No More For The Road

[James G]

Yes, keep 'em coming. Love the fashion in which the story is told and can't wait to find out more about this world you have/are building.

[Dan]

The change in leadership in the Ministry of Security & Internal affairs did little to change things on the ground. The day to day operations of the NKVD and MGB, continued much as before, arrests were ordered, people deported, imprisoned or executed seemingly at a whim. Around the world, the MGB continued to recruit spies, and those spies continued to report back to their handlers.
Behind the scenes, Khrushchev, in his new role as Commissar for Security began a quiet and comparatively bloodless purge of the security services. Anyone that was considered one of "Beria's animals" faced a very stark choice, accept the new order and the new way of doing things, or accept a new, unwelcome and often rather short future.
All of this, as ever was signed off by Stalin himself with little more than a cursory glance, and as with the Great Terror, not a single finger was lifted by the General Secretary or the Politburo to intervene on anyone's behalf.

Deputy General Secretary Malenkov even went as far in his personal journal as to say 'This day has been coming. The actions of the Cheka, we could explain, they were hard but neccessary, the actions of the NKVD under Beria were little more than the sadistic fantasies of a deranged pervert'.

Indeed, from 1948 to 1953, what was later dubbed by some revisionists in the Brezhnev Government as "Stalin's 5 year Security Plan, Khrushchev maneuvered his way to effectively creating a single Security and Intelligence body for the Soviet Union. Although officially there were multiple Agencies, Via deputies, they all came under the personal control of Nikita Khrushchev. It was a control exercised with subtlety that some of his rivals in the Politburo felt Khrushchev incapable of, and indeed, he managed it right under the watchful eye of Stalin, who until then had maintained total control.

On May 2nd 1953, The General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Iosef Vissarionovich Stalin died of a massive coronary heart attack. It took three days for the news to become public, by which time, Georgy Malenkov had been installed as the General Secretary, with Lazar Kaganovich as his deputy. It was a very delicate balancing act. Malenkov required the support of the Armed Forces, to get this, he needed the support of their leader, Marshall of the Soviet Union - Georgy Zhukov. For Kaganovich to maintain his position, he assumed the support of his protege, the Commissar for Security, Nikita Khrushchev. Zhukov and Khrushchev both realised that one could not survive without the other, and so, quietly cooperated, maintaining their own positions almost to the extent that they could ignore the machinations that became virulent in the Post Stalin landscape of the Soviet Union amongst the others. The price for both Zhukov and Khrushchev's support was simple, a seat at the table each.

There were two other figures that moved within the cliques for a short while. Of these, one would align himself openly with the Zhukov/Khrushchev bloc, and the other be more circumspect and appear to fall by the way side. Anastas Mikoyan was a political survivor. Having served under Lenin, and Stalin already, the Armenian was quick to recognise where the power had shifted to, and while he supported Malenkov in some of his efforts to move out from Stalin's shadow, proposing a motion to give the armed forces their own independent intelligence services, (ones that would, on occasion tread on the toes of the KGB, however due to the relationship that existed between Zhukov and Khrushchev, and sensibly, between their successors, this did not result in the sometimes bloody turf wars that other departments engaged in where the only winners were the KGB), he also supported Kaganovich in his moves to unify the internal, (NKVD, later NKGB) and external, (MGB), non military intelligence services into the KGB in 1955. Having identified the power behind the throne, he was initially considered a front runner in the fight to replace Malenkov after his death in 1958. Mikoyan played the long game again, supporting neither Kaganovich or the other potential successor, Nicolai Bulganin.

Kaganovich, himself an old campaigner, quietly began sounding out supporters once he became aware of Malenkov's failing health, and finding only Molotov prepared to support him, he discounted his own chances and resolved to retire at an appropriate moment.
Nicolai Bulganin had briefly been Minister for the Defence of the Union until he was transferred to the Ministry of Finance to make way for Georgy Zhukov on the orders of Malenkov. However, Bulganin very quickly turned his mind to the world of finance and gained some small success. A success however small, was greater than the success of any of his predecessors.

