Comrade Kryuchkov’s “War Scare” (1983), or the Bureaucratic Origins of the “Able Archer” War-Scare Thesis

Abstract

Many historians argue that the world came to the brink of nuclear war during the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Able Archer nuclear-release exercise in November 1983. This war-scare thesis originated with Soviet defector Oleg Gordievsky, who made this assertion based on several telegrams that he had seen at the State Committee for Security (KGB) residency in London in 1983. The article contextualizes and analyzes the telegrams based on the statements of leading officers of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate (FCD), responsible for foreign intelligence, to their Soviet-bloc colleagues in the years 1981 to 1983. Based on this analysis, the telegrams that Gordievsky cited had not “created a vicious spiral which was steadily and dangerously raising tension in Moscow,” as he later asserted. Instead, they reflected the bureaucratic strivings of the head of the FCD, Vladimir Kryuchkov, to finally develop an early-warning system against Western military attack, which he had narrowed down to potential nuclear-missile attack (Raketno-Yadernoe Napadenie).

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The author reports there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 Christoper Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story of its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1990), p. 592.

2 Ibid., p. 599.

3 Simon Miles, “The War Scare that Wasn’t: Able Archer 83 and the Myths of the Second Cold War,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 22, No. 3 (2020), pp. 93–95.

4 Simon Miles has compiled a long list of some of the many works by historians citing or arguing in support of the Able Archer 1983 war scare thesis. See: Miles, “The War Scare that Wasn’t,” p. 86, fn. 1. These works include: Hal Brands, What Good Is Grand Strategy? Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), p. 124; Stephen J. Cimbala, “Revisiting the Nuclear ‘War Scare’ of 1983: Lessons Retro- and Prospectively,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 27, No. 2 (2014), pp. 234–253; Campbell Craig and Fredrik Logevall, America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), p. 322; Jonathan M. DiCicco, “Fear, Loathing, and Cracks in Reagan’s Mirror Images: Able Archer 83 and an American First Step toward Rapprochement in the Cold War,” Foreign Policy Analysis, Vol. 7, No. 3 (2011), pp. 253–274; Beth A. Fischer, The Reagan Reversal: Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997), pp. 122–140; John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin, 2007), pp. 227–228; George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 861; David E. Hoffman, The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy (New York: Anchor Books, 2009), pp. 94–100; Nate Jones (ed.), Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise That Almost Triggered Nuclear War (New York: The New Press, 2016), pp. 1–59; Arnav Manchanda, “When Truth Is Stranger than Fiction: The Able Archer Incident,” Cold War History, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2009), pp. 111–133; James Mann, The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War (New York: Viking, 2009), pp. 42, 77; Don Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to a New Era: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1983–1991 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), pp. 65–68; Serhii Plokhii, The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union (New York: Basic Books, 2014), p. 7; Peter Vincent Pry, War Scare: Russia and America on the Nuclear Brink (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999), pp. 33–44; Doug Rossinow, The Reagan Era: A History of the 1980s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), p. 101; Len Scott, “Intelligence and the Risk of Nuclear War: Able Archer-83 Revisited,” in Intelligence in the Cold War: What Difference Did It Make?, edited by Michael Herman and Gwilym Hughes (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 5–23; Jeremi Suri, “Explaining the End of the Cold War: A New Historical Consensus?,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 4, No. 4 (2002), p. 63; Frank Umbach, Das rote Bündnis: Entwicklung und Zerfall des Warschauer Paktes 1955 bis 1991 (Berlin: Christoph Links, 2005), pp. 220–227; James Graham Wilson, The Triumph of Improvisation: Gorbachev’s Adaptability, Reagan’s Engagement, and the End of the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), pp. 78–81; Jay Winik, On the Brink: The Dramatic, Behind-the-Scenes Saga of the Reagan Era and the Men and Women Who Won the Cold War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), pp. 289–291.

