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the KGB an alliance with the Russian chauvinists. And the latter,
for their part, figure that with the aid of the KGB they can take over
power in Russia. The very fact that this process is gradual testifies to
its inevitability and irreversibility- in the foreseeable future, at any
rate .
4. How Many Agents Does
the Committee of State Security Have?
I remember that whenever we Russian writers met with Ameri–
can tourists, there were so many KGB agents around that it seemed
as if there were not two but three groups of people present: the
Americans, the Russians , and the
gebisty.
Whom were the
gebisty
supposed to be watching? The Americans? Yes, of course, but
mostly they were keeping an eye on us Russians, and on our
behavior with foreigners. Incidentally, in KGB lingo meetings with
foreigners are called "contacts," which suggests meetings with people
who have infectious diseases. (In general, medical terminology is
common usage with the KGB people: both they themselves and the
rest of us employ a strictly physiological term for them: "the
organs .")
Likewise, the Soviet borders are protected not so much against
foreign infiltrators as against Soviet citizens, so as to block their
natural exodus from the fatherland.
It
might not be a bad idea, by
the way, if those liberal American senators who want to see free
emigration from Russia were to make some preliminary calculations
(if only by way of comparison with the number of Cuban boat
people) as to the scope of that exodus if the Soviet authorities were to
yield to threats and open the Soviet borders to all those desiring to
leave. I very much fear that free emigration from the Soviet Union
would be a much greater disaster for the United States than for the
USSR.
I would even venture to say that the numerous KGB agents
abroad are primarily serving the internal needs of the Soviet Union.
In other words, they are keeping an eye on one another, and only in
their spare time do they keep tabs on foreigners and things foreign.
This is something I myself was able to observe during several trips
abroad as a tourist. When a group of Soviet tourists travels abroad,
they are enveloped by an especially dense atmosphere of
