Stasi Documents Provide Details on Operation RYaN, the Soviet Plan to Predict and Preempt a Western Nuclear Strike; Show Uneasiness Over Degree of “Clear-Headedness About the Entire RYaN Complex.”

Newly available Stasi notes of meetings between Soviet and East German security heads between 1981 and 1984 provide unprecedented details of Operation RYaN, the Soviet intelligence effort to detect and preempt a Western “surprise nuclear missile attack,” that contributed to the risk of nuclear war through miscalculation during the 1983 Able Archer nuclear war scare. These documents provide operational details to the scanty documentary record of Operation RYaN; disclose that the KGB received funding to create 300 new positions so that it could monitor and report on a Western nuclear first strike (that the West had never contemplated); and hint at Stasi –and KGB– concerns over lack of “clear-headedness about the entire RYaN complex,” inferring that Operation RYaN increased, rather than decreased, the danger of nuclear war.

These Stasi memorandums of conversations at the highest levels were released by the Office of the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the Former German Democratic Republic (BStU), translated to English by Bernd Schaefer, and introduced, posted, and contextualized (in a collection of nine documents dating to 1964) by Walter Süß and Douglas Selvage in a Cold War International History Project e-dossier. The release reinforces the need for international archival research and collaboration to more fully unravel the mystery of the “last paroxysm” of the Cold War, and stands as a stark and important contrast to the improper and absurd national security claims used by American and British intelligence agencies to prevent the release of information about this nuclear war scare.

Operation RYaN –RYaN(РЯН) is the Russian acronym for Raketno-Yadernoye Napadenie (Ракетно ядерное нападение), оr “nuclear missile attack”– began in May 1981.[1] At a major KGB conference in Moscow, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov, then Chairman of the KGB, announced the creation of Operation RYaN because, they claimed, the United States was “actively preparing for nuclear war” against the Soviet Union and its allies.

The establishment of Operation RYaN has been corroborated by KGB annual reports from 1981 and 1982, previously published by the National Security Archive. The 1981 annual report states that the KGB had “implemented measures to strengthen intelligence work in order to prevent a possible sudden outbreak of war by the enemy.” To do this, the KGB “actively obtained information on military and strategic issues, and the aggressive military and political plans of imperialism [the United States] and its accomplices,” and “enhanced the relevance and effectiveness of its active intelligence abilities.”

The 1982 annual report confirmed Soviet fears of Western encirclement, and noted the challenges of countering the “U.S. and NATO aspirations to change the existing military-strategic balance.” Therefore, “[p]rimary attention was paid to military and strategic issues related to the danger of the enemy’s thermonuclear attack.”

The most comprehensive account of Operation RYaN remains a Top Secret February 1983 telegram from KGB Headquarters Moscow to the London KGB Residency entitled “Permanent operational assignment to uncover NATO preparations for a nuclear missile attack on the USSR,” with enclosed instructions on how to report on indicators pointing toward a nuclear sneak attack. This document was published in full in 1991 by Soviet double agent Oleg Gordievsky (who alerted MI6, which then warned the US, of the danger of Able Archer 83) and British intelligence historian Christopher Andrew in Comrade Kryuchkov’s Instructions: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations, 1975-1985.



According to Gordievsky, each station chief (resident) in “Western countries, Japan, and some states in the Third World” received an Operation RYaN directive. Each was addressed by name, labeled “strictly personal,” and designated to be kept in a special file. The directive stated:

“The objective of the assignment is to see that the Residency works systematically to uncover any plans in preparation by the main adversary [USA] for RYaN and to organize continual watch to be kept for indications of a decision being taken to use nuclear weapons against the USSR or immediate preparations being made for a nuclear missile attack.”



Attached to the telegram was a list of seven “immediate” and thirteen “prospective” tasks for the agents to complete and report. These included: the collection of data on potential places of evacuation and shelter, an appraisal of the level of blood held in blood banks, observation of places where nuclear decisions were made and where nuclear weapons were stored, observation of key nuclear decision makers, observation of lines of communication, reconnaissance of the heads of churches and banks, and surveillance of security services and military installations.

Regrettably however, Comrade Kryuchkov’s Instructions included a facsimile reproduction of only the first page of this document. The additional pages were translated and typeset into English with no Russian corroboration of their authenticity. Nevertheless, the KGB annual reports, as well as documents from other former Eastern Bloc ( Czechoslovakian and Bulgarian ) archives have helped to substantiate Gordievsky’s accounts.

The recently released Stasi documents go much further than previous Eastern Bloc sources. Key revelations include: