After World War I, several communist movements tried to replicate the Bolsheviks’ take-over of Russia in European countries, most importantly and most often in Germany. All failed. As a result, the Soviet leadership and communists worldwide from around 1920 focused more energies on colonized countries, especially in Asia. As most of these seemed to lack the economic and sociopolitical conditions necessary for a communist revolution, the aim was to weaken if not overthrow European imperial rule, serving the interests of both the USSR and the local petit bourgeoisie, peasants, and few industrial workers. The perhaps greatest price was China. Moreover, India was seen to be (exceptionally) ripe for direct communist action.

Communists and some anti-colonial nationalists were also active in and across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, often sharing resources while being networked with the Communist International. Abbreviated as the Comintern (also the Third International), the latter was thekey international communist organization: founded in 1919 in Moscow, headquartered there, and employing through its dissolution in 1943 thousands of professional cadres from around the world, principally from Europe and Asia, as Brigitte Studer’s Reisende der Weltrevolution: Eine Globalgeschichte der Kommunistischen Internationale (2020) shows. Also in the Soviet Union, the year 1920 saw the landmark Congress of the Peoples of the East, in Baku. And in 1921, the Communist University for Laborers of the East (Kommunistichyeskii univyersityet trudyaschikhsya Vostoka, KUTV) opened its doors in Moscow. It became the first full-fledged Soviet training center for Soviet Muslims and for foreign communist cadres, principally from Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, and it impacted Soviet views of the East, as Lana Ravandi-Fadai and Masha Kirasirova have shown in “Red Mecca” (2015) and “The ‘East’ as a Category of Bolshevik Ideology and Comintern Administration” (2017), respectively. The text here is the English translation, published in 1954 in the collection J. V. Stalin: Works: Volume 7, of a Russian text published in 1925 in the principal Soviet newspaper, Pravda, rendering a speech that the 1924-1953 Chairman of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) held to KUTV’s students in 1925.

Cooperative agreement with a focus on shared intelligence work in the "Near East against the US, Britain, the FRG, France, and the other NATO countries, and also against Israel, the Arab countries, and Arab political forces and organizations."

This report emphasizes American propaganda in the Middle East, such as promoting democracy and American way of life, as well as its anti-Soviet propaganda. The report also extensively lists the Americans' participation in the region such as how much money and resources were devoted there, including from private institutions.

Gorbachev and Andreotti discuss issues in the Middle East, including Soviet plans in Afghanistan and a possible international conference on the Middle East.

Brezhnev reports to Honecker on international affairs.

Notes on a meeting in Moscow from March 6-10 between Yasser Arafat & the PLO Delegation and the Soviet government. Arafat was met by Brezhnev, Boris Ponomarev and Andrei Gromyko. Among the issues discussed were the situation in the Middle East, the Soviets desire for Palestine to counter Egypt's "capitulation" to Israel and the U.S. (which Arafat affirmed), tensions in Southern Lebanon and the PLO's increasing desire to further cooperation with Syria and non-Christian Lebanese groups.

Briefing given by V. I. Potapov on the dispute between the USSR and the SSR regarding the historical treatment of Soviet-Romanian relations. The SSR was accused of pursuing an independent foreign policy and offering a bad example for other socialist countries. Some issues examined were: the Romanian position in the Belgrade Negotiations, the RCP attitude towards “Eurocommunism," the Romanian position towards Africa, the Middle East and China and the Moldavian question.

Materials provided by former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin to CWIHP, following the publication of the Working Paper No. 40, "The KGB in Afghanistan." As with all Mitrokhin’s notes, his compilation on Soviet “active measures” in South and Southwest Asia is based on other smuggled-out notes and was prepared especially for CWIHP. Please read the Notes on Sources for information on the nature and limitations of these documents.

The Soviet leadership discusses the state of Soviet foreign policy after the Hungarian crisis and Khrushchev’s visit to the US. Molotov criticizes Khrushchev for recklessness in foreign policy direction. Soviet inroads in the Middle East and the Third World are analyzed. The effects of the crises in Eastern Europe are placed in the context of the struggle against US imperialism.

Information on the results of an analysis of the activities of the KGB residency in Cairo, Egypt from 1972-1976, conducted by KGB Service R. Starting in January 1973, the KGB leadership prohibited the residency from using Egyptian citizens as agents; however the resident in Cairo initiated restrictions on penetration operations earlier, in 1967 and 1968. As a result, by 1977, the residency had no agents in the majority of its intelligence objectives.

In May 1971, after the defeat of the anti-Sadat opposition group “left Nasserists,” the KGB’s leadership role in the organization came to light. In response, President Sadat took steps to curtail the activities of Soviet intelligence in Egypt. The KGB resident in Cairo was forced to strengthen his efforts to obtain information on the intentions of the Egyptian leadership, while improving security for clandestine operations. In 1967, the Centre decided not to task the Cairo residency with collecting information on the United States or China, because its limited resources permitted it to focus only on Egypt’s internal politics, and its relations with the USSR, the United States, Israel, and other Arab states. The prohibition against using Egyptian citizens as agents meant that the residency often had to rely on operational-technical means of collection; however by June 1977, the KGB’s leaders instructed the Cairo resident to select and recruit a well-known Soviet-Arab for use in gathering political information, and active measures.