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Russian interlude

One evening, in the summer of 1991, I found myself in the northern hemisphere, in Moscow, at a performance of the world-­renowned Moscow circus – as a guest in the box of the KGB, at that stage certainly the most feared spy service in the world. Fact is indeed sometimes stranger than fiction; in the world of spies, even stranger things sometimes happen.

With me at the circus was Mike Kuhn, a valued colleague from NI. We watched in amazement the horsemanship of the riders in the small arena, especially the men from Mongolia who looked as if they had been born in the saddle. Our host, one Artemov, was called away for an urgent telephone call and returned with a somewhat grim expression, but offered no explanation. Naturally, we did not ask what was amiss; spies don’t share bedroom secrets.

Back at the luxury guesthouse that evening, we enjoyed ourselves to the full, living it up in the swimming pool and sauna and then, after a lot of the KGB’s best vodka, proposing silly toasts to one another and our respective countries. To stoke the fires of conviviality even further, I let rip with ‘Sarie Marais’ and sang all three verses with gusto.

The invitation from the KGB to visit Russia had not been an impulsive whim to make friends with a few South Africans: the prelude to the visit had stretched over almost a decade.

Fairly soon after I became the head of NI’s predecessor, the Department of National Security, in 1980, I realised how important it was for South Africa to create a secret channel of communication with the Russians – one of the ANC’s greatest benefactors. An opportunity presented itself in the early 1980s when South Africa had arrested a Russian spy, Alexei Kozlov – a chance that NI used to initiate talks with the KGB.

For years, in many European cities, discussions with representatives of the KGB had been held, particularly with an eye to suspending Russian financial and military support to the ANC, or at least scaling it down. Progress had been painfully slow, but at last we were seeing excellent results.1

In March 1991, two generals of the KGB, Artemov and Ivanov (not, apparently, their real names), arrived at Jan Smuts Airport amid sensitive operational arrangements to bring the two of them unhindered into the country under the noses of the security police. Mike Louw, deputy director general of NI, received them there, at the start of what was destined to become one of the most interesting visits that a sister service in the world of espionage ever made to South Africa.

Our well-read guests asked searching questions about the country. These ranged from the rightists in the agricultural sector to the role of ethnicity in black politics (as observed particularly in the actions of the IFP in the negotiation process). They also asked knowledgeable questions about the support and respect accorded to the ANC and fished, professionally, about what leading ANC figures were getting up to. Unemployment and the role of the trade unions were also discussed closely.

About the crumbling Soviet Union our colleagues were surprisingly open and loyally critical. They believed that the changes in the Soviet bloc had happened too quickly, which had led to undue disruption and a disorderly society. In their view, concessions during premature and rapid transformation were often made too readily. Furthermore, they claimed that 90 per cent of the 2 500 members of the Soviet parliament were ignorant about political matters and had very little or no experience of public administration.

Artemov and Ivanov were also personal guests at our beach house, Lewensessens, at Kleinbaai on the southern Cape coast. My wife Engela cooked her typical boerekos, including roast leg of lamb and curried meatballs. Before dinner, the discussion turned to boerewors, among other things; as a result, it was added to the meat dish, although in untraditional – fried – form. Our Russian colleagues particularly enjoyed the wors and, without hesitation, we shared Granny’s ‘secret recipe’ with them.

On 25 March 1991, the two had an important appointment with President De Klerk in Tuynhuys. Artemov was the spokesperson and communicated the messages from his government. The first of these was that the Russian leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, accepted the NI–KGB channel as the official communication conduit for sensitive matters between Russia and South Africa.

As far as Russia was concerned, there need be no impediment to future co-operation. De Klerk agreed, but also made the point that this should neither replace nor stand in the way of normal diplomatic relations.

