The Cold War “Chekist community”: Realities and limits of a shared intelligence culture

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During the Cold War, the security services of the socialist dictatorships of the Eastern Bloc were instruments of terror, repression and surveillance of Eastern European societies. Sharing the same Soviet origins, these intelligence services were united by the same paranoid analysis of the world and international relations, based on a binary “friend/enemy” vision and an emphasis on action. Defining themselves as “shield and swords” of the Communist parties, these Chekists shared a professional ethos that made them a secret elite at the service of the global proletarian revolution. From its beginnings in the mid-1950s however, “Chekist International” had great difficulty developing efficient forms of cooperation and exchange, as a lack of trust impeded sharing. In the 1970s and the 1980s, the field of international terrorism illustrated the reality and limits of a Chekist intelligence culture, and it was finally swept away by Mikhail Gorbachev’s new international policy.