The “KGB Wanted List” and the Evolving Soviet Pursuit of Defectors

Abstract

The 1969 edition of a document known as the “KGB Wanted List” was smuggled to the West in 1972 by a Soviet State Security Committee (KGB) officer who defected. The KGB periodically compiled the list to target people around the world whom the Soviet government accused of violating Soviet law, especially through defection. More than four decades after the 1969 list became available in the West, the Security Service of Ukraine—the main counterintelligence agency in independent Ukraine—declassified a later edition of the KGB list, dated 1979. This article compares these two editions of the list, analyzing the individuals included (and excluded) in each, the judicial sentences passed against subjects, and the KGB organizations responsible for handling their cases. The article shows that the Soviet view of defectors evolved throughout the Cold War and that the KGB was far from omnipotent even on Soviet territory. It further shows that post-Soviet Russia's pursuit of defectors bears many similarities to practices of the Soviet era, with equivalents of the KGB Wanted List reported in Russia today.