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  Copyright © 2019 by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan

  Cover design by Pete Garceau

  Cover photographs: Top © Historia/Rex/Shutterstock; Middle. Courtesy of the author; Bottom © AP/Rex/Shutterstock; Skyline illustrations © iStock/Getty Images

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  First Edition: October 2019

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Soldatov, Andreĭ, author. | Borogan, I. (Irina), author.

  Title: The compatriots : the brutal and chaotic history of Russia’s exiles, emigrés, and agents abroad / Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan.

  Other titles: Brutal and chaotic history of Russia’s exiles, emigrés, and agents abroad

  Description: First edition. | New York : PublicAffairs, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019021344 (print) | LCCN 2019980308 (ebook) | ISBN 9781541730168 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781541730182 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Russians—Foreign countries—History. | Refugees—Soviet Union. | Political refugees—Foreign countries. | Secret service—Soviet Union. | Soviet Union—Politics and government.

  Classification: LCC DK35.5 .S65 2019 (print) | LCC DK35.5 (ebook) | DDC 305.8917/1—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019021344

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019980308

  ISBNs: 978-1-5417-3016-8 (hardcover), 978-1-5417-3018-2 (ebook)

  E3-20190823-JV-NF-ORI

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Soviet/Russian Foreign Intelligence Organizations and Departments in Charge of Keeping Tabs on Russian Émigrés

  Cast of Characters

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  PART I: SPIES AND DISSIDENTS

  1 Talent Spotting

  2 Identifying Targets

  3 The Cost of Love

  4 “The Horse”

  5 “The Mother”

  6 Operations Area: United States

  7 The Tide Turns

  8 Warring Narratives

  9 Stalin’s Daughter

  10 Now It’s Official

  11 Bear in the West

  12 The KGB Thinks Big

  13 Moving People

  14 The Other Russia

  PART II: MARKET FORCES

  15 Moving the Money

  16 The Scheme Devised

  17 Muddying the Waters

  18 Some Habits Die Hard

  19 Cooperation and Rebranding

  PART III: PUTIN’S PROJECT

  20 A Fresh Start

  21 The Siege

  22 Getting Out the Message

  23 The Crisis

  24 Courting the White Church

  25 Reunion

  PART IV: MEANS OF OUTREACH

  26 Political Emigration: Restart

  27 Illusions Crushed

  28 “We Need Some Targeted Hits”

  29 Desperate Times

  30 When the Party’s Over

  31 Eliminating the Problem

  32 Chasing a Poison

  33 Everything Old Is New Again

  34 The Fears of the Super-Rich

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More

  About the Authors

  Also by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan

  Notes

  Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.

  Tap here to learn more.

  SOVIET/RUSSIAN FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE ORGANIZATIONS AND DEPARTMENTS IN CHARGE OF KEEPING TABS ON RUSSIAN ÉMIGRÉS

  • 1920—INO (Inostranny Otdel; Foreign Department) at Cheka (the All Russian Extraordinary Commission, known as the Soviet secret police, established in 1917)

  • 1922—INO at GPU (Glavnoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie; Chief Political Department) and then at OGPU (Obyedinyonnoye Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravleniye; Joint State Political Department)

  • 1930—Administration for Special Tasks at INO of OGPU and the Fifth Section at INO (emigration)

  • 1934—INO, renamed in 1939 into the Fifth Department at NKVD (Narodny Kommisariat Vnutrennikh Del; People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs)

  • 1941—First Directorate at NKGB (Narodny Kommisariat Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti; People’s Commissariat of State Security)

  • 1945—Ninth Section (Emigration) at First Directorate at NKGB

  • 1946—Section 10-A (Emigration) at the First Directorate of the MGB (Ministerstvo Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti; Ministry of State Security)

  • 1947—Section EM at KI (Komitet Informatsii; Information Committee)

  • 1949—Third Section at First Directorate (External Counterintelligence) of the MGB

  • 1951—Third Section at First Chief Directorate (Foreign Intelligence) of the MGB

  • 1953—Ninth and then Fifth Section (External Counterintelligence) at the Second Chief Directorate of the MVD (Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del; Interior Ministry)

  • 1954—Ninth Section within the First Chief Directorate (Foreign Intelligence) of the KGB

  • 1963—Second Service (External Counterintelligence) of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB

  • 1974—Department K (External Counterintelligence) of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB. The Fourth Section of Department K was specifically tasked to deal with the émigré organizations.

