Head of KGB Backs Down on Tough Remarks

The head of the KGB, the Soviet security and intelligence service, sought on Tuesday to soften the impact of his recent tough speeches with a renewed commitment to political reforms at home and improved relations with the West.

Vladimir A. Kryuchkov, chairman of the Committee for State Security, as the KGB is formally known, told a press conference that his harsh words, particularly a weekend speech to the Soviet parliament, had been misunderstood and were not intended as a call for a return to the grim regimes of the past.

“There is no return to the old ways, neither in domestic policies of the Soviet Union nor in its relations with other states,” Kryuchkov declared. “Even if someone in this country did try to turn back, he would become bankrupt immediately because we have entered a new phase in our forward movement, both domestically and internationally.

“We are not going to shift into reverse, though certain corrections need to be made in our developments. That’s perfectly natural. Our course leads us forward on the road of renovation and progress.”

Only Saturday, however, Kryuchkov called for a return to the Soviet Union’s old economic system with its state ownership, central planning and government management, arguing that this was necessary at least for a time to stabilize the country.

He also criticized essential elements of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s planned reforms and said that the KGB was waiting instead for a new set of orders giving it broader powers to pull the country out of its deepening political and economic crisis.

Kryuchkov in addition accused the West, particularly the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, of attempting to destabilize the Soviet Union by further undermining its economy, encouraging ethnic tensions and infiltrating the new pro-democracy and free-trade-union movements.

Even the food that the West is now shipping to the Soviet Union, often at reduced prices or financed by low-interest credits, is suspect, Kryuchkov warned, for nearly half of it does not meet Soviet standards.

“As for my statement being controversial, this too is natural,” he said Tuesday at the outset of a Kremlin press conference. “It would have been strange indeed if a speech by the chairman of the KGB were met with unanimous applause and approval. Western countries differ in their understanding of what is happening here--there is both hope and apprehension.”

With a smile and bonhomie that reflects his KGB nickname, “Cherub,” Kryuchkov continued for more than an hour in what a senior foreign policy adviser to President Mikhail S. Gorbachev bluntly described as “damage control.”

“The cables we have received from our missions abroad about the reaction to Kryuchkov’s speech on Saturday have been disastrous, simply disastrous,” the official said. “What he said may have been well intentioned, but even at home some people concluded that the KGB was longing for a return to the Stalin era.

“In foreign countries, everything he said was taken as evidence we were moving toward that dictatorship (Foreign Minister Eduard A.) Shevardnadze warned about when he resigned. Kryuchkov can’t take his words back, but he had better explain them. That was made clear to him by the president.”

The U.S. State Department on Monday denounced Kryuchkov’s charges as “completely unfounded and inaccurate” and expressed concern that “such a senior official would use such outdated and inflammatory rhetoric.”

Confronted with the task of convincing skeptical audiences at home and abroad that the gentler, kinder KGB of the past year and a half is not just a mask for the same ruthless organization, Kryuchkov insisted that he had simply been misunderstood.

He did not accuse the West of economic sabotage, as it had seemed from his speech Saturday to the Congress of People’s Deputies, he said, but characterized the sharp practices of some Western firms as “akin to economic sabotage, which is not the same thing.”

“We are speaking about the firms that are insolvent themselves and that would like to take advantage of the situation to make money,” Kryuchkov explained. “As long as Soviet business has not reached a sufficient level in its development, it will be making mistakes, and we will have to learn by our mistakes.”

And the Soviet Union is “grateful, very grateful” for the Western assistance and advice it is now receiving, he repeated several times, and Moscow does not regard it as a way of subverting the country into full-scale capitalism.

Even his hard-edged warnings about increased espionage by Western intelligence agencies, pursuing different tactics and using new techniques, need to be understood properly, Kryuchkov said.

“Well, comrades, ladies and gentlemen, do we really think spies are dropping out of the skies?” he said. “I wouldn’t want you to think that we ourselves are doing nothing in this respect. We are working too.

“And I can understand when the United States tries to evaluate the situation in this country, to determine the direction in which we are moving, when they show interest in certain problems like our nuclear potential. . . . So, they are working, and the most important thing for them here is--pardon me--not to get caught.”

The KGB is, in fact, developing its contacts with the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies and starting to cooperate, Kryuchkov continued. Recently, it gave the CIA updated Soviet projections of likely casualties from a war in the Persian Gulf, apparently based on its first-hand knowledge of the Iraqi army, its weaponry and fighting capability.

The message of goodwill was the same on domestic issues--and a marked contrast not only to Kryuchkov’s speech to the Congress of People’s Deputies but also to recent television appearances and newspaper interviews in which he has warned of KGB preparedness to act, even with force and at the risk of bloodshed, if the crisis here deepens.

“We will act in strict compliance with the law,” Kryuchkov told a Soviet journalist who asked about his plans--left vague in his speech--to deal with what he called “destructive forces.” “I believe the most important tool will be political methods--that is the main thing. . . .

“You can take any position now, but it is crucial that it be constructive,” he continued. “You can engage in a struggle, but it is important that this struggle proceeds within constitutional limits. You can even say you are against Soviet power and agitate against it. Still, this is not a crime. But if you resort to violent methods, to unconstitutional means, then you become an object for our activities.”

If Gorbachev used his presidential powers to declare a state of emergency, to rule by decree or to remove local or regional governments, the KGB would implement those orders, Kryuchkov told the Soviet journalist, all the while downplaying those possibilities.

“I worry about the situation in the country, about the possible course of events, and as KGB people we are working on the different options for the country’s development,” he said in that earlier interview. “I believe our duty is not to allow any dictatorship, but to act within the framework of law.

“If things went wrong, however, the question of extraordinary measures might be put on the agenda. I am confident if the president uses them, it will not be a return to the past in any way. It will be just setting an order everybody is missing, and the right, leftists and centrists are demanding it.”