KGB

Mária Palasik - From The Budapest Dance Palace to the Autopsy Table: The Lapusnyik Case, or the Defection and Death of a Secret Agent at the Beginning of the Kádár Era
Abstract

In the summer of 1962, the political police had an extraordinary case in Hungary. Béla Lapusnyik, a police sergeant with the Interior Ministry, committed the crime of illegally crossing the border to Austria during the night of 8 May. His act was regarded as treason and generated a series of actions at the ministry. Leaders feared that Lapusnyik could give information to Austrian intelligence, counterintelligence, and even military counterintelligence. This could lead to dangerous consequences for the Hungarian secret agencies. Everybody was certain that Lapusnyik would indeed give sensitive information to Austrian state security, although, ultimately, he could not, as he died under suspicious circumstances in a Vienna hospital. Today, it is certain that Lapusnyik was killed at the behest of the KGB. We do not know who the killer was, but it is already known that Lapusnyik was murdered using a particular liquid poison, called DMS (dimethyl sulphate), which was designed to evaporate from the body’s system by the time of his death. This would explain why Austrian autopsy experts were unable to establish poisoning as the cause of death. The poison was created in a special Soviet laboratory. Under the bureaucracy of the Hungarian Interior Ministry, the everyday life of the political police was well‑documented. The investigation of this case shows how the framework of State Security could provide great opportunities for a young man and yet radically corrupt his personality. This study concentrates on the investigation of Hungarian State Security services. As background, the author also introduces Béla Lapusnyik, his life, family origin, career, and other details about his illegal border crossing. In conclusion, it summarizes the known facts about how a healthy young man could die as a prisoner of the Austrian state police (Staatspolizei, STAPO).

Witold Bagieński - The Polish People’s Republic and KGB Intelligence Cooperation after 1956
Abstract

Throughout the communist period in Poland, security organs were under the influence and supervision of the Soviet Union. At the beginning of 1957, it was agreed that the KGB Liaison Group would be established in Warsaw. Its role was to coordinate cooperation between security authorities. Despite the change in the situation after 1956, the KGB continued to influence the direction of the Polish Security Service. One of the most important fields of cooperation was intelligence. Department I of the Interior Ministry cooperated with the First Main Directorate of the KGB in many fields. The basis for cooperation was the exchange of information and some of the documents obtained, which were mainly about political and economic issues. Scientific and technical intelligence was also an important field of cooperation. The security authorities of the Polish People’s Republic were not treated by the KGB as an equal partner. Very often they were obliged to give more than they received in return. From the mid-1950s onwards, on the KGB’s initiative, cyclical conferences were convened for the intelligence services of Eastern Bloc countries. Contacts with the KGB ceased in the 1990s.

Evgenia Lezina - Soviet State Security and the Regime of Secrecy: Guarding State Secrets and Political Control of Industrial Enterprises and Institutions in the Post‑Stalin Era
Abstract

Having been entrusted with securing secrets in the early years of Soviet rule, the secret police remained the chief guardian of state secrets and the main driving force behind the regime of secrecy in the USSR until its collapse in 1991. This paper explores the development of the secrecy regime in the Soviet Union from the late 1950s until the late 1980s, focusing on the relevant functions, methods, and practices of regime-secrecy bodies during this period. It also addresses a double function of state security agencies at industrial enterprises and institutions as a secret police conducting counterintelligence servicing and performing surveillance over employees on the one hand, and acting as a guardian and organizer of the secrecy regime on the other. Additionally, it examines the role and implications of the personnel security screening system, which was a part of securing state secrets. This study is largely based on archival sources from the collections of the Lithuanian Special Archives in Vilnius, the archives of the State Security Service of Ukraine in Kyiv, and the Communist Party archives in Moscow.

Jens Gieseke - The Post‑Stalinist Mode of Chekism: Communist Secret Police Forces and Regime Change After Mass Terror
Abstract

The occasion of the centenary of establishing the Soviet secret police known as the “Cheka” encourages a closer examination of the “Soviet-type” of the secret police in terms of their long-term development. Secret police forces were evidently of constitutive importance to the communist regimes. At the same time, their role was subject to considerable change and variation concerning their role in the fabric of the communist power apparatuses, their methods, and the groups in society against which they were directed. In the first part of this study, four to five phases of the Soviet secret police development and their “brother organs” in the Eastern Bloc are outlined as a working hypothesis. In the second part, continuity and change will be exemplified by the transition to the third, “post-Stalinist” phase, focusing on the cases of the Soviet Committee for State Security (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, KGB) and the East German Ministry of State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS) in terms of their role within the fabric of power relations, their self-images and public representations, and their practices of violent persecution and preventive surveillance.