Cold War Cooperation: The KGB and Poland’s Security Service in Operation Kaskada and Operation Kama

Abstract

The increasing tension in international politics during the Cold War increased the importance of intelligence services throughout the world. Security services on both sides of the Iron Curtain were an important tool for gathering information on the enemy and for destroying political opponents. Moscow and its allies readily used their secret services for their purposes, both international and domestic. During the Cold War, the State Committee for Security (KGB) tightened its links to intelligence and counterintelligence services of the Soviet Bloc (SB) countries. One example of such cooperation is the joint operation of the KGB and the SB—Security Service of the Polish People’s Republic—in the 1970s and 1980s, called Operation Kaskada, and its subset, Operation Kama. The KGB and SB actions focused on compromising expat activists of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and on finding their allies in the USSR and Poland. The strategies used by both intelligence services led to closing a courier route from the West into the USSR and to seizing a contingent of documents that Moscow then used expertly for its propaganda and political ends. Given its efficacy, the operative model used by the Soviet intelligence agents is in all probability still used by Russian intelligence and counterintelligence services.