Bulganin's main contribution was, while working with Mikoyan, was to renegotiate the terms of the Finnish war reparations, instead of simply handing raw materials over to the USSR, they negotiated a deal whereby Soviet owned, but Finnish financed factories would be built to process the raw materials into salable goods. After the initial period of reparations had been completed, the Factories were sold at the commercial rate back to the Finnish government, however, part of the deal was that for the next 10 years, a percentage of the profits would be paid directly to the Soviet Government, a deal that finally ended in 1979.
This however was insufficient to gain the position of Premier, as he simply lacked the support needed.
In the end, It was Mikhail Suslov, the chief Ideologue and a political non-entity despite his title and lacking in the skills required to intrigue at this level, that was elected, unanimously, to the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet union.

The factionalism that errupted briefly looked as though it would bring down the Poliburo, or at least upset the foundations that had been laid by Khrushchev and Zhukov, and it was here that Bulganin and Mikoyan chose their time to join the K/Z Axis. As described earlier, Anastas Mikoyan was more circumspect and while he generally voted alongside Zhukov and Khrushchev, it was Bulganin that became the figurehead of the bloc within the Politburo and was quickly elected as Deputy General Secretary.
With stability ensured, at least for the now, Khrushchev felt free enough to embark on what would be termed his greatest work, his finest victory, and a course of action with the potential to plunge the world into a war from which it would never recover, a fear that was partially realised after his death from natural causes in 1972.

[lordroel]

Feb 27, 2018 20:31:11 GMT Dan said:

"The change in leadership in the Ministry of Security & Internal affairs did little to change things on the ground. The day to day operations of the NKVD and MGB, continued much as before, arrests were ordered, people deported, imprisoned or executed seemingly at a whim. Around the world, the MGB continued to recruit spies, and those spies continued to report back to their handlers.
Behind the scenes, Khrushchev, in his new role as Commissar for Security began a quiet and comparatively bloodless purge of the security services. Anyone that was considered one of "Beria's animals" faced a very start choice, accept the new order and the new way of doing things, or accept a new, unwelcome and often rather short future.
All of this, as ever was signed off by Stalin himself with little more than a cursory glance, and as with the Great Terror, not a single finger was lifted by the General Secretary or the Politburo to intervene on anyone's behalf.

Deputy General Secretary Malenkov even went as far in his personal journal as to say 'This day has been coming. The actions of the Cheka, we could explain, they were hard but neccessary, the actions of the NKVD under Beria were little more than the sadistic fantasies of a deranged pervert'.

Indeed, from 1948 to 1953, what was later dubbed by some revisionists in the Brezhnev Government as "Stalin's 5 year Security Plan, Khrushchev maneuvered his way to effectively creating a single Security and Intelligence body for the Soviet Union. Although officially there were multiple Agencies, Via deputies, they all came under the personal control of Nikita Khrushchev. It was a control exercised with subtlety that some of his rivals in the Politburo felt Khrushchev incapable of, and indeed, he managed it right under the watchful eye of Stalin, who until then had maintained total control.

On May 2nd 1953, The General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Iosef Vissarionovich Stalin died of a massive coronary heart attack. It took three days for the news to become public, by which time, Georgy Malenkov had been installed as the General Secretary, with Lazar Kaganovich as his deputy. It was a very delicate balancing act. Malenkov required the support of the Armed Forces, to get this, he needed the support of their leader, Marshall of the Soviet Union - Georgy Zhukov. For Kaganovich to maintain his position, he assumed the support of his protege, the Commissar for Security, Nikita Khrushchev. Zhukov and Khrushchev both realised that one could not survive without the other, and so, quietly cooperated, maintaining their own positions almost to the extent that they could ignore the machinations that became virulent in the Post Stalin landscape of the Soviet Union amongst the others. The price for both Zhukov and Khrushchev's support was simple, a seat at the table each.

