The Cold War may be a distant memory, but there are still secrets to be unraveled about Soviet political espionage in France during the period from the end of the Second World War to the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s. An examination of the KGB archives handed over to the British in 1992 by defector Vassili Mitrokhin (1922-2004) sheds light on the role played, to varying degrees, by certain French politicians in the service of Moscow. The subject remains sensitive, and the cases are so varied as to call for caution regarding the involvement and responsibility of each individual. From simple ideological closeness to communism to outright compromise, paid or unpaid, the spectrum is wide, and the presence of names in secret Soviet intelligence reports is not in itself proof of treason.
The example of Pierre Sudreau (1919-2012), a former Resistance fighter and politician in the 1960s, illustrates this complexity. In October 2022, three former heads of the DST domestic intelligence agency (now DGSI), Jean-François Clair, Michel Guérin and Raymond Nart, revealed in their book La DST sur le Front de la Guerre Froide (“The DST on the Cold War Front”) that they had worked on the links between Sudreau, who was a minister under President Charles de Gaulle, and the KGB. Interviewed by Le Monde at the end of August, Nart said: “Sudreau called himself a ‘centrist,’ but the positions he took in favor of the USSR were in total contradiction with his political affiliation, and this attracted the attention of the DST very early on.”
The KGB archives supplied by Mitrokhin confirm these suspicions. Sudreau is described as an “agent of influence.” Between the 1960s and 1980s, documents describe him as a participant in operations launched by the KGB to influence French political authorities and public opinion in favor of Moscow. However, there is no trace of any remuneration for his services or details of how he communicated with the KGB.
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