5 Miles, “The War Scare that Wasn’t,” pp. 87–88. Miles cites the following works from the anti–war-scare camp (ibid., p. 87, fn. 3): Gordon Barrass, The Great Cold War: A Journey through the Hall of Mirrors (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), pp. 297–312; Mark Kramer, “Die Nicht-Krise um ‘Able Archer 1983’: Fürchtete die sowjetische Führung tatsächlich einen atomaren Großangriff im Herbst 1983?,” in Wege zur Wiedervereinigung: Die beiden deutschen Staaten in ihren Bündnissen 1970 bis 1990, edited by Oliver Bange and Bernd Lemke (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2013), pp. 129–49; Gordon Barrass, “Able Archer 83: What Were the Soviets Thinking?,” Survival, Vol. 58, No. 6 (2016), pp. 7–30; Raymond L. Garthoff, “Soviet Leaders, Soviet Intelligence, and Changing Views of the United States, 1965–91,” in The Image of the Enemy: Intelligence Analysis of Adversaries since 1945, edited by Paul Maddrell (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015), pp. 28–67; Beatrice Heuser, “The Soviet Response to the Euromissiles Crisis,” in The Crisis of Détente in Europe: From Helsinki to Gorbachev, 1975–1985, edited by Leopoldo Nuti (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 137–149; Beatrice Heuser, “Military Exercises and the Dangers of Misunderstandings: The East-West Crisis of the Early 1980s,” in Military Exercises: Political Messaging and Strategic Impact, edited by Beatrice Heuser, Tormod Heier, and Guillaume Lasconjarias (Rome: NATO Defense College, 2018), pp. 113–137; Vojtech Mastny, “How Able Was ‘Able Archer’? Nuclear Trigger and Intelligence in Perspective,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2009), pp. 108–123.

6 It is important to note that former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief historian Benjamin Fischer, who wrote one of the earliest histories citing Gordievsky in classified form at the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence (CSI), has consistently written about a longer-term war scare from 1981 to 1983. Although many proponents of the Able Archer 1983 war-scare thesis cite his earlier CSI study, he has consistently stressed the limitations of the available materials regarding a discrete war scare surrounding Able Archer in 1983. I would tend to agree with Fischer that many Soviet officials, including especially Andropov, were more scared of the possibility of war, including nuclear war, with the United States and NATO from 1981 to 1983 than during the 1970s or thereafter. See: Benjamin B. Fischer, A Cold War Conundrum: The 1983 Soviet War Scare (Langley, VA: CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1997); Benjamin B. Fischer, “Scolding Intelligence: The PFIAB Report on the Soviet War Scare,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 31, No. 2 (2018), pp. 102–115; Benjamin B. Fischer, “The Soviet–American War Scare of the 1980s,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 19, No. 3 (2006), pp. 480–518.

7 Handwritten notes, “Beratung b. Gen. Minister m. Stellv. Vorsitz. d. KfS d. UdSSR, Gen Krjutschkow,” 23 June 1981, Bundesarchiv (BA), Ministry for State Security (MfS), ZAIG, Nr. 5381, p. 1.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid., p. 3.

11 “On the Tasks of the State Security Organs in Light of the Decisions of the XXVI Congress of the CPSU.” Report by Comrade Yu. V. Andropov at the All-Union Conference of the Leadership Structure of the Organs and Troops of the KGB of the USSR, 25 May 1981. The speech is reprinted in the top secret, internal KGB publication: Dei͡atel′nost′ Organov Gosudarstvennoĭ Bezopasnosti SSSR na Sovremennovm Ėtape: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov [Activities of the State Security Organs of the USSR at the Current Stage: A Collection of Documents and Materials; henceforth, DOGB SSSR], Part 2 (Moscow: Redakt͡sionno-izdatel′skiĭ otdel, VKSh KGB, 1983), in HDA SBU, F. 13, op. 1, spr. 678, pp. 34–52.

12 Handwritten notes, “Beratung b. Gen. Minister m. Stellv.,” pp. 1–3.

13 Andropov, “On the Tasks of the State Security Organs in Light of the Decisions of the XXVI Congress of the CPSU,” pp. 38–39.

14 “Report of the Member of the Politburo of the CPSU CC [Central Committee], Chairman of the Committee for State Security of the USSR, Comrade Yu. V. Andropov, at the Meeting of KGB Party Activists,” 25 March 1981, in DOGB SSSR, Part 2, p. 22.

15 Stasi Note on Meeting Between Minister Mielke and KGB Chairman Andropov, 11 July 1981, trans. Bernd Schaefer, in Wilson Center Digital Archive, last modified 2 November 2012, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/115717

16 Ibid.

17 “Hinweise für Gespräche in Moskau (Juli 1981)” (n.d.), BA, MfS, ZAIG, Nr. 5169, pp. 6, 9.

18 Andropov, “On the Tasks of the State Security Organs in Light of the Decisions of the XXVI Congress of the CPSU,” pp. 47–50.

19 Memorandum from V. Stárek, Department 36 of the I. Line of the State Security, to K. Sochor, Head of the I. Line of State Security, 9 September 1981, Archiv Bezpečnostních Složek (Security Services Archive, ABS), Prague, Archival Signature (Archivní ˇcíslo, A. č.) 81282/108, p. 302. Andropov had put things somewhat differently in his speech in May 1981: “Never since the Great Patriotic War and the tensest periods of the ‘Cold War’ has the confrontation with the secret services been as tense as it is now.” Andropov, “On the Tasks of the State Security Organs in Light of the Decisions of the XXVI Congress of the CPSU,” (see fn. 11), p. 51.