Gorbachev’s good wishes for De Klerk’s political transformation initiatives were then communicated and the hope was expressed that, in both the Soviet Union, which was busy with similar processes, and South Africa, transformation would be accomplished successfully and peacefully. De Klerk agreed with this, whereupon Artemov declared that a personal meeting between the two heads of state was not out of the question.

Surprisingly enough, Artemov asked for South Africa’s help with providing grain fodder for livestock in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev’s official message read: ‘We are facing serious difficulties with our national economy in providing the country with feeding stocks and foodstuff.’ Naturally, he did not mention that this, among other factors, was the result of the catastrophic ideological manipulation of Russian agriculture.

De Klerk informed Artemov that, at the time, South Africa was also experiencing a shortage of certain agricultural products, but that we would be happy to send a team of experts to the Soviet Union where practical assistance could be discussed and planned by specialists in the field. Nor was this just talk – the plan later came to fruition when an interdepartmental team headed by Mike Kuhn visited Russia to launch the initiative.

De Klerk took the opportunity to ask Artemov about the situation in the Soviet Union. He also requested that the message be relayed to Gorbachev that it would be of great benefit to South Africa if the Soviet Union stopped supporting sanctions and opposed our isolation from participation in international social and sporting activities. He also asked that pressure be exerted on the SACP and MK to abandon the use of violence for the purpose of attaining political goals. The two KGB colleagues listened attentively, made notes, and promised that the message would be communicated within days to the Russian leader.

The two must have mesmerised us all a little, as PW Botha would have said. We have to admit that we bade them farewell with heavy hearts indeed.

My invitation to visit Russia as a guest of the KGB four months later was a direct outcome of Artemov and Ivanov’s visit to South Africa.

Very early in the morning – at about 4.30, after the spectacular show by the Moscow Circus the previous evening – I was awakened discreetly to take a telephone call from South Africa. It was Mike Louw. He told me the devastating news that my father had passed away the previous day.

It occurred to me that this must have been the same news that Artemov had received the previous night while we were at the circus, but that he had obviously decided to spare me the grief for the time being, also realising that such sad news should come from a close confidant such as Mike instead. From other hosts during my time in Russia I received the same sincere sympathy. I experienced it as a character trait shown by those who, in their history, had lived through immeasurable hardship and suffering. This kept one humble and grateful and made one more aware of supporting one’s fellow man in times of hardship.

I did not have much time to reminisce about my father and his life. The KGB had organised a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to have a personal discussion with Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It was scheduled for the next day, but, because of the death of my father, I had to return home earlier than planned.

Then another unimaginable thing occurred: Gorbachev undertook to interrupt a sitting of the Politburo and see me that same day in the Kremlin – which is exactly what happened on 10 July 1991 at 10a.m. We met in an enormous boardroom adorned with old-world finery. The Russian leader wore a neat, navy tailored suit and a red tie. Artemov and an interpreter were also present.

From my side, I informed Gorbachev about the political negotiations in South Africa and asked that the Soviet Union not favour any particular political group in this process; and that the Russians use their influence to exert pressure on the ANC–SACP to abandon its protest action, such as mass mobilisation, if it wanted the process to proceed peacefully. I added that the SACP had a radical influence on the ANC and that it was interested less in a political settlement than in a violent takeover of power. I also warned that any military destabilisation of the process would not be tolerated, be it from inside or outside South Africa.

The Russian leader listened attentively and then made a few remarks. First, he sent his best wishes to President De Klerk and admitted that both of them were dealing with challenging and wide-ranging issues of transformation. Of the South African settlement process, he was complimentary and supportive.

On the possibility of political contact on the highest level, he replied: ‘I will give this idea serious consideration.’ He expressed his concern about the political disintegration in Eastern Europe (it was almost two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall) and the influence that this might have on the Soviet Union’s cohesion. He had, possibly, already foreseen the demonstrations in Chechnya and the balkanisation of the southern Russian states.

