In the spring of 1968, during the Prague Spring, a reform movement aimed at liberalizing Czechoslovakia, the KGB executed Operation Progress. This involved deploying trained spies posing as Westerners to infiltrate the burgeoning movement. Their aim was to gather intelligence on reformist leaders and undermine their efforts, even manipulating events to prevent protests, such as having a self-immolation protestor committed to psychiatric care. Unpublished documents reveal deep insights into these covert operations, which remain unacknowledged by Russian intelligence agencies to this day.
These visitors were not what they seemed. They were spies from the KGB's illegals programme, Soviet citizens who spent years training to pose convincingly as westerners.
The KGB decided for the first time to deploy its most prized spies inside the eastern bloc, in a mission called Operation Progress, aimed at neutralizing the Prague Spring.
Unpublished documents, along with interviews with participants, shed new light on how Moscow used its spies to keep tabs on reformers in Prague.
The Prague Spring, ultimately crushed by a massive Soviet invasion, reflected a huge desire for change in Czechoslovak society, seeking a more liberal version of communism.
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