Stories from the past and about the past.
During the 17th century, the Franco-Ottoman relations were quite stable. The alliance, established in 1536, continued during the majority of this period. There were no large conflicts. Despite that, intelligence activity during this period was very lively. The example of Mahmut, an Ottoman spy undercover, gives us valuable information on the Ottoman international politics.
During the early 80s, the world was again on the brink. The diplomatic relations between the East and the West were very unstable. There were a few factors. The Soviets believed the United States was going to start a nuclear attack. A personal element was present, too. Yury Andropov was haunted by the events in Hungary in the 1950s and how the once powerful Communist state began to crumble. Therefore, he justified operation RYAN, or Raketno Yadernoe Napadenie (Nuclear Missile Attack). The whole purpose of the operation was to collect intelligence to prevent a possible attack. In other words, the project was a sort of intelligence operation among the countries of the Iron Curtain, primarily the (former) Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic as their close ally. The program was initiated in May 1981.
In 1967 Aldo Flores, a member of the PCB Central Committee, participated as a Bolivian CP delegate to the SED Congress in Berlin and then visited the USSR. He wanted to use his transit through Prague to inform the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia of recent events in Bolivia…
Charles Bridge in Prague in the 1970s (Photo: Vitold Muratov/ Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0) In the early 1970’s, Western Continue Reading