A Tale of Two Reforms: KGB Prophylaxis in the Khrushchev and Gorbachev Years

• In Event: KGB Archives: New Directions

Abstract

This paper will examine the fate of a Khrushchev-era innovation in secret policing—the tactic known as “prophylaxis”—during Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms. Ever since the Khrushchev years, the KGB had typically chosen not to arrest low-level political offenders, but to “invite” them to supposedly informal “prophylactic conversations” in which they were warned to change their ways. This tactic was called into question at the dawn of the Gorbachev era. In principle, KGB sources agreed, the secret police’s use of prophylaxis followed the spirit of perestroika, glasnost’, and democratization, since it deemphasized overtly punitive tactics, took on an “educational” character, and focused on the root causes of anti-Soviet activity. In practice, prophylaxis became substantially more controversial soon after Mikhail Gorbachev took power. The number of prophylactic interventions plummeted, and KGB offices launched detailed reviews of past prophylaxis cases to determine whether earlier investigations had been warranted. (In many cases, the KGB found that offenders had been summoned to prophylactic conversations for trivial offenses that often fell outside the jurisdiction of the secret police.) This presentation will show that prophylaxis was always less reformist and humane than its champions claimed—and, more importantly, that as early as 1987, Gorbachev-era KGB officials did not merely return to the rhetoric and politics of the Thaw but instead pushed a series of deeper and more radical reforms of the KGB. In short, the paper will be a case study and comparison of reformist politics and KGB operations during two distinct periods of Soviet history.

Author

• Edward Cohn, Grinnell College