Inside the KGB: Myth and Reality.

• Author: Kniazkov, Maxim

C

Inside the KGB: Myth and Reality. Vladimir Kuzichkin. Pantheon, $25.00. There is certainly no lack of books about the KGB in the West. John Barron, Stanislav Levchenko, Oleg Gordievsky, and scores of other experts on Soviet espionage have contributed immensely to the understanding of what is going on in the huge building dominating Dzerzhinsky Square in Moscow. Yet Vladimir Kuzichkin's book offers a glance at the KGB from quite an unusual angle. Up to now this agency has been almost universally portrayed as an omnipotent, unscrupulous, and highly effective intelligence service for which no task is too difficult. This is partly true.

But as Soviets like myself understand, the KGB is not a separate island within Soviet society. It is an integral part. Therefore, all the ills of the society-corruption, patronage, overwhelming bureaucracy, and lack of initiative--do not spare the KGB. As it appears from Kuzichkin's book, the KGB suffers as much from the incompetent intrusions of Communist party apparatchiks as any other institution in the Soviet Union.

For years I lived under the misapprehension that the KGB was probably the only remaining Soviet institution that doesn't do its hiring by nepotism. Kuzichkin's book shattered that illusion. For example, he mentions the name of Valery Maisuradze, the son of the KGB deputy chief in Georgia, who surely made his way to the First Directorate with help from his father. (Why did he prefer the First Directorate to staying in his native Georgia? Because it promises lucrative careers overseas. Intelligence work means dollars instead of worthless rubles.)

Coincidence or not, about 10 years ago a person named Valery Maisuradze came to the TASS news agency of the USSR, where I had worked for more than 13 years; after a brief stint at the foreign desk he went straight to our bureau in London, where he worked for several years before the British swept him away during one of their regular purges of the Soviet community.

We were not friends, but I talked to him a couple of times and edited a lot of his news stories. My opinion: Nothing can be further apart than this man and everything that is associated with the word intelligence." If this Maisuradze and the one mentioned in the book are the same person, I feel sorry for the KGB.

Nepotism is a very dangerous disease, capable of destroying any institution. It can never be limited. Once a relative of a high official is accepted to a lucrative position, say, at...