There were two other figures that moved within the cliques for a short while. Of these, one would align himself openly with the Zhukov/Khrushchev bloc, and the other be more circumspect and appear to fall by the way side. Anastas Mikoyan was a political survivor. Having served under Lenin, and Stalin already, the Armenian was quick to recognise where the power had shifted to, and while he supported Malenkov in some of his efforts to move out from Stalin's shadow, proposing a motion to give the armed forces their own independent intelligence services, (ones that would, on occasion tread on the toes of the KGB, however due to the relationship that existed between Zhukov and Khrushchev, and sensibly, between their successors, this did not result in the sometimes bloody turf wars that other departments engaged in where the only winners were the KGB), he also supported Kaganovich in his moves to unify the internal, (NKVD, later NKGB) and external, (MGB), non military intelligence services into the KGB in 1955. Having identified the power behind the throne, he was initially considered a front runner in the fight to replace Malenkov after his death in 1958. Mikoyan played the long game again, supporting neither Kaganovich or the other potential successor, Nicolai Bulganin.

Kaganovich, himself an old campaigner, quietly began sounding out supporters once he became aware of Malenkov's failing health, and finding only Molotov prepared to support him, he discounted his own chances and resolved to retire at an appropriate moment.
Nicolai Bulganin had briefly been Minister for the Defence of the Union until he was transferred to the Ministry of Finance to make way for Georgy Zhukov on the orders of Malenkov. However, Bulganin very quickly turned his mind to the world of finance and gained some small success. A success however small, was greater than the success of any of his predecessors.

Bulganin's main contribution was, while working with Mikoyan, was to renegotiate the terms of the Finnish war reparations, instead of simply handing raw materials over to the USSR, they negotiated a deal whereby Soviet owned, but Finnish financed factories would be built to process the raw materials into salable goods. After the initial period of reparations had been completed, the Factories were sold at the commercial rate back to the Finnish government, however, part of the deal was that for the next 10 years, a percentage of the profits would be paid directly to the Soviet Government, a deal that finally ended in 1979.
This however was insufficient to gain the position of Premier, as he simply lacked the support needed.
In the end, It was Mikhail Suslov, the chief Ideologue and a political non-entity despite his title and lacking in the skills required to intrigue at this level, that was elected, unanimously, to the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet union.

The factionalism that errupted briefly looked as though it would bring down the Poliburo, or at least upset the foundations that had been laid by Khrushchev and Zhukov, and it was here that Bulganin and Mikoyan chose their time to join the K/Z Axis. As described earlier, Anastas Mikoyan was more circumspect and while he generally voted alongside Zhukov and Khrushchev, it was Bulganin that became the figurehead of the bloc within the Politburo and was quickly elected as Deputy General Secretary.
With stability ensured, at least for the now, Khrushchev felt free enough to embark on what would be termed his greatest work, his finest victory, and a course of action with the potential to plunge the world into a war from which it would never recover, a fear that was partially realised after his death from natural causes in 1972.

Good update, keep them coming.

[James G]

Nasty little schemers and plotters!
As is the way, once the betrayals start they soon snowball.
And you have gone and put Suslov in charge. That man will let Khrushchev do his worse against the West.

[Dan]

He will, after all the dialectic states that the capitalists will fall to the combined forces of revolutionary socialism and the rising consciousness of the proletariat.

So long as, that is, no one lets a fly get in the ointment...

[James G]

The thinking of zealots indeed. Suslov was one as far as I am aware. Not mad, just a believer.
Ah, yes, until someone does something which isn't part of the script.

