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Progress of a Pilgrim
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14197 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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7 / 1988 |
3,431 Words |
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Donald Jameson
Donald Jameson is a writer and consultant on Soviet and
Eastern European political and economic affairs. |
ON THE WRONG SIDE: MY LIFE IN THE KGB
Stanislav Levchenko
McLean, Va: Pergamon-Brassey, 1988
258 pp., $18.95
The reason we use the term defector to characterize a person who chooses to leave a Soviet-bloc country is that there is a paragraph in Article 64 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic that makes it a crime ("treason of the motherland") to leave the Soviet Union without permission from the government or, of abroad, to fail to return when so ordered. All the other republics of the Soviet Union copy this paragraph, as do all other communist-run states. That is why they have defectors and the rest of the world has emigrants. If you want to leave the Soviet Union and "they" don't want you to, defection is your only way out. I dwell on this point because some people in the West, and some defectors, get caught up in analyzing defection as though it were a special, exotic art. It isn't, except as Soviet law makes it so.
On the Wrong Side is a defector's story, the story of Stanislav Levchenko. It is the story of his whole life from early childhood to the present. It is the story of a Soviet citizen who rose through the ranks due to his academic achievement, ability with people, and patriotism. He was selected as a KGB agent and cooperated with the agency so that he could live abroad. Finally, however, he became so disaffected through his experiences that he sought asylum in the United States, where he has declared war on the KGB.
Rise to the KGB
The full story of Levchenko's involvement with the KGB is especially interesting as an illustration of the omnipresence, long-term planning, and patience of the KGB.
In the USSR, the high road to a career in service overseas--a much sought-after goal in the Soviet Union--is enrollment in the Institute of International Relations, called IMO for the initials of its Russian name, Institute Mezhdunarodnykh Otnosheney. It is similar to American military service academies in its dedication to training for particular specialities. Its graduates emerge as area specialists with an excellent command of two foreign languages and a good grounding in world affairs. Usually by the end of the third year of their five-year course, they are selected by one of the organizations that control the bulk of the Soviet career
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