Thread by @KyleWOrton

The lengths the #KGB went to in trying to destroy #Solzhenitsyn even after he had been expelled from the Soviet Union are extraordinary, and not entirely irrational: they understood the danger he posed to them.

<Mini thread drawn from "The Sword and the Shield", pp. 312, 317-21>

Andropov first tried to expel Solzhenitsyn in autumn 1971, but Brezhnev listened to interior minister Nikolai Shchelokov, who said the great writer should be co-opted rather than persecuted. Andropov did not forget this, and later witch-hunted Shchelokov until he killed himself.

In late 1973, after Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov wrote an open letter that encouraged Congress to override the Nixon-Kissinger administration by passing Jackson-Vanik that linked Soviet trade privileges to human rights, Brezhnev said the KGB should have cracked down from the start.

Unsurprisingly, the intelligence reports Andropov submitted to the Central Committee included "Zionism" as one of the forces that stood behind the dissident activities of Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov. The order to expel Solzhenitsyn was given in February 1974.

After Solzhenitsyn landed in Switzerland in 1974, the KGB found it easier to infiltrate his inner circle than within the USSR: he didn't know anyone and some of the first people he found were KGB agents posing as Czech refugees, playing on his sympathy with the Prague Spring.

In September 1974, Andropov ordered a massive campaign against Solzhenitsyn: hostile books were written, one under the name of his wife; KGB agents in his inner circle were exposed and rumours spread of more; and a constant stream of threats was directed against his children.

Nineteen sections of the KGB worked on the anti-Solzhenitsyn program, the Soviets drew in the allied services of the Captive Nations to assist, and the residencies in at least seven countries were involved.

https://twitter.com/KyleWOrton/status/1437223510141714442

The KGB campaign influenced Solzhenitsyn's move to the US, where he lived as a recluse, except for the 1978 Harvard speech, which led to an extraordinary moment with the entire Soviet leadership gathering to watch the speech of the premier dissident. They thought it harmed him.

// End