[Dan]

"I think it was from around 1955 we began to get more aggressive, not physically aggressive, but politically aggressive instructions from Moscow. With Khrushchev being the new man in charge he left no doubts that he intended to use the position his new ministry, the KGB, to mold Britain as much as possible. None of us were aware of how badly compromised the nation already was, although Cairncross was the first of us to begin to suspect the magnitude of how far things had gone.
It wasn't just the immediate post war technology transfers, but as things went on, [Sir Stafford] Cripps in his position as President of the Board of Trade, began making trade agreements with the Soviet Union that, while not bad for us, weren't as good as had we traded openinly for certain goods. For example, paper, if we had bought openly from the Finns or Swedes rather than from the Soviets we could have saved nearly £30 per ton of processed paper, although on the other side of it, we were selling high quality coal to the Soviets at £5 a ton over the market rate however it still left a negative balance of payments that favoured the Soviets quite heavily". - Donald MacClean - The Cold War, Episode 7 - Usurping the Crown. First shown RTE1 December 14th 1998

---

It was in the late 1950's that Britain seemd to go from a country that had very little problem with foreign intelligence activity, to finding that a number of nations had taken quite a significant interest in British institutions. While few public prosecutions were carried out, most were moved to a different department andhad their security clearence downgraded, this began to change in January 1960 when 2 low level officials from the Soviet Embassy in London were expelled for spying. In return, the British second attache and a low level secretary were expelled from the Soviet Union for activities "not in keeping with their diplomatic nature".
However, from 1960 to 1965, over 100 foreign nationals, including diplomatic staff were expelled from Britain for alleged spying, and nearly 50 British or Commonwealth nationals were prosecuted for alleged spying activities. Of the 41 that were successfully prosecuted, the nationalities they worked for broke down as follows:

China - 11, (plus 1 from Taiwan)
German Democratic Republic - 8
Israel - 6
Bulgaria - 5
Czechoslovakia - 3
United States Of America - 2
USSR - 2
Yugoslavia - 1
Argentina - 1
Chile - 1

At the time it was theorised that the increase in activity by CID, (The Chinese State Security apparatus, not to be confused with the Criminal Investigation Department of the British, later, English Police), as a result of the Sino-Soviet split that occurred following Suslov's coded denunciation of Stalin in his Speech to the Presidium entitled "The Cult of Personality and it's incompatability with the Socialist Struggle" in 1958.
Chinese premier Mao, himself an ardent Stalinist, responded through the state news media that "The USSR has lost it's way in the revolutionaly struggle, and they have taken a flawed path in their interpretation of Marx based on Euro-centric biases". This critisism of the USSR sparked a war of words between the two.
This in turn led to an increase in border incidents between the two which occasionaly turned into a miniature war between the two. It was only a caution, and a fear of weakening their position relative to the United States and the other, that prevented things from escalating militarily.

While things levelled out militarily, diplomatically, things reached dizzying heights. China supplanted the USSR as main supporter and supplier to the post war DPRK, USSR supported India, America and China supported Pakistan. China and the USSR initially both supported North Vietnam, however with victory in sight in the late 1960's the USSR ended it's support of the North Vietnam after a dispute over post war basing rights. The sudden loss of support, which China would eventually fill, caused a 2-3 year delay in operations meaning that it wasn't until 1970 that North Vietnamese forces took Saigon. It has been argued that had the Americans committed large scale ground forces to Vietnam to aid the French government in supporting it's former colony, that this defeat could have been avoided. However, following the Anglo-French & Israeli invasion of the Suez region of Egypt to secure the canal and their rebuttal of American demands to quit the area, such support was never likely to materialise, despite the rigorous anti-communist rhetoric of both the De-Gaullist French, and the Kennedy/Johnson American government.

South East Asia became a hotbed of Communist subversion. British and Commonwealth interventions in Borneo and Malaya to deal with Maoist guerrillas helped to set the reputation of the Royal Marines as the most elite force in the British Army, with the roles of the Army reduced to that of little more than garrison troops. At various stages, the Army suggested reconstituting the Chindits - troops that would specialise in Jungle warfare and long range patrolling, or even reforming the Special Air Service, however, the Admiralty successfully lobbied for the Royal Marines to continue the role, and instead, expanded the role of the Special Boat Squadron to cover the specialist roles required that could not be satisfied by existing skills within the Royal Marines Commando, however due to the nature of the recruitment into the Special Boat Squadron, where officers and enlisted men serve three years in the SBS before returning to their Commando, these were soon disseminated throughout the Royal Marines.