  • 1975—Nineteenth Section within the First Chief Directorate of the KGB

  • 1991—SVR (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki; Foreign Intelligence Service or External Intelligence)

  • 1992—GRU (Glavnoye Razvedivatelnoe Upravlenie–GRU VS Rossii; military intelligence agency known as the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia)

  • 1995—FSB (Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti; Federal Security Service)

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  LEADERS OF NATIONS

  Joseph Stalin

  Leonid Brezhnev

  Richard Nixon

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Boris Yeltsin

  Vladimir Putin

  STALIN’S SECRET SERVICES

  Vasily Zarubin, chief of station in the United States

  Mikhail Trilisser, head of the Foreign Intelligence Department (INO)

  Nahum Eitingon, chief operative in charge of high-profile assassinations

  Liza Gorskaya, operative; Zarubin’s third wife

  Yakov Blyumkin, operative, head of illegal station in Istan
bul

  Jacob Golos, head of Soviet spy ring in New York

  Earl Browder, chairman of Communist Party in the United States

  George Koval, “illegal” in New York

  Caridad Mercader and Ramon Mercader, Eitingon’s assets

  COMMITTEE OF STATE SECURITY (KGB)

  Yuri Andropov, chairman

  Vladimir Kryuchkov, head of the foreign intelligence branch—the First Chief Directorate—and later chairman

  Leonid Shebarshin, head of the First Chief Directorate

  Alexander Vassiliev, KGB operative, journalist, and later historian

  Yuri Sagaidak, KGB operative, journalist, and later financier

  YELTSIN’S SECRET SERVICES

  Evgeny Primakov, head of SVR Foreign Intelligence agency

  Yuri Kobaladze, SVR’s head of public relations

  Alexander Litvinenko, FSB officer, refugee in London, and author

  PUTIN’S SECRET SERVICES

  Sergei Naryshkin, head of SVR Foreign Intelligence agency

  Sergei Tretyakov, SVR deputy head of station in New York

  Anna Chapman, SVR agent in the United States (New York)

  Mikhail Semenko, SVR agent in the United States (Washington, DC)

  Evgeny Buryakov, SVR operative, New York station

  EITINGON/ZARUBIN FAMILY

  Zoya Zarubina, spy and translator; daughter of Vasily Zarubin and stepdaughter of Nahum Eitingon

  Alexei Kozlov, financier, inmate, activist, and Russian-German businessman; grandson of Zoya Zarubina

  Olga Romanova, journalist and head of Russia Behind Bars; wife of Alexei Kozlov

  KARA-MURZA FAMILY

  Vladimir Kara-Murza (senior), journalist and NTV news anchor

  Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr., journalist and politician; son of Vladimir Kara-Murza

  Zhenya Kara-Murza, wife of Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr.

  AMERICANS

  George Kennan, diplomat, historian, and author of the “containment” policy

  Henry Kissinger, secretary of state

  Louis Fischer, journalist

  George Fischer, author and researcher; son of Louis Fischer

  Bert Jolis, Office of Strategic Service veteran, diamond trader, and fund-raiser for Resistance International

  Bill Browder, investor, anti-Kremlin campaigner; grandson of Earl Browder

  RUSSIAN OPPOSITION

  Boris Nemtsov, Yeltsin’s vice prime minister and politician

  Vadim Prokhorov, lawyer to Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr.; no relation to Mikhail Prokhorov

  COMPATRIOTS

  Leon Trotsky, founder of the Red army and Stalin’s archenemy in exile

  Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin’s daughter and writer

  Mikhail Baryshnikov, dancer

  Alexander Solzhenitsyn, soldier, prisoner, and writer

  Natasha Gurfinkel, senior vice president of Bank of New York

  Vladimir Galitzine, aristocrat and vice president of Bank of New York

  Lucy Edwards, vice president of Bank of New York

  Vladimir Bukovsky, dissident and founder of Resistance International

  Mikhail Tolstoy, member of parliament and organizer of the First Congress of Compatriots

  Alexei Jordan, aristocrat, financier, and leader of the United Russian Cadet Corps in the United States

  Boris Jordan, financier and media manager; son of Alexei Jordan

  Peter Holodny, priest, financier, and treasurer of the White Church

  Masha Gessen, journalist, author, and LGBTQ activist

  Masha Slonim, journalist and granddaughter of Stalin’s foreign minister

  Ilya Zaslavskiy, oil company manager and activist at Free Russia Foundation

  Garry Kasparov, chess champion and opposition activist

  OLIGARCHS

  Boris Berezovsky, go-between and go-getter, and former ally of Putin exiled to London

  Vladimir Gusinsky, media magnate and founder of NTV and Russian Television International; in exile

  Mikhail Khodorkovsky, oil tycoon, prisoner, and leader of Open Russia movement; in exile

  Alexander Lebedev, KGB officer in London, banker, and media magnate in Russia and the United Kingdom

  Mikhail Prokhorov, nickel tycoon, owner of the Brooklyn Nets, media magnate, and owner of Snob (Global Russians club)

  “There is no business like it. We are politicians. We are soldiers. And, above all, we are actors on a wonderful stage.”

  LEONID NIKITENKO,

  a chief of the Nineteenth Section of the KGB, in charge of recruiting agents in the Russian émigré communities in the West

  “A strong diaspora can only exist if there is a strong state.”