20 Memorandum from V. Stárek, 9 September 1981, p. 303.

21 A Bulgarian participant summarized Andropov’s comments: “After briefly reviewing the international context, Andropov stressed that the highest-priority task for the intelligence organs of the socialist countries at the present stage is to prevent the enemy from surprising us with preparations for war or the carrying out of a military adventure, or as he put it: ‘not to end up in a war.’” Note from Vasil Kotzev, Head of the FCD of Bulgarian State Security, to Minister of Internal Affairs D. Stoyanov on the Meeting in Moscow, 28 May 1982, in KGB i DS—Br’zki i zavisimosti [KGB and DS (Bulgarian State Security)—Relationships and Dependencies], edited by Tatyana Kiryakova and Nadezhda Angelova, CD Version (Sofia: Committee for Disclosing the Documents and Announcing the Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens to the State Security and the Intelligence Services of the Bulgarian National Army [CDDAABCSSISBNA], 2010), pp. 1194–1195.

22 Speech of the head of the FCD of the KGB of the USSR at the Moscow Meeting of the Heads of the Foreign-Intelligence Organs of the States of the Socialist Commonwealth in May 1982, ibid., p. 1204.

23 President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, “The Soviet ‘War Scare,’” 15 February 1990, in Jones, ed., Able Archer 83, p. 133.

24 Robert W. Pringle, Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), p. 170.

25 Kryuchkov and some other heads of Soviet-bloc intelligence agencies did begin in the fall of 1981 and early 1982 to instruct their residencies abroad to look for potential intelligence or indicators of a potential U.S. attack, including a nuclear first strike, but there did not appear to be a consistent program or set of indicators. They also did not use the term “operation” or “permanent operational assignment” regarding the prediction of a surprise nuclear strike (RYaN). See, for example: Perspective Plan for the Cooperation between the Intelligence Organs of State Security of the PRB [People’s Republic of Bulgaria] and the USSR for the Period 1981–1985, August 1981, in Kiryakova and Angelova (eds.), KGB i DS, p. 1049; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 583–584.

26 “Notiz über die Gespräche zwischen dem Vorsitzenden des KfS der UdSSR, Genossen Generaloberst FEDORTSCHUK, und dem Minister für Staatssicherheit der DDR, Genosse Armeegeneral MIELKE am 9./10. September 1982,” BA, MfS, ZAIG, Nr. 5383, p. 16.

27 Record of the Head of the 17th Department of the I. Directorate of the [Czechoslovak] State Security Service, Jan Stehn—”Skorepy,” on Negotiations with the Delegation of the FCD on the Issue of Surprise Rocket-Nuclear Attack (NRJN) on December 10–14, 1984, 21 December 1984, in Pavel Žaček, “Vznik operace RJAN: pohled zevnitř. Z dokumentů o Hlavní správě rozvědky KGB SSSR, 1982–1984” [The Emergence of Operation RYaN: A View from Within]. From the documents on the KGB USSR Main Intelligence Directorate, 1982–1984],” in Securitas Imperii Vol. 22, No. 1 (2013), p. 198.

28 “Vermerk über die Ergebnisse der Konsultationen mit Genossen Generalmajor SCHAPKIN, Stellvertreter des Leiters der I. Hauptverwaltung des KfS, und zwei Experten zur Problematik RJAN vom 14. bis 18.8.1984 in Berlin,” 24 August 1984, BA, MfS, ZAIG, Nr. 5384, p. 3.

29 Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 584.

30 Ibid., pp. 582–584; Christoper Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, Comrade Kryuchkovs’s Instructions: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations, 1975–1985 (Stanford: University of California Press, 1993), p. 69.

31 Kryuchkov to London Residency, Permanent operational assignment to uncover NATO preparations for a nuclear missile attack on the USSR, 17 February 1983, in: Andrew and Gordievsky, Comrade Kryuchkovs’s Instructions, p. 69.

32 Ibid., p. 70.

33 Ibid., pp. 71–72.

34 Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 592.

35 Telegram from Bulgarian State Security to its Residencies in NATO countries, 11 January 1983, in: PGU-DS i Varshavskiyat pakt sreshu NATO (1959–1991) [The FCD of Bulgarian State Security and the Warsaw Pact regarding NATO (1959–1991)], DVD Version (Sofia: CDDAABCSSISBNA, 2015), pp. 292–295.

