In the late 1950s, Nikita Khrushchev’s policies opened the Soviet Union to foreign visitors. The large influx of Western journalists, students, and tourists necessitated changes in the KGB standard operating procedures. More sophisticated methods of surveillance and counterintelligence collection were required. Special units were created to study how the KGBs of the Soviet Republics coped with the emerging challenges.
One of these units was set up at the headquarters of the KGB of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic in Vilnius. On September 27, 1960, the unit's high-ranking member, Lt. Colonel Tumantsev, filed a report on the surveillance and other covert measures which the KGB operatives employed during the visits of foreign diplomats and journalists. His top secret report was digitized by the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania in 2012 and is discussed here in English for the first time.[1]
In the report, Tumantsev described the details of two separate operations involving the search of the hotel rooms of the visiting foreigners known in the KGB technical jargon as the Measure “E.” Both operations took place at the Hotel Vilnius in Vilnius. The target of the first operation was the room of Italian journalist Wanda Grawonska[2] who came to Vilnius accompanied by the first secretary of the Italian Embassy in Moscow, Enrico Carrara. The visit in question took place in February 1960.
According to Tumantsev, Carrara was known to the KGB as an officer of the Italian foreign intelligence service and had a “weakness for alcoholic beverages and women,” which the KGB tried to leverage against him. Grawonska was suspected of ties with Stasys Lozoraitis, the former foreign minister of pre-WWII independent Lithuania, who was the head of the anti-Soviet Lithuanian diplomatic service based in Rome. It is clear from the report that Grawonska was perceived by the KGB as more threatening and dangerous than Carrara.
Grawonska’s conduct in Vilnius is described by Tumantsev as highly provocative. According to him, in her conversations with the locals, she made many “libelous” comments about the Soviet government and the socialist system, while at the same time praising the benefits of the bourgeois capitalism. When she met with a Lithuanian Catholic priest, she gave him several copies of the booklet titled “Lithuania and Lithuanians in the Free World,” which Tumantsev condemned for its “anti-Soviet” orientation. Grawonska also irritated the KGB by demonstratively pointing to their external surveillance operatives and trying to escape them by taking a taxi to the suburbs. Most damningly from Tumantsev’s point of view, Grawonska took hundreds of photographs of the daily life in Vilnius. The KGB feared that she would use the photos to give an unflattering portrayal of the Soviet life in her subsequent articles in Western journals and newspapers. To prevent Grawonska from carrying out her ‘nefarious’ design, the decision was made to enter her hotel room and expose (destroy) her film rolls. The question that the KGB needed to work out was how to keep Grawonska away from her room long enough to do so.
For the task of distracting Grawonska, the KGB engaged their agent and informer codenamed NEMAN [the name of the major river]. There is no indication in the report as to who NEMAN was, but it is likely that he was either a journalist or an art critic, somebody with a prominent role in the Vilnius cultural circles. According to Tumantsev, NEMAN was planted to Grawonska during her first visit to Vilnius in January 1960 and managed to gain her trust. He apparently impressed her so much that when she came to Vilnius again in February, she asked to see NEMAN and then introduced him to Carrara. Coached by the KGB, NEMAN invited both Grawonska and Carrara for dinner at the Vilnius Airport restaurant, quite a distance away from the hotel. Familiar with Carrera’s “weakness,” he also invited a well-known theater actress [or ballerina] to accompany them.
Tumantsev reported that the KGB team waited to receive a phone confirmation from their source at the airport that Grawonska and her companions made their dinner orders at the restaurant before two experienced operatives sprang into action. One operative was from the OTO [technical service] and the other from the 2nd Directorate [counterintelligence]. Having obtained the key of Grawonska’s room from a trusted contact at the hotel, they entered the room and methodically exposed all the film rolls they could see lying around. They also discovered that one of Grawonska’s leather bags was tightly packed with about 100 film rolls. They took the bag to another hotel room where they had already brought a portable x-ray machine. When they exposed all the rolls, they returned the bag to the same place in Grawonska’s room. According to Tumantsev, the whole operation took about 2 hours. He noted that the agent NEMAN proved to be a real expert in keeping both Grawonska and Carrara entertained during the dinner, while adding that the warning system had been put in place in case they suddenly decided to return to the hotel.
There is nothing in the report regarding the epilogue of the operation. There is no mention of whether Grawonska noticed that her film rolls were damaged and, if so, how she reacted. For Tumantsev and his KGB unit, the operation was marked down as an unmitigated success.
The second operation Tumantsev described in his report involved the visit to Vilnius of two Japanese diplomats, the first secretary of the Japanese Embassy in Moscow, Hirooka, and the attaché at the Embassy, Tanaka [only their last names are included in the report]. This visit took place in June 1960. Tumantsev noted that before the visit, the Lithuanian KGB was informed by the Second Chief Directorate of the KGB [counterintelligence] that Hirooka was an experienced foreign intelligence officer fluent in Russian language and skilled in using various technical equipment for collecting information about the objects of interest to the Japanese government.
After Hirooka and Tanaka arrived in Vilnius, they were put under around-the-clock surveillance by the KGB. Tumantsev indicated that it was observed that Hirooka spent a lot of time at the hotel writing something in a thick notebook which he later deposited in his bag. The decision was made to gain access to the notebook. Once again, the question was how to keep Hirooka away from his room long enough to do so.
According to Tumantsev, in contrast to the case of Grawonska and Carrera, a different tactic was used this time. Instead of dining and wining the Japanese diplomats, the KGB engaged their agent TSAREV who was introduced to them as a translator and a tourist guide. Using his encyclopedic knowledge of history, TSAREV convinced the diplomats that the town of Trakai would be a great place to visit. Trakai is about 30 kilometers from Vilnius and has been a popular tourist destination for decades due to its medieval architecture. When the diplomats left for Trakai with TSAREV and the taxi driver, who was selected because he was also a trusted KGB contact, the KGB operative team entered Hirooka’s room. They quickly found the notebook and photographed its content which was in Japanese language. In total, there were 92 pages filled with writing, which, according to Tumantsev, were promptly dispatched to the Second Chief Directorate in Moscow. It is also noteworthy that during the drive to Trakai, the taxi driver took the longest possible route, not only to allow more time for the hotel room search, but also to avoid passing near any Soviet military installations.
In conclusion, Tumantsev’s report is just one of many archival testimonies of the methodical nature and thoroughness of the spying on foreign visitors by the regional KGBs of the Soviet republics. As can be seen from the report, external surveillance and hotel room searches were quite common and most local individuals who foreign journalists and diplomats interacted with during their visits were planted by the KGB. Not only was the KGB ready and willing to violate the visitors’ right to privacy but was also on occasion engaged in damaging and destroying their property and equipment. Conveniently for the KGB leadership which wanted to hear only the good news, it seems that the reactions of the affected journalists and diplomats were rarely reported.
[1] “Valstybės saugumo organų operatyvinio darbo patirties tyrimo ir apibendrinimo grupės prie LSSR KGB pirmininko vyr. referento N. Tumancevo pažyma apie asmenų sekimą [The Statement of N. Tumantsev, High-Ranking Officer of the LSSR KGB Operational Work Experience Research Unit, on the Surveillance of Individuals],” F. K-l, ap. 10, b. 275, 1. 73–77. Top Secret. Digitized on February 7, 2012, http://www.kgbveikla.lt/docs/show/261/from:665.
[2] Wanda Grawonska is a well-known Italian journalist. At this time, she is in her 90s and lives in Rome. Her father was a pre-WWII Polish diplomat Jan Grawonski and her maternal grandfather Alfredo Frassati was the founder of the Italian newspaper La Stampa.
