KGB files: what does the book say?

We bring you a few lines from the book, The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World, that created a controversy over the weekend

The KGB code
"Following Shastri's sudden death….Congress leaders chose Indira Gandhi (code named VANO by the KGB), … whom they could manipulate at will."

Uniting the Left, campaign funding
"Moscow's strategy during 1966 for the Indian elections in the following year was based on encouraging the CPI and the breakaway Communist Party of India, Marxist (CPM) to join together in a left wing alliance to oppose Mrs. Gandhi and the Congress government. As well as subsidising the CPI and some other left-wing groups during the 1967 election campaign, the KGB also funded the campaigns of several agents and confidential contacts within Cong."

Discrediting detractor
In an attempt to discredit SK Patil, one of the leading anti-Communists in the Congress Syndicate, Modin circulated a forged letter from the US consul-general in Bombay to the American ambassador in Delhi referring to Patil's 'political intrigues with the Pakistanis' and to the large American subsidies supposedly givenhim.

CPI more than supports Congress
In July 1969 she nationalised fourteen commercial banks. Desai was sacked as Finance Minister and resigned as Deputy Prime Minister. Encouraged by Moscow, the CPI swung its support behind Mrs Gandhi. By infiltrating its members and sympathizers into the left-wing Congress Forum for Socialist Action (code named SECTOR by the KGB), the CPI set out to gain a position of influence within the ruling party.

Trade of nations
The Syndicate hinted that Mrs. Gandhi intended to 'sell' India to the Soviet Union and was using her principal private secretary, Parmeshwar Narain Haksar, as direct link with Moscow and the Soviet embassy. From 1967 to 1973 Haksar, a former protégé of Krishna Menon, was Mrs. Gandhi's most trusted adviser.

The resident Leftie
His advocacy of the leftward turn in Mrs. Gandhi's policies sprang, however, from his socialist convictions rather than from manipulation by the KGB. But both he and Mrs. Gandhi 'were less fastidious than Nehru had been about interfering with the democratic system and structure of government to attain their ideological ends'.

If you can't defeat them, join them
Mohan Kumaramangalam seemed to be implementing a 'thesis', which he had first argued in 1964: that since the CPI could not win power by itself, as many of its members and sympathizers as possible should join the Congress, make common cause with 'progressive' Congressmen and compel the party leadership to implement socialist policies. Another leading figure in the Congress Forum for Socialist Action was recruited in 1971 as Agent RERO and paid about 100,000 rupees a year.

Home away from home
In the early 1970s, the KGB presence in India became on of the largest in the world outside the Soviet bloc. Indira Gandhi placed no limit on the number of Soviet diplomats and trade officials, thus allowing the KGB and GRU as many cover positions as they wished. Nor, like many other states, did India object to admitting Soviet intelligence officers who had been expelled by less hospitable regimes.

In kind and in cash
The Prime Minister is unlikely to have paid close attention to the dubious origins of some of the funds which went into Congress's coffers. That was a matter which she left largely to her principal fundraiser, Lalit Narayan Mishra, who - though she doubtless did not realise it - also accepted Soviet money. On at least one occasion a secret gift of 2 million rupees from the Politburo to Congress (R) was personally delivered after midnight by the head of Line PR in New Delhi, Leonid Shebarshin. Another million rupees were given on the same occasion to a newspaper which supported Mrs. Gandhi.

Mama's boy
Indira Gandhi, despite her own frugal lifestyle, depended on the money he collected from a variety of sources to finance Congress (R). So did her son and anointed heir, Sanjay, whose misguided ambition to build an Indian popular car and become India's Henry Ford depended on government favours.

Trade, subsidies, well-wishers
Covert funding for the CPI seems to have been unaffected. By 1972 the import-export business founded by the CPI a decade earlier to trade with the Soviet Union had contributed more than 10 million rupees to Party funds. Other secret subsidies, totalling at least 1.5 million rupees, had gone to state Communist parties, individuals and media associated with the CPI.

Cash transfer
In the mid-1970s Soviet funds for the CPI were passed by operations officers of the New Delhi main residency to a senior member of the Party's National Council code named BANKIR at a number of different locations.

Well accounted for
Rajeshwar Rao, general secretary of the CPI from 1964 to 1990, subsequently provided receipts for sums received. Further substantial sums went to the Communist-led All-India Congress of Trade Unions.

Manufacturing consent
According to KGB files, by 1973 it had ten Indian newspapers on its payroll (which cannot be identified for legal reasons) as well as a press agency under its 'control'. During 1972 the KGB claimed to have planted 3,789 articles in Indian newspapers - probably more than in any other country in the non-Communist world. Among the KGB's leading confidential contacts in the press was one of India's most influential journalist, code named NOK. Recruited as confidential contact in 1976 by A. A. Arkhipov, NOK was subsequently handled by two Line PR officers operating under journalistic cover. Contact with him ceased in 1980 as a result of his ill health.

Our their man

India was also one of the most favourable environments for Soviet front organisations. From 1966 to 1986 the head of the most important of them, the World Peace Council (WPC), was the Indian Communist Romesh Chandra.

THE MITROKHIN ARCHIVE II: THE KGB AND THE WORLD by Christopher Andrews and Vasili Mitrokhin published by Penguin Books UK