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Index and Concordance to
Alexander Vassiliev’s Notebooks and Soviet Cables Deciphered by
the National Security Agency’s Venona Project
(Updated 30 May 2013)
This index and concordance indexes twenty-one volumes of KGB archival material: nine
notebooks written by Alexander Vassiliev and twelve compilations of the Soviet international telegraphic
cables deciphered by the U.S. National Security Agency’s Venona project. Indexed are proper names,
cover names, and organizational titles along with some geographic entities, events, diplomatic
conferences, and subjects. When known, cover names are cross-indexed with the real name behind the
cover name. Brief biographical or explanatory information is provided for significant figures, tradecraft
terminology is defined, and obscure abbreviations expanded.
Alexander Vassiliev’s notebooks
The original Vassiliev notebooks, handwritten in Russian, are held in the Manuscript Division of
the Library of Congress.
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Scanned versions of the notebooks along with transcriptions into
word-processed Cyrillic Russian and translations into English are available on the web at:
<
http://digitalarchive.org/collection/86/Vassiliev-Notebooks
>. All three versions have identical
pagination. The Russian transcriptions and the English translations are electronically searchable. This
index/concordance indexes the English translations. Vassiliev’s notebooks are entitled:
Vassiliev Black Notebook
Vassiliev White Notebook #1
Vassiliev White Notebook #2
Vassiliev White Notebook #3
Vassiliev Yellow Notebook #1
Vassiliev Yellow Notebook #2
Vassiliev Yellow Notebook #3
Vassiliev Yellow Notebook #4
Vassiliev Odd Pages
These notebooks are paginated, and an index entry referenced the page of the cited volume.
Page number are in the upper right hand corner of each page. For example, the entry for the cover name
“Achilles” is as follows:
************************************************************************************
“Achilles” [“Akhill”] (cover name in Vassiliev’s notebooks): Karl Dunts.
Vassiliev Black Notebook, 27,
100; Vassiliev Yellow Notebook #1, 99, 106.
************************************************************************************
“Achilles” is the cover name as it appears in the English translation of Vassiliev’s notebooks.
In this case, “Achilles” appears on pages 27 and 100 of Vassiliev Black Notebook and pages 99 and 106
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1. For the background of composition of the notebooks, see: John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and
Alexander Vassiliev,
Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (New Haven: Yale
University Press,
2009), ix-liii.
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of
Vassiliev Yellow Notebook #1. Cover names in Vassiliev’s notebooks are usually within quotation
marks and are usually in title case with the first letter capitalized. (The Venona project followed a
different convention.)
[“Akhill”] is the Cyrillic Russian original transliterated into the Latin alphabet of the cover name
“Achilles.” “Akhill” does not appear in the translated Vassiliev notebooks in the Latin alphabet but does
appear in Cyrillic Russian in the transcribed and original handwritten versions of Vassiliev’s notebooks.
Since the pagination of all three versions is the same, the page citation to the English translation is also
accurate for the two Cyrillic Russian versions. “Akhill” is in the Latin alphabet with the transliteration
from Cyrillic done using the BGN/PCGN transliteration system.
Karl Dunts is the real name behind the “Achilles” cover name. In many cases, however, the
real identify of the cover named person is not known. In those cases, the entry indicates that the cover
name is unidentified but may cite something about that person’s attributes if those are given in the text of
Vassiliev’s notebooks.
When the real name
behind a cover name is known, there is also an index entry for the real name.
In the of “Achilles”/Dunts, the entry reads:
************************************************************************************
Dunts, Karl Adamovich: Soviet intelligence officer. Cover name in Vassiliev’s notebooks: “Achilles”.
As Dunts: Vassiliev Yellow Notebook #1, 99. As “Achilles”: Vassiliev Black Notebook, 27, 100;
Vassiliev Yellow Notebook #1, 99, 106.
************************************************************************************
As Dunts: Vassiliev Yellow Notebook #1, 99 indicates that he appears under his real name on
page 99 of Vassiliev Yellow Notebook #1.
As “Achilles”: Vassiliev Black Notebook, 27, 100; Vassiliev Yellow Notebook #1, 99, 106
indicates where he appears under his cover name.
The Venona Decryptions
More than three thousands telegraphic cables between Soviet institutions in Moscow and their
subordinate stations around the world were deciphered by the U.S. National Security Agency in a project
entitled Venona.
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The earliest cables dated from 1941 and the latest to 1950. Most were from the
period 1943 to 1945. The project started in 1943, decoded its first cable in 1946,
and continued until
NSA shut down the project in 1980 when it judged the remaining cables vulnerable to decryption, almost
all from the early 1940s, were too old to be of any current intelligence interest. While cables from
Soviet stations in sixteen nations were deciphered, the great majority were between Moscow and its
stations in the United States.
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2. For the background of the Venona project, see; Robert Louis Benson and Michael Warner, Venona:
Soviet Espionage and the American Response 1939–1957 (Washington, D.C.: National Security Agency;
Central Intelligence Agency, 1996), vii-xliv; Robert L. Benson, The Venona Story (Ft. Meade, MD:
Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 2001); and John Earl Haynes and Harvey
Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press [Nota
Bene], 2000), 8–56.