In this folder Mitrokhin expresses the KGB’s concerns regarding the potential for Yuri Orlov’s nomination for a Nobel Prize. Orlov was well known in the Soviet Union for his dissident activities and for organizing the Moscow Helsinki Group to monitor Soviet adherence to the 1975 Helsinki Accords. According to Mitrokhin, he openly supported all anti-soviet groups and organized public protests for the Soviet human rights movement. As the KGB was concerned, they made many efforts to take the movement under control, but these did not lead to success. Mitrokhin provides examples of the KGB’s attempts to stop Orlov’s activism.

Mitrokhin states that the West, however, was in extreme support of Orlov’s ideology. In order to help his movement to gain more influence, Western officials nominated Orlov for the Nobel Prize in 1978. The KGB immediately developed a complex plan to assure Nobel officials that Orlov did not deserve the prize and that it would have been unfavorable for the prestige of the Nobel Prize if Orlov was awarded it. Mitrokhin states that KGB chief Yuri Andropov took control over the operation because Orlov winning the prize would have been crucially harmful for the Soviet political system. Mitrokhin provides the detailed plan in this entry.

A KGB resident in Oslo sent an urgent telegram to Moscow on October 27, 1978 stating that Anwar El Sadat and Menachem Begin became laureates of the Nobel Peace prize. Mitrokhin provides full telegram text in this entry and also states that the Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs expressed his satisfaction with the fact that Orlov did not win the prize because it would have negatively affected relations between the two countries.

In folder 35 Mitrokhin discusses the KGB’s assertion of an increase in domestic dissent and unrest in the 1970s and early 1980s as well as the methods the KGB utilized to combat this threat. Soviet intelligence believed that this increase in domestic unrest was due primarily to an increased effort by the United States and its allies to promote internal instability within the USSR. In response, the KGB continued to screen foreigners, increased the harshness of penalties for distribution of anti-Soviet literature, and monitored the activities and temperament of nationalists, immigrants, church officials, and authors of unsigned literature within the Soviet Union. Mitrokhin’s note recounts the KGB’s assertion that foreign intelligence agencies were expanding their attempts to create domestic unrest within the USSR. These activities included the support and creation of dissidents within the Soviet Union, the facilitation of the theft Soviet property such as aircrafts, and the public espousal of a position against Soviet persecution of dissidents and Jews. Responding to public exposure of these activities, the KGB proclaimed its legality and trustworthiness while also beginning to assign some agents verbal assignments without written record.

Vasili Mitrokhin describes the KGB handling of Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky, native of Bembei, Bashkir ASSR. Bukovsky has been under investigation by the KGB since 1959, when he was still in the 10th grade in the Moscow Secondary School No. 59. As a high school student, he authored a journal “Martyr” that contained negative comments about the CPSU. In 1960, he established a youth organization that produced illegal leaflets. Since then, Bukovsky engaged in a number of dissident events and was time and time again warned by the KGB against participating in such activities. Bukovsky continued and in 1963 Miss Stevens, an American citizen, passed to him a copy of a book by Milovan Djilas entitled “The New Class.” Bukovsky proceeded to disseminate it. On 1 June, 1963 criminal charges were pressed against Bukovsky following his arrest. It was decided to enroll him at the psychiatric clinic, the custody was first granted to his parents. Bukovsky continued his anti-Soviet activity and on 5 December 1965 joined protests in defense of Siniavsky and Daniel. He was interned in a psychiatric clinic that month. In the fall of 1966, Bukovsky, Daniel and Gubanov established a youth organization called “Avangard.” In 1967, Bukovsky was arrested once again. At trial, he spoke against Article 70 and 190 of the Constitution, stating they were ambivalent, vague and exploited to persecute political opponents of the CPSU. In 1972, Bukovsky was sentenced and sent to a labor camp. In 1976, he was exchanged for Corvalan, the leader of the Communist Party of Chile.