Soviet Spies Trivia Quiz

Answer: Cheka

In order to prevent a counter-revolution Dzerzhinsky adopted terror tactics, a position supported by Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. Thousands were executed. The Okhranka, by the way, was the tsarist secret police while the OGPU and KGB were later incarnations of the Soviet security apparatus. The Cheka was originally known as the Vecheka.

Answer: Richard Sorge

When Sorge was captured by the Japanese, they proposed to exchange him (the two countries weren't yet at war) but the Soviet embassy denied any knowledge. Sorge was executed in 1944. Obviously, the information he supplied about the Nazi invasion of the USSR went to waste.

Answer: Lavrenty Beria

Beria, too, was executed but not until after Stalin's death in 1953. He made a bid for ultimate power in the USSR but was defeated by a coalition that included Khrushchev.

Answer: Yury Andropov

Andropov was KGB head from 1967 until 1982 when he became general secretary until his death 15 months later. In the 1950s he was the USSR's ambassador to Hungary and played a major role in coordinating the Soviet invasion of that country. Vladmir Putin, who was appointed President of Russia in 1999 and elected to the office in 2000, also had officially worked for the KGB, having retired in 1990.

Answer: Amtorg

The Amtorg Trading Company in New York was a handy cover for KGB agents. KGB agents also frequently used TASS (the Soviet news agency) as well as more conventional diplomatic covers. L. Ron Hubbard, the author of "Dianetics", was offered a research job by Amtorg.

Answer: Klaus Fuchs

Other known Soviet spies who worked at Los Alamos during World War II are Theodore Hall and David Greenglass, the brother of Ethel Rosenberg. Fuchs' espionage is credited with saving the Soviets at least one year's work and a great deal of money in developing the atomic bomb.

Answer: Anthony Blunt

Blunt, Philby, Burgess, and Maclean attended Cambridge together and all passed information to the Soviets. Maclean and Burgess were diplomats, Philby was a high-ranking intelligence officer and Blunt was a respected art historian.

Answer: John Walker, Jr.

Walker had retired from the US Navy by the time of his arrest in 1985. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. His son Michael and his brother Arthur were also convicted of charges related to their sale of information to the Soviets.

Answer: Christopher Boyce

Long-time friends Christopher Boyce and Andrew Daulton Lee sold spy satellite information to the Soviets. After his conviction Boyce escaped from prison. Apparently, he was aided in his escape by the prison administration showing the movie "Escape From Alcatraz" from which Boyce borrowed the idea of making a paper maché dummy head to leave in his bed while he escaped. Further, books he'd read in the prison library had informed him about what plants were safe to eat in the wild while he hid from authorities.

He was eventually recaptured.

Answer: Aldrich Ames

Aldrich Ames was the son of a CIA analyst. During the 1970s he was involved in several high-level cases, including the defection of Soviet ambassador Arkady Nikolaevich Shevchenko to the USA. In the 1980s Ames sold information on 25 CIA agents working in the Soviet Union. One, a diplomat, was a personal friend of Ames'.

Answer: death to spies

Smersh was absorbed into the NKVD in 1946. A rather obscure outfit, it is mostly remembered because Ian Fleming used the name in his James Bond novels. Bizarrely, while researching this question the name L. Ron Hubbard came up again. Apparently he believed that Smersh was part of an anti-Scientology conspiracy. See a 1971 memo called "Notes on Smersh" at:
http://www.xenu.net/archive/go/go070571/go070571.htm

Answer: SVR

SVR stands for Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, meaning Foreign Intelligence Service. It was the first element of the KGB to establish a separate identity. The Stasi (Staatsicherheit or "State Security") was the East German secret police and Abwehr was Nazi military intelligence.

The FSB (Federal'naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti or Federal Security Service) is responsible for Russian internal security.

Answer: honey trap

An example of a honey trap is the case of Clayton J. Lonetree, a US marine assigned to the U.S. embassy in Moscow. He confessed in 1987 to passing secrets to his girlfriend who in turn passed the information to her KGB control officer. An account of a failed honey trap was reported in Pravda.

Indonesian President Ahmed Sukarno was clandestinely filmed by the KGB in what most would consider a compromising situation. When shown the video, Sukarno misinterpreted the blackmail attempt as a gift and asked for copies to take home.

This is odd considering that according to the Christian Science Monitor (March 1, 2002) the CIA made a pornographic film with a Sukarno look-alike to discredit him with Muslims.

Answer: GRU

The GRU (Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye or Central Intelligence Office) is still in existence, providing the Russian military with information. Its origins date back to the Russian Civil War. According to Britain's internal security agency, the MI5, the GRU's intelligence activity in the UK has remained constant since the end of the Cold War.

Answer: Vasili Mitrokhin

The book is "The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB". Among the revelations in the book: The KGB engineered a disinformation campaign linking the CIA to the assassination of John F. Kennedy and another campaign to label J. Edgar Hoover as a homosexual. Less successful was the miscalculated attempt to portray Martin Luther King as an "Uncle Tom".

Interestingly, Mitrokihn first approached the CIA with the material but was turned away. He then went to the British, who spirited Mitrokhin and his family out of Moscow.