The Story of a Fictional Soviet Military Private Enterprise and the ’real’ Soviet James Bond

Abstract

The legal predecessors of the Soviet Union's Committee for State Security (KGB) guarded the state order and power of the ruling party (the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) elite with their recurring purges. In an intimidated society, it was unthinkable to question whether this happened, how things should happen... Just as it was unquestionable that the Agencies were doing their job perfectly and in an exemplary manner. However, as exemplified by the case of military deserter Nikolai Pavlenko, among many others, minor and major cracks and blemishes in the famously shiny shield and reputation of the Cheka–NKVD–MGB–KGB became visible after the change of regime. The organisation and its masters, the ruling elite, tried in various ways to patch up and cover up these flaws, for example, with the figure of the legendary Soviet intelligence agent Max Otto von Stierlitz in the TV series titled Seventeen Moments of Spring (1973).