EASTERN AND CENTRAL EUROPE IN THE COLD WAR PERIOD: THE SOVIET MODEL OF INTELLIGENCE STRUCTURES
EASTERN AND CENTRAL EUROPE IN THE COLD WAR PERIOD: THE SOVIET MODEL OF INTELLIGENCE STRUCTURES

Summary/Abstract: An ideological clash between Soviet communism and American anticommunismwas central to the Cold War conflict. American policymakers, such asGeorge Kennan and John Forest Dulles, acknowledged that the Cold War was essentiallya war of ideas; a war largely fought out on two fronts: intelligence and propaganda.Since the late 1940s, in Eastern and Central Europe, institutionalizedintelligence organizations resulted from direct subordination to a foreign state secretservice, the Soviet one. After the World War II the Red Army and NKVD units werepresent at the organizing session of all intelligence services in Eastern and CentralEurope (Bulgarian, Czechoslovak, East German, Hungarian, Polish, and Romanian). Itwas copied the Soviet security apparatus model, their structure and operationalguidelines were based on verbatim translations from Russian documents. This paperaims to provide a short overview of intelligence structures evolutions in Eastern Europeduring the Cold War, in order to highlight some important moments in the history of“institutional (in) dependence” on the Soviet Union for most of these structures.

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