Just like a Century Ago, Moscow’s Intelligence Services Working Hard to Penetrate Wide Swath of Émigré Opposition Groups

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 9 – The case of Nomma Zarubina, whom the FBI has accused of working with the FSB, has called attention to something many in Russia and the West prefer not to focus on. Just like a century ago, Moscow’s intelligence services are working hard to penetrate émigré opposition groups.
    Because Lenin went from being the leader of a small émigré clique to the ruler of Soviet Russia in a matter of months, Soviet and now Russian leaders have always been more obsessed with émigré activists than those activists in most cases deserve, seeking to penetrate them to know what is going on and use them for Moscow’s purposes.
    In some cases, these agents promote Moscow’s line and work to disorder the émigré groups. In others, they push for radical agendas so that the Kremlin can discredit the groups or use them as propagandistic scarecrows. But in every case, the involvement of Russian agents has the effect of disordering the groups by sowing suspicions that they are totally penetrated.
    Smaller ethnic groups are generally more able to resist than are larger regional or pan-Russian organizations because the former find it easier to identify agents than the latter, but they are not immune from such penetration and often find themselves victims in ways they don’t expect (idelreal.org/a/uchastnitsu-dekolonialnogo-meropriyatiya-nommu-zarubinu-obvinyayut-v-svyazyah-s-fsb-chto-ob-etom-dumayut-v-natsdvizheniyah-/33229067.html).
    The best defense is to be aware of the problem and work to counter it gain knowledge about Operation Trust, the early Soviet effort to penetrate and disorder the first Russian emigration  (On the Trust as precedent for Putin’s approach to nationalist and regionalist groups now, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/09/regionalists-in-russia-find-common.html.)