  VLADIMIR PUTIN,

  president of Russia, former colonel of the KGB

  INTRODUCTION

  Toward the end of December 2017, a skinny, young Russian with expressive eyes, a stubbly beard, and a slight limp walked into a coffee shop in downtown Washington, DC. His name was Vladimir Kara-Murza (junior), and he was a Russian political émigré and anti-Kremlin lobbyist. He had lived in DC for years but often traveled back and forth to Moscow, irritating the Kremlin. On a trip to Moscow in spring 2015, he had been poisoned and nearly died. During his treatment in a Washington hospital, he received a visit from an FBI agent who said he had been assigned to Kara-Murza’s case. When Kara-Murza recovered, he flew back to Moscow, and in February 2017 he was poisoned a second time, experiencing identical symptoms. That was why, ten months later, he was still limping.

  The young Russian took a seat next to the window and a minute later was joined by a tall man in his midforties: the FBI agent. The agent had called for a meeting, promising to bring Kara-Murza some information about his poisoning. At this point, they had known each other for two years.

  “We think we found the active substance you were poisoned with,” the FBI agent said.

  He told Kara-Murza that the agency was preparing a detailed report and explained that the heads of the Russian secret services would be soon visiting Washington: “We are going to hand the report over to them—that there was an attempted murder of a Russian citizen on Russian territory for political reasons.”

  The FBI’s intent, the agent implied, was to send a message that they were not very happy about politically motivated poisonings in Moscow. But some in the agency were more troubled by the strange events happening on their own turf—in Washington.

  A year and a half earlier, a Russian former press minister and presidential aide had been brutally beaten near his Dupont Circle hotel. He managed to make it to his room and then died there, not far from the coffee shop where Kara-Murza and the FBI agent were sitting. Those who had beaten the ex-minister to death were never found, and the rumor in Moscow was that he had fallen out of line with the Kremlin just before the incident.

  The FBI wanted to make its concerns clear to the Russian intelligence community, and the upcoming visit provided a unique opportunity. The heads of all three major Russian spy agencies—SVR, the foreign intelligence agency; FSB, the domestic security service; and the GRU, military intelligence—had never before traveled together to a Western capital, but they planned to do exactly that at the end of January 2018.

  Three weeks after their coffee shop meeting, the FBI agent called Kara-Murza again. He didn’t offer to meet this time. He just told Kara-Murza that laboratory results on the poison were inconclusive and that the plan to deliver a report had been called off. Then he hung up.

  The heads of the three Russian intelligence agencies flew to Washington, as planned, at the end of January. It was very unlikely, given the circumstances, that the report on Kara-Murza was mentioned at the highly secret meeting.1 The following month, another Russian, former spy Sergei Skripal, would be poisoned in Britain by two agents of Russian military intelligence.

  Almost thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and twenty since Vladimir Putin came to power in the Kremlin, Russians abroad were suddenly in the cross
hairs.

  In January 2018, as the heads of all three Russian spy agencies went to Washington, we went to Paris.

  In the heavy rain, across the enormous Champ de Mars, the Eiffel Tower seemed unreachable. We were standing at the epicenter of France’s military glory: behind us stood the stately classic complex of the École-Militaire—the famous center for French military education—and all around us the avenues were named after French marshals.

  We decided to keep walking. It was a nice walk, even in the rain; after the winter in Moscow, it felt good to see something other than snow. From the Champ de Mars we headed down the Avenue Rapp—named after a Napoleonic general who led an attack at Austerlitz that completely decimated the Russian emperor’s elite Chevalier Guard. Our destination was the Pont de l’Alma, a bridge named after a Crimean War battle in which an expeditionary French and British force defeated the Russian army.

  But our intentions for sightseeing were not historical in nature. Right at that junction stands a brand-new complex: four buildings with facades covered in beige limestone. The building in the middle, topped by five onion-shaped domes, is the Holy Trinity Cathedral—part of the Russian Orthodox Spiritual and Cultural Center.

  We wanted to see it because although the center had been in operation for only two years, it had already sparked large-scale “spy mania.” Among the rumors circulating was that the French counterintelligence services had surrounded the complex with jamming devices to prevent the Russians from using the center’s facilities for electronic eavesdropping. And we knew that the officials at the French Foreign Ministry, located on the nearby Quai d’Orsay, were pissed off by the Russian government’s request that the center’s employees be granted diplomatic immunity.

  We entered through the main doors. Two bulky security guards told us—very politely and in Russian—to open our bags. They checked the insides thoroughly.

  We crossed the main hall and entered an internal courtyard, where the rain was still coming down. But when we tried to sneak into the next building, we were stopped; a man appeared from nowhere and gestured at us to stop and go back. It was clear that we had entered an area that was under careful watch. In an instant, we were struck by that familiar feeling of being on Russian territory—specifically, the territory of a Russian government institution abroad.