Between the domestic and the foreign the KGB and Soviet Muslims in the late USSR

Between the domestic and the foreign the KGB and Soviet Muslims in the late USSR

This article examines the ambivalence of the Soviet authorities’ attitude to and policy toward Soviet Muslims in the 1970s and 1980s. Soviet Muslims were an asset for Soviet foreign policy in Muslim countries, serving as KGB operatives and as diplomats in the Middle East, Iran, South Asia, and Afghanistan and proved generally loyal to the Soviet state. However, some Soviet officials, notably in the KGB, did not fully trust Soviet Muslims. They k…