Secrecy and the Soviet State

The Soviet Union was one of the most secretive states that ever existed. Mark Harrison explores how this system of secrecy worked and uncovers how secrecy served to both strengthen, and weaken, the Soviet state.

To register for the Book Launch on 5 October 2023, 17:30 at 10-11 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5AH

Click hereLink opens in a new window

Soviet secretive state

Every government has its secrets, but the Cold War saw two different approaches. In the Western liberal democracies there were military and financial secrets, but journalists, campaigners, and politicians pushed continually at the limits. The media provided a ready market for leaks and scandals. The boundaries of the secret sphere and the rules that govern it were mostly public information to be debated and contested, sometimes in the courts. Many Western states developed Freedom of Information laws that allowed citizens to demand information. A degree of secrecy may have been necessary, but it was seen as a necessary evil.

The Soviet Union pioneered another approach. Everything was secret unless the government authorized its disclosure. Below a handful of the highest officials, no one had the right to know anything; there was only need-to-know. Significantly, secrecy applied not only to specific facts or documents but also to the rules of access and disclosure, which were never debated or contested outside the state’s innermost councils.

Its “regime of secrecy,” made the Soviet Union the most secretive state that ever existed.

Four pillars of Soviet secrecy

My book describes “four pillars” that upheld Soviet secrecy. These were the state monopoly of production and communication; comprehensive censorship; a ruling party committed to “conspirative” norms of behaviour; and a secret police, the KGB, that supervised the security of government information in every place of work and leisure.

The resulting secretiveness had many drawbacks. For the officials inside the system, working with the rules for secure communication and storage of secret documents was complex and time-consuming. I call this the “secrecy tax” because complying with the rules made government business much more costly and slowed it down. My book shows that fear was a factor, too: the fear of accidentally breaking the rules rose and fell but could be paralysing at times.

Among the negative consequences of the secretive state was a highly conformist elite. The aim was something often stigmatized today as “groupthink”: the communist party leaders feared that nearly any kind of clash of ideas, values, or objectives, could undermine them if it welled up from below. Only the leaders could initiate a change of course, and then the followers should fall into line. Groupthink was achieved partly by censoring all kinds of facts or expressions that might discredit the party orthodoxy.

The role of the KGB

Because the Soviet elite was continually renewed by recruitment and promotion, another important step was to filter out anyone with ideas or knowledge that might present a challenge. The work of filtering was done by the KGB. The opportunity was presented by the need to vet the loyalty of every candidate for recruitment or promotion into a position of managing or training others, because all such positions required access to secret government instructions or information, and this extended to every teacher and every workshop chief or head of office, however minor. The means of vetting was the KGB files on tens of millions of citizens with their personal information, including any hint of compromising evidence (“kompromat”).

Personal facts considered to be compromising were varied. Directly compromising were reports of a bad attitude to party leaders or policies or of unauthorized contacts with foreigners. A prison record or, in the Western borderlands, a war record suggesting cooperation with the German occupation authorities was also bad. A family connection to relatives who had resisted Soviet occupation or fled to the West was also compromising. Using such reports in its files (which were secret, of course), the KGB excluded anyone who seemed to have a different family background, life experience, or opinions from the access to secrets that any position of responsibility required.

My book looks carefully at the role of undercover informers. The KGB engaged in massive undercover surveillance because ordinary people with political reservations about communist rule were secretive and did not talk freely other than to trusted friends, whom the KGB then targeted for recruitment.

The vetting process was another secret. Anyone could guess that the KGB held their personal information, but no one ever knew exactly what, and no one could be sure that their career was blocked by the KGB or by some other factor. In any case, curiosity about secret matters was also frowned upon and might be regarded as further compromising evidence.

Another use of kompromat was to control people. My book looks carefully at the role of undercover informers. The KGB engaged in massive undercover surveillance because ordinary people with political reservations about communist rule were secretive and did not talk freely other than to trusted friends, whom the KGB then targeted for recruitment. Some informers cooperated willingly. In other cases, while pure coercion was rare, a nudge was sometimes productive: the KGB reminded them that the existence of compromising evidence made them vulnerable. In turn, undercover surveillance spread low trust through society.

Soviet leaders and secrecy

The Soviet elite was not only selected for conformity. It was also uninformed. Although increasingly educated, Soviet officials and managers were denied a vast range of information about the outside world and their own country. An example discussed in my book is the Soviet Union’s defence costs. In the post-war period, Soviet leaders pursued a twin-track policy of negotiating arms control abroad while rearming at home. They overcame the obvious clash by arming in secret while secretly understating the defence budget. The concealment was so intense that by the 1980s not even the top Soviet leaders knew what their country was really spending on defence. This became highly damaging in the international arena: it was obvious to everyone that Soviet diplomats based their country’s supposed commitment to peace on a lie, but a new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, although genuinely committed to peace, could not tell the truth because it was so buried in secrecy that no one could find it.

Secrecy/capacity trade-off

To summarize, the Soviet state had seemingly unprecedented capabilities based on its near monopoly of productive capital, monolithic authority, and secretive decision making. But behind the scenes, Soviet secrecy was double-edged: it raised transaction costs, incentivized indecision, promoted groupthink and ignorance, eroded citizens' trust, and damaged the Soviet Union’s ability to negotiate abroad. The result was what my book calls the secrecy/capacity trade-off – a bargain in which Soviet leaders accepted the loss of considerable state capacity as the cost of assuring their own hold on power.

Secrecy in Russia today

Concluding, my book looks at secrecy in Russia today. The intense secrecy of Soviet times was achieved by centralized control of printing presses, radio and TV stations, and national postal and telephone landline services. In the digital age of peer-to-peer information sharing and social media, that direct control has gone. Today’s despots survive by other means, relying on indirect pressure and disinformation. Still, the secrecy/capacity trade-off continues to operate. With more transparent decision making, Russia’s soldiers would not have invaded Ukraine thinking they were on an exercise, and President Putin would not have sent them into battle believing that he could win the war in three days.

About the author

Mark Harrison is Emeritus Professor and former Head of Department of Economics, University of Warwick. Please visit his staff profile page, his blog or his Twitter account @mark4harrison.

Secret Leviathan is available from Combined Academic Publishers (use HARRISON20 at checkout for a 20% discount) or on Amazon Kindle.