Prison’s Barley Dish Extolled : New Soviet Documentary Shows KGB’s Human Side

The KGB, long characterized in the West as omnipotent and sinister, demonstrated its new--but limited--love affair with glasnost Wednesday with the premiere of a documentary film that took viewers into an isolation ward and a hand-to-hand combat class for Soviet spies.

Journalists then were permitted, in the first such news conference of its kind, to question three of the agency’s top officials, who surprised some by gladly reading out telephone numbers that reporters can use to reach KGB public relations spokespersons. But at the same time, they sidestepped several sensitive questions about telephone buggings and monitoring of dissidents.

The KGB has begun a campaign in the last six months to remake its image, both internally and abroad, and the 55-minute film “KGB Today,” is clearly in keeping with that attempt toward glasnost . In the documentary, the agency is primarily shown as leading the fight against drug smuggling and organized crime.

There also was an effort to give agents a human face.

Poetry Reading by Agent

Col. Igor Prelin, a 27-year veteran of the KGB and now its official public relations spokesman, was shown in the film reciting some verses he wrote:

We wage a war with no rules,

a snowstorm with no end.

We share a bottle with a foe,

or get a bullet from a friend .

He then led the film crew to the kitchen in the isolation ward of Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison, where he tasted a spoonful of a white, gooey-looking barley dish prepared for prisoners.

“Mmmm. How do you manage to cook pearl-barley that good? Do you do double - boil it? I’ll tell you one thing, my wife cannot do it right. . . . May I have more, please?” he asked.

Another agent, Capt. Sergei Savichev, discussed with the crew the merits of his hair style, a shaggy crewcut. “It is my choice and my invention. I think it is the best for my head,” he said.

The documentary also included rare footage of West German pilot Mathias Rust in the KGB cell where he was held after flying a light plane across Soviet borders and landing in Red Square.

Agents were shown in target practice on a rifle range and practicing hand-to-hand combat, karate-style, in a gymnasium. Col. Eduard Kucheryavenko, identified as the “chief of reception,” showed the crew two rooms inside KGB headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Square where informants are questioned.

The film may be shown on Soviet television, and Novosti, a Soviet news agency, hopes to negotiate with foreign companies so the documentary can be exported.

New Chief Spearheads Openness Drive

The KGB’s chief, Gen. Vladimir A. Kryuchkov, who took over as the agency’s head last year, has spearheaded the drive to open up some parts of the top-secret agency.

But the top agents who fielded reporters’ questions for more than an hour after the showing of the documentary appeared less than willing to talk about some of their practices.

The chief of investigations, Col. Oleg Dobrovolsky, denied that the KGB was investigating an opposition movement in Leningrad, the Democratic Union. But when told that KGB officials in Leningrad had publicly acknowledged that the group is under investigation, Dobrovolsky stammered: “We are investigating some cases relevant to its activities, but we are not investigating that movement or any other independent movement.”