36 Výpis ze zprávy o jednání delegace informační služby I. Hlavní správy KGB SSSR a vedení 17. odboru I. správy SNB z 5. až 9. dubna 1983 s výkladem náčelníka Informačně-analytické správy genmjr. Nikolaje Sergejeviče Leonova o zjišťování příznaků nenadálého jaderného útoku proti Sovětskému svazu a zemím socialistického společenství (Extract from the Report on the Meeting of the Information Service of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB of the USSR and the Leadership of the 17th Department of the First Line of the SNB from 5 to 9 April 1983, with the Presentation of the Head of the Information and Analytical Administration [of the FCD] Major General Nikolai Sergeyevich Leonov on the Detection of Indicators of a Sudden Nuclear Attack against the Soviet Union and the Countries of the Socialist Commonwealth), in Žaček, “Vznik operace RJAN,” pp. 194–195. Previously, the FCD, Leonov said, had sent longer lists of indicators to its residencies in Washington and New York, and they had responded that they would have to give up all other intelligence and operational work if they were to monitor all the indicators that the center had provided. This had led to the decision to limit the tasks for each residency to four to five for the permanent operational assignment RYaN. Ibid.

37 Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 592.

38 Ministry of State Security (Stasi), “About the Talks with Comrade V. A. Kryuchkov,” 7 November 1983, translated by Bernd Schaefer, Wilson Center Digital Archive, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/119320

39 Ibid. Kryuchkov also spoke of “thousands” of indicators that “Chekist” foreign intelligence could use. At another point he told Wolf: “In the First Chief Directorate there exist a large number of thoughts and ideas that fill seven binders.” Ibid.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid.

42 Jones, Able Archer 83, p. 22.

43 Ibid., p. 15.

44 Ministry of State Security (Stasi), “About the Talks with Comrade V. A. Kryuchkov.”

45 Ibid.

46 Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 592.

47 Cf. Jones, Able Archer 83, p. 31.

48 Andrew and Gordievsky, Comrade Kryuchkov’s Instructions, p. 86. Gordievsky was unsettled by the assertion in the telegram that any potential order by the “enemy” (i.e., the United States) to launch a nuclear strike would come only 7 to 10 days before it was implemented. See ibid., p. 85; Jones, Able Archer 83, p. 31. However, Kryuchkov had told Wolf in October that a nuclear strike would be launched within 24 hours of such a decision. Thus, it was crucial, Kryuchkov suggested, to predict such a nuclear strike six to twelve months in advance, based on the enemy’s longer-term preparations. “About the Talks with Comrade V. A. Kryuchkov,” 7 November 1983 (see fn. 38). Jones cites Kryuchkov’s mention of the 24-hour timeframe in his discussion with Wolf, but ignores Kryuchkov’s goal of predicting such a decision six to twelve months in advance (i.e., a much longer time frame, and the actual time frame within which the FCD was working). See Jones, Able Archer 83, p. 32. Jones seems to attribute significance to the fact that the Stasi foreign intelligence’s report regarding the one-on-one discussion between Wolf and Kryuchkov from 4 October was forwarded to the head of the Stasi’s International Department for cooperation with other communist security services on 7 November, “the day Able Archer began.” Ibid. Damm, the head of the Stasi’s International Division, played a very minor role in the Stasi in comparison to Wolf, who not only headed Stasi foreign intelligence, but also held the post of deputy minister. The document was clearly a routine communication, and the lateness of its communication to Damm reflected his lower status.

49 Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 600.

50 Kramer, “Die Nicht-Krise um ‘Able Archer 1983,’” pp. 147–148. Based on Gordievsky’s description of the telegram, Gordon Barrass, former chief of the United Kingdom’s Cabinet Office Assessment Staff and erstwhile member of the Joint Intelligence Committee, writes, “The most interesting feature of this telegram was that it was so pathetic. On the one hand, it listed several possible explanations for this so-called alert, one of which was that the countdown to a nuclear strike had begun under the cover of Able Archer. On the other, residencies were instructed to confirm the alert and evaluate the hypotheses.” Barrass, “Able Archer 83,” p. 13.

51 Barrass, The Great Cold War, p. 301; Len Scott, “November 1983: The Most Dangerous Moment of the Cold War?” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 35, No. 1 (2020), p. 137.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Douglas Selvage

Douglas Selvage is a Senior Researcher (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) at the Research Office of the Stasi Records Archive in Berlin. His recent publications include Der »große Bruder«: Studien zum Verhältnis von KGB und MfS 1958 bis 1989 [“Big Brother”: Studies Regarding the Relations between the KGB and Stasi, 1958–89], coedited with Georg Herbstritt, and Staatssicherheit und KSZE-Prozess: MfS zwischen SED und KGB (1972–1989) [State Security and the CSCE Process: The Stasi between the SED and the KGB, 1972–1989], coauthored with Walter Süß. The author can be contacted at [email protected].