MOSCOW -- Soviet youth are being threatened by pop music, Hare Krishna, and a thirst for Western lifestyles but the KGB is trying to do something about it, the agency's No. 2 man said in an interview released Tuesday.
'The organs of the KGB are giving top priority to preventive action,' said Semyon Tsvigun, first deputy director of the Soviet agency.
He said the Soviet intelligence service was 'taking care to resist the hostile efforts of the special services and ideological centers directed against our youth.'
The article in the September issue of Kommunist magazine, which reached subscribers this month, was unusual in its open presentation of what the KGB sees as its role in Soviet society.
'Religio-mystical groups' such as the Hare Krishna sect have recently appeared on the Soviet scene, Tsvigun said.
He pointed to other 'negative' phenomena like 'groups of youth based on the hobby of pop music and the Western style of life, accompanied by hooliganistic and other anti-social excesses.'
Tsvigun was apparently referring to the recent wave of disco clubs in the Soviet Union, organized by youth organizations or local governments which feature music instead of political lectures.
The article also said the KGB was operating against Western intelligence agencies that had been trying to recruit 'possible leaders for a confrontation with the Soviet regime' -- an apparent reference to the dissident movement.
'As a result of measures taken by the KGB ... anti-social elements, despite the significant material and moral support of the West, did not manage to achieve organizational solidarity on the platform of anti-Sovietism,' Tsvigun said.
He said Chinese and U.S. intelligence services have cooperated in recent years, with Peking's agents slipping into the Soviet Union aided by Chinese diplomats based in Moscow.
But he said Western spymasters find it hard to penetrate Soviet society because 'there is no social basis in the U.S.S.R. for recruiting agents.'
He said Zionist organizations were active with Jewish dissidents in Soviet society, but other groups have also stirred discontent among ethnic Germans, Armenians and religious believers to persuade them to leave the country.
Tsvigun said they have taken advantage of food supply and 'various insufficiencies in the organization of medical and daily services' to make their case.
