2024/11/25 by Imre Dobák · 2 voices
Social Sciences · #Intelligence, Security, War Strategy #Eastern European Communism and Reforms #European and Russian Geopolitical Military Strategies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/16161262.2024.2433890
openalex publication_date 2024/11/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
This article looks back to the Cold War years in describing the international radio counterintelligence cooperation of the internal state security services of the formerly socialist European countries. The technical equipment for collecting and transmitting information from other countries was valorised in a context in which borders played a divisive role, especially in the first half of the Cold War period. Western secret service ‘agents’ in Eastern Bloc territory received information from their intelligence centres via secret radio devices, and often sent back information via encrypted radio transmissions. By the 1950s, the socialist countries had developed their own state security organizations and radio interception capabilities. From 1955 on, this was performed in cooperation with the other socialist countries under the coordination of the so-called Warsaw Coordination Centre. The aim of this article is to describe, based on Hungarian archival sources, the little-known inter-state security cooperation that existed from 1955 to the end of the Cold War, and to contribute to the historical understanding of the Eastern Bloc Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) activities.