BY FAR the most important of the KGB's contacts in South America was Salvador Allende Gossens (codenamed Leader by the KGB), whose election as President of Chile in 1970 was hailed as “a revolutionary blow to the imperialist system in Latin America”.

Allende was the first Marxist anywhere in the world to win power through the ballot box. He was unlike any stereotype of a Marxist leader. During his visits to Havana in the 1960s, he had been privately mocked by Castro's entourage for his aristocratic tastes: fine wines, expensive objets d’art, well-cut suits and elegantly dressed women. Allende was also a womaniser. Gabriel García Márquez described him as “a gallant with a touch of the old school about him, perfumed notes and furtive rendezvous”.

Despite the private mockery which they aroused in Allende’s Communist allies, however, his bourgeois appearance and expensive lifestyle were electoral assets, reassuring middle-class voters that their lives would continue normally under an Allende presidency. As even his opponents acknowledged, he had enormous personal charm.

Allende’s election left President Nixon, according to his National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, “beside himself” with rage. Having berated the Democrats for more than a decade for allowing Cuba to go Communist, Nixon now faced the prospect as a Republican president of seeing Chile follow suit. There was, he angrily told Kissinger, “only a one in ten chance” of preventing Allende’s confirmation, but the attempt must be made in order to “save Chile” from communism. The CIA drew up a two-track plan. Track 1 was to find some method of persuading the Chilean Congress not to vote Allende into office. Track 2 was to engineer a military coup. Both failed. On October 24, Allende was formally elected President by vote of the Chilean Congress.

Regular Soviet contact with Allende after his election was maintained not by the Soviet Ambassador but by his KGB case officer, Svyatoslav Kuznetsov, who was instructed by the centre to “exert a favourable influence on Chilean government policy”. According to Allende’s KGB file, he “was made to understand the necessity of reorganising Chile's army and intelligence services, and of setting up a relationship between Chile’s and the USSR’s intelligence services”. Allende was said to react positively.

CIA covert action against Allende continued during his presidency. Nixon gave instructions to “make the [Chilean] economy scream”.

Kuznetsov arranged his regular meetings with Allende through the President’s personal secretary, Miria Contreras Bell, known as La Payita and codenamed Marta by the KGB. La Payita was Allende’s favourite mistress during his presidency. Kuznetsov reported that Allende was spending “a great deal of time” in her company. “His relationship with his wife has more than once been harmed as a result.” Despite Allende’s affairs, however, his wife, Hortensia, remained intensely loyal to him. Kuznetsov did his best to cultivate her as well as her husband.

In October 1971, on instructions from the Politburo, Allende was given $30,000 “in order to solidify the trusted relations” with him. Allende also mentioned to Kuznetsov his desire to acquire “one or two icons” for his private art collection. He was presented with two icons as a gift.

On December 7, in a memorandum to the Politburo, the KGB proposed giving Allende another $60,000 for what was termed “his work with [ie, bribery of] political party leaders, military commanders and parliamentarians”. Allende was to be urged to strengthen his authority by establishing “unofficial contact” with Chilean security chiefs and “using the resources of friends [Communists]” in the Interior Ministry.

In June 1972, Kuznetsov's close relationship with Allende was disturbed by the arrival in Santiago of a tough new Soviet ambassador, Aleksandr Vasilyevich Basov, whose membership of the Central Committee indicated both his high rank and the importance attached by Moscow to relations with Allende’s Chile. Unlike his predecessor, Basov was not prepared to play second fiddle to a KGB officer. His relations with the residency worsened, apparently soon after his arrival in Santiago, after the discovery in the walls of both his office and apartment of American listening devices with miniature transmitters which could be activated from some distance away. Basov doubtless blamed the KGB for failing to protect the security of the embassy. Basov initially insisted on accompanying Kuznetsov to meetings with Allende, thus hampering the conduct of KGB business which the resident was reluctant to discuss in the presence of the ambassador.

Within a few months Basov was seeking to replace Kuznetsov as the main Soviet contact with Allende. His aim was to reduce most Soviet contact with Allende to “a single channel” controlled by himself. But it is clear from KGB reports that without the ambassador’s knowledge, Kuznetsov succeeded in establishing a secret channel “for handling the most confidential and delicate matters” directly with Allende.

In 1972 Moscow downgraded its assessment of the prospects of the Allende regime. The “truckers’ strike”, allegedly backed by CIA funding, virtually paralysed the economy for three weeks, providing dramatic evidence of the weakness of the Popular Unity Government and the power of its opponents. The mounting evidence of chronic economic mismanagement made Moscow reluctant to provide large-scale support.

Anxious to do what it could to prevent the defeat of the Allende regime, the KGB gave an exaggerated impression of its ability to influence Chilean politics.

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