed, the very hero, if not a sympathetic Westerner, name of the Stalin-era counterintelli- was likely to be placed in the Great A noteworthy exception was the gence organization, Smert’ Shpionam Patriotic War—“the only time in So- Rote Kapelle (Red Orchestra) the (English acronym, SMERSH), meant viet history when the interests of the acclaimed, if ultimately smashed, So- “death to spies.” people coincided with the interests of viet HUMINT network in Europe in the state”—or else during the Bolshe- the early 1940s. The Red Orchestra, Given all the obstacles—histori- vik Revolution.10 however, was concerned mainly with cal disdain for spying, memories of incrementally damaging German the Terror, and a lack of inspiring A tipping point in overcoming military and industrial production.7 dramatics in actual Soviet espio- Soviet popular disdain for fictional No Soviet intelligence operation that nage history—Soviet “spy” fiction espionage was the 1961 elevation of we know of saved so many Allied in the early Cold War centered less Vladimir Semichastny to the head of lives or was so valuable to eventual on traditional clandestine espio- the KGB, a post he held until 1967.

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