In Britain everything seemed perfectly normal, and even many in the Civil Service and Intelligence Services had little idea of what was to come.

---

"It was Burgess' idea. During the summer of 1959 he became aware that two of the secretaries from the Soviet Embassy were working for the CIA and were using their cover to snoop, as it would be expected they would do, on our operations. However, rather than reporting back through to the KGB as they would be expected to do, they were instead passing their information back to their opposite number in the American Embassy for a suitable number of US dollars. I also had information that a small number of our Moscow staff had also been sharing information with the cousins about our operations that we would rather wasn't shared.
Through cut outs and a useful "double agent" in the STASI it was agreed that we would "expel" the two Soviets, and that they would expel two of our staff that had been being a little naughty for us to deal with. It was obvious to both of us that while our staff would be subject to an "interview without biscuits" and a new job counting penguins on the Falklands, the two Russians sent back would face a far harsher fate. I had no sympathy for them then, and still do not now, they betrayed their nation to the enemy". Harold Philby - Final interview with Pravda before his death, Tuesday 14th April 1987.

[James G]

The game with the Chinese spies went off very well then.
Amazed at the list of countries and how duped the (now rotten) British security establishment is.
So Suez goes different and so does Vietnam as well.
The Royal Marines being at the forefront of things is something unexpected and I'm interested to see how that fits in overall.
As to Philby, that matches all I've read about him. A real shit about the fates of anyone else at all and unable to see what he did was wrong.

[Dan]

It's a deliberate move on my part, this butterflies the SAS coming back into existence.

This will have some other effects further down the line.

Would anyone like to hazard a guess as to what some of those effects will be?

[James G]

The war in Oman springs to mind.
So does Mogadishu and the Iranian embassy siege though I am not sure on butterflies there.

[Dan]

The Central Intelligence Agency began to have suspicions regarding British Intelligence in the 1950's, after the Fuchs Affair.
Klaus Fuchs had been a scientist working on various atomic bomb projects in conjunction with the Americans and for the British, and at the same time had been passing information to agents of the Soviet Union. Shortly after MacClean was exposed as a Soviet Agent, Klaus Fuchs also confessed to being a spy for the Soviet Union. This was initially handled by SIS as while it had involved a British Subject, it had taken place outside of Great Britain, mostly in the United States and Canada. The case officer assigned to Fuchs was a direct subordinate of Harold Philby, and so, under Philby's instructions, the information regarding Fuch's activities was compartmentalised and fed through the "Cryptonomicon", a method developed in the Second World War to disguise the origins of intelligence, before being passed on to the CIA.
It was not that at this point the American Intelligence agency suspected Soviet infiltration, but that they recognised the pattern of the filtering and thus realised they were not getting raw information.

As this information pertained to the, (still at that point secret), Atomic Weapons projects, concerns were raised in some corners that the British may be trying to deliberately delay the American project in order for their own Atomic Weapons project, Tube Alloys, (the code name used during the second world war prior to the amalgamation of the original British Atomic Weapons project with the American Trinity Project), to either catch up or exceed their own. In fact, the British were still developing their own weapons at RAF Aldermaston and had been doing independently since the end of the second world war. Their research, while not as well funded and the United States, bore comparable results and by 1952 resulted in the successful detonation of Britain's first independently built atomic weapon during OPERATION HURRICANE off the coast of Australia in May.