Gorbachev undertook to talk frankly with the ANC leadership about its responsibility to seek a political solution in all earnestness, but, in almost the same breath, told me that we were inclined to overestimate Moscow’s influence on the ANC and even the SACP. He was, no doubt, correct if one took cognisance of the SACP’s ultra-revolutionary stance, even towards the ANC leadership, in the previous few years.

At one stage, I was probably too frivolous in joking about Lenin’s absence from Petrograd during the revolution of 2 February 1917 and brought it up in relation to the communists in the ANC who also kept a reasonably low profile. Gorbachev frowned slightly, but the interpreter, with what was presumably a masterly touch of eloquence, took the impetuous sting out of my comment.

Gorbachev spent a full 40 minutes with me – or rather, I should say, with South Africa. I experienced him as both pleasant and intelligent. As a person, he was more matter-of-fact than earthily genial, as I had experienced of many Russians, but neither was he off-hand or dismissive. Possibly, he was not relentless enough to handle that vast country with its enormous problems, ambitious politicians and headstrong security forces.

On our departure, I gave him a Krugerrand coin and a Krugerrand necklace for Mrs Gorbachev. On the way back in the car, Artemov took me to task about the Lenin remark and said that the interpreter had seen fit to adapt my words considerably … but that it was all for a good cause. I agreed – for what other reason was there a brotherhood among spies? I thanked the interpreter heartily.

On the plane on the way home, I could relax, for the first time, and look back on the years and think about my father with sadness, but also with pride. Nicolaas Evehardus Barnard, aged 72 when he died of heart failure, had been a man among men, a deeply religious Afrikaner patriot with sound political judgement.

He had grown up virtually penniless, as an orphan and a bywoner. And yet, with discipline and determination, he had studied simultaneously at the Bloemfontein Teachers’ Training College, where he was chairman of the Students’ Council, and the Grey University College; after three years, he had been awarded a BA degree and a teacher’s diploma. He had been a pioneer in education in what was then South West Africa, where he had been promoted to chief inspector of education; all his life, he had been averse to egotism.

He inspired his four sons to do everything with full commitment and dedication. Beneath his photo that hung in what was later our family company’s boardroom are the words by which we shall always remember him: ‘Blaas hoog die vlam!’ (‘Fan the flame high!’)

Before my early departure after the death of my father, I enjoyed the hospitality and spontaneity of my Russian hosts for three days and nights. Mike Kuhn and I were accommodated in a newly built guesthouse that had everything we could possibly need.

We later realised that it was, in all probability, the very same place where my then Russian counterpart, General Vladimir Kryuchkov, planned a coup against Gorbachev. Just over a month after our visit, Kryuchkov and the minister of defence, Dmitry Yazov, among others, had tried to seize power in Russia while Gorbachev was away on holiday. However, their plans had been foiled. On hearing this news, Mike and I had both been worried – but, luckily, unnecessarily so – that our visit would perhaps be linked to the attempted putsch.

We were shown many interesting and historic places, including the University of Moscow where a number of South African communists were being trained and the rector told us that most of the South African students were slackers of the highest order. After an extended tour of the Kremlin and all its wondrous and valuable cultural treasures, I found myself in a room that few communists are destined to see: Vladimir Lenin’s office, which still looks exactly as it did in the photographs one saw in history textbooks years ago. Even the familiar globe of the world was in its place, as was the desk at which he had helped to plan his revolution and Leon Trotsky’s civil war against the White Russians.

We also journeyed through the countryside and spent a night in none other than Joseph Stalin’s dacha in the vicinity of Kursk, where the greatest tank battle in history had taken place during the Second World War. Mike and I took photos of one another in the bathroom adjoining the main bedroom where I slept. We took photos beside the bath and on the toilet – after all, very few people have surely been privileged to share a toilet seat with Stalin!

