WI no Farewell source: 1980s Soviet industrial spy operations not compromised?

MrP

Banned
At the height of the Second Cold War, the Soviet capability to steal technology from the West was critically compromised by a KGB defector, who gave French counter-intelligence services extensive information on Soviet industrial espionage operations in Western countries. The information was forwarded to the CIA.

Vetrov was an engineer who had been assigned to evaluate information on Western hardware and software gathered by the "Line X" technical intelligence operation for Directorate T, the Soviet directorate for scientific and technical intelligence collection from the West. He became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist system and decided to work with the French at the end of the 1970s. Between the spring of 1981 and early 1982, Vetrov gave almost 4,000 secret documents to the DST, including the complete list of 250 Line X officers stationed under legal cover in embassies around the world.

As a consequence, Western nations undertook a mass expulsion of Soviet technology spies. The CIA also mounted a counter-intelligence operation that transferred modified hardware and software designs to the Soviets. Thomas Reed alleged this was the cause of a spectacular trans-Siberian pipeline disaster in 1982.
The blow came at a particularly bad time for the USSR, as the Reagan administration was then stepping up the arms race, and the Soviet economy, which could no longer rely on oil exports to stay afloat due to the counter-shocks of the early 1980s, was entering terminal sclerosis. So WI Soviet industrial espionage had been able to continue unimpeded throughout the 1980s? Would it have bought the USSR more time before its collapse? Would it have allowed Gorbachev to not make a mess of Glasnot and Perestroika?
 
Would it have bought the USSR more time before its collapse? Would it have allowed Gorbachev to not make a mess of Glasnot and Perestroika?
This is a heck of an interesting POD, a seemingly minimal change and/or something a lot of people don't really know about with potentially a big and long-lasting effect.

I do want a better source than wikipedia, which I just don't have much faith in (the people there seem most interested in the formality of the writing).
 

MrP

Banned
Pardon my ignorance, but why do you call it the Second Cold War?
Historians tend to distinguish between the First Cold War, which started with the imposition of Communist rule in Eastern Europe and ended after the resolution of the Cuban missile crisis, and the Second Cold War, which started with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and ended--depending on whom you ask--sometime between the Reagan-Gorbachev Reykjavik Summit and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
 
The effects could be really interesting. Sov subs, just frex, are likely to be better sooner, & Sov manufacturing generally could improve.

OTOH, given the Sov economy works the way it does (like it's run by a gang of insane clowns...:rolleyes:), it's going to be in crisis on roughly the OTL schedule anyhow, isn't it? Especially once Reagan starts ramping up...
 
This is a fascinating PoD, P. :)

I don't know enough to contribute, but I'll post to keep it on the front page a bit longer. That way, somebody who knows their gluteals from their ulnar process might see it, and comment.
 

MrP

Banned
OTOH, given the Sov economy works the way it does (like it's run by a gang of insane clowns...:rolleyes:), it's going to be in crisis on roughly the OTL schedule anyhow, isn't it?
I wouldn't say it was run by insane clowns--they were more like lazy rent seekers. Either way, I'm assuming that the Soviet economy was still doomed no matter what, it's more a question of whether it could patch up its systemic flaws with pilfered technology for a few years longer.

This is a fascinating PoD, P. :)

I don't know enough to contribute, but I'll post to keep it on the front page a bit longer. That way, somebody who knows their gluteals from their ulnar process might see it, and comment.
Cheers, old boy :)
 
Top