The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

crucial decisions in complex situations without wasting any time coordinating his moveswith the Center. For these reasons, the expert on the United States, Ivanov, was appointedover Medyanik, another deputy head at PGU, who was then in charge of Middle Easternoperations.Needless to say, that appointment caught Vladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov bysurprise. He would now have to take into consideration that the KGB chairman would becomparing information arriving from Kabul from the KGB Residency (Vilior Osadchiy) andthe KGB Representative Office (Leonid Bogdanov) with the information received directlyfrom Andropov’s personal representative. On the other hand, the head of PGU had reasonsto be grateful for such an unexpected turn of events. General Ivanov was too independent,too highly respected, and too professional to be working as a regular deputy head of PGU.Kryuchkov constantly sensed mistrust of his actions on the part of Ivanov, who was a muchbetter qualified professional than his superior. A man like Ivanov, with such deep andpowerful connections “at the very top,” would be better kept as far away from Kryuchkov’sagency as possible. It was a stroke of luck that the Politburo decided to send Ivanov toAfghanistan * . Kryuchkov had to thank providence for such an unexpected gift.B.S. (this is how subordinates usually referred to Ivanov) received his appointmentin Kabul calmly; he considered it an important party and work assignment, the goal ofwhich was to “protect the interests of the Soviet Union in one of the tactical areas mostcrucial for its foreign policy objectives.” However, as he left for Afghanistan the generalrealized that he would never return to his former post. Perhaps he was even glad to be* It is interesting that in the writing of this book, we discovered a telling detail that was very characteristic ofIvanov. Unlike the majority of his colleagues, who wrote memoirs and gave interviews to Russian and foreignjournalists generously in the nineties, not once did Ivanov act or speak publically.392