In the notorious headquarters of the KGB, we talked for hours on end. It was with mixed feelings that I stood before the bust of Felix Dzerzhinsky for a photograph in the foyer of the KGB’s main building, the Lubyanka. Dzerzhinsky was the founder and, from 1917 to 1926, the first director of the Cheka, the Soviet Union’s security police. The mixed feelings arose because of my historical loathing of communism until I had come to the Damascene realisation that not every Russian is a communist, nor do they all stand for the same values. It was here, on Dzerzhinsky Square, where, according to the history books, unspeakable atro­cities had been carried out by the Russian intelligence service. Nevertheless, for me it was a privilege that I, representing NI, was permitted into the hallowed halls of the KGB.

I was even taken on an extended guided tour through the KGB museum, where my hosts did not hesitate to play open cards – relaying the heroic stories as well as the failures. They were extremely proud of some, very ashamed of others, and they acknowledged the familiar, universal tendency: that the politicians claimed all the glory for the successes, whereas the officials were held responsible for the failures.

We then moved on to General Kryuchkov’s boardroom, where the revered head of the KGB had little to say. In his office, he did me the honour of pinning a KGB decoration to my chest in recognition of the extraordinary service I had rendered in the building of relations between the two intelligence services.

The photo of this event must surely still be giving the ANC nightmares: how was it possible that the KGB had honoured a ‘Boer-Broederbonder spy’ in this way? Shortly before his death, Joe Slovo and I drank whisky together for old times’ sake, and I showed him the photograph.

‘You progressed far further than I did in the KGB,’ he joked. ‘You thought I was a major in the KGB, but it looks to me as if you were a field marshal!’

We were particularly impressed by the KGB’s chief of operations, Leonid Shebarshin, who spoke intelligently about everything – from the SACP, which apparently fostered dreams of a revolutionary takeover of power in South Africa, to the role of Chief Buthelezi and the IFP and similar dilemmas that the Russians faced with the Islamic ethnic minorities in the southern parts of their vast country. We were all convinced that, in both cases, a form of federalism offered the best solution.

It was clear that our KGB colleagues harboured no illusions about the realities of Africa. They informed us that they were planning to limit their presence considerably on the continent, which they regarded as no more than a bottomless pit from which there was little to speak of in the way of useful intelligence returns. There and then it was agreed that a KGB representative would be stationed in Pretoria to keep the Kremlin fully informed about developments in South Africa on a first-hand basis.

In my feedback to President De Klerk, I pointed out that the Soviet Union was under enormous pressure and that Moscow greatly appreciated the proposed co-operation with some of our state departments.

I also gave a full report on the visit to Neil van Heerden, Derek Auret and Herbert Beukes of foreign affairs, who were scarcely able to hide their displeasure at what they felt was a case of NI trespassing on their sphere of influence. This was fully understandable, but I had no choice but to give these valued colleagues a watered-down dose of bitter medicine: that the Russians had told me emphatically that they saw no possibility of extending the informal, confidential diplomatic relations that took place between us so infrequently. The reason was simply that the minister of foreign affairs, Pik Botha, was frankly incapable of keeping sensitive and secret matters to himself, and the Russians were especially concerned about such matters reaching the ears of the American CIA, the British SIS and other European intelligence services.

In October 1991, three months after my visit to Russia, the head of the KGB, Yevgeny Primakov, visited South Africa. In the following year, Moscow opened an embassy in Pretoria. Although I had already been transferred from NI to Constitutional Development, I had the responsibility of seeing that the KGB was kept informed about the intricacies of the negotiations in South Africa.

After 1994, the relationship between the ANC government and those in power in Moscow remained, at best, very cool, and is still by no means known for its warmth and supportiveness. Proposed visits by Mandela to Moscow were postponed a number of times, and Moscow is still not a destination high on the list of international cities that ANC leaders visit on their endless overseas journeys. Under President Zuma, relations have improved, however.

1 For further details, see Niël Barnard, Secret Revolution: Memoirs of a Spy Boss, especially pp. 88–94.