The confession by Klaus Fuchs, having been sent via the Cryptonomicon, provided the CIA with all the information they required to roll up the "Atomic Ring" of Soviet spies in the Trinity Project and its successors, however, the distrust of the British had been growing and so the information was not acted upon until far too late giving the Soviets a priceless view of the American weapons project.
There were two further side effects of this growing distrust. British attempts to continue cooperation on weapons development had been rebuffed as early as September 1945, so after the successful British detonation of a device, an attempt was made by elements of the American government to keep weapons development in friendly hands, (ignoring the successful Soviet detonation in 1949). These attempts were further aided in 1953 with the successful detonation of the first Soviet Thermonuclear weapon, however, as this distrust was fed back to American lawmakers, the plan was cancelled, and the proposed treaty was shot down before it had even left the planning stages. This isolated the United States in terms of weapons development and gave rise to the second side effect, it delayed their research on American Thermonuclear weapons, by some estimates, by up to two years.

While the British counter-espionage effort had been infiltrated successfully by the KGB, it's offensive espionage organs, had not, (at this stage at least).
Shortly after their first atomic detonation, information was stolen from the Soviets on their thermonuclear research. This provided the British with a quick boost to their program, and a full theoretical design was ready by November 1952.
In an ironic twist, both the Americans and the Soviets learned of the British design around the same time through their own espionage efforts. In an early success for Guy Burgess in Section D, the American infiltration was discovered and quietly wound up limiting the access to material. As a result, the Americans stuck with the Fermi-Teller design, sidelining Stanislav Ulam and his contribution to the later, (and theoretically superior Ulam-Teller design).
The Soviet effort, either by accident or design, (and many have suggested, with merit that it was the latter), was relatively untroubled, handing the Soviets the British version of their design. Dubbed RDS-6B, this produced around a 420kt yield - 5% greater than the RDS-6S at 400kt when the weapons were detonated in June 1953. In August of 1953, in what was dubbed OPERATION TORNADO, Britain detonated it's own thermonuclear weapon, a scaled down version of the original design,  which produced a yield of 150kt.

While this was significantly lower than that of the Soviet device, something the British were unaware of at this point, the efficiency of the British device was much higher than the Soviet version meaning pound for pound, the British version would be more efficient and cheaper to produce.

Burgess' success in rolling up the American espionage effort resulted in the Soviet effort also being wound up as well. Burgess, which secure in his position could not at this stage turn a blatant blind eye to Soviet activity and remain in his position. This slight reticence was noticed by a senior SIS Science & Technical officer, Peter Wright. Although it was in no way close to conclusive, it was enough, Wright claimed afterwards in his Biography, to become suspicious and begin keeping notes. 

[James G]

Well that changes the world a lot. That early post-war distrust in trans-Atlantic relations there on such a vital area plays into the reasons why we have the bigger splits later over foreign adventures.
And Peter Wright is now active, starting his long chase!

[Dan]

Mar 4, 2018 11:48:09 GMT James G said:

Well that changes the world a lot. That early post-war distrust in trans-Atlantic relations there on such a vital area plays into the reasons why we have the bigger splits later over foreign adventures.
And Peter Wright is now active, starting his long chase!

At the moment the distrust is only really in the Intelligence circles. As far as Military co-operation in Korea went, there was no effect there, co-operation in Germany is unaffected there and military bases in the UK are fine too. Politically, while Britain is still repaying it's war debt to the USA, there won't be a bad word said in public. 

At this point, outside of that rarefied circle of the spooks, everything is fine. 

I mentioned before that the SAS would be butterflied by these decisions and that the Royal Marines would get more of the limelight, and asked if anyone wanted to take a stab at unintended consequences? 
One I will mention, is that Col Charlie Beckwith won't have a visit to Stirling Lines and be inspired. 

[James G]

So no Delta Force then for the US Army?

[Dan]

No Delta Force.
SEALs and Marine Force Recon, Green Berets, Rangers etc will be around though.

Probably the biggest changes I can foresee, and this may or may not be a spoiler, but the GSG-9 model, where the counter terrorist "Siege Busters" type forces are more likely to be Police rather than Army. GSG-9 for example are drawn from the Federal Police. So the FBI HRT won't have any competition for that role in the US, once a need is identified.

The Metropolitan Police are likely to try their hand at this using members of SO19.