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Like the USA, the former USSR (now Russia) has a long cryptographic history.
Over the years, they produced a wide range of cipher machines that were
used by the Russians themselves and by their allies of the former Warsaw
Pact states, such as the DDR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania
and Yugoslavia.
Unfortunately though, not much is known about the cipher machines of the USSR
as most of them were produced at the height of the Cold War, when East and
West were separated by the tightly closed Iron Curtain.
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After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989
and the collapse of the Soviet Union a few years later, most machines were
withdrawn by the Russians and have subsequently been destroyed.
Only very few machines have escaped the sledge hammer.
USSR machines featured on this website:
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Shortly before WWII, the Russians bought a couple of
Hagelin B-211
machines and copied the design. The machine became known
as K-37 (Crystal) and was modified for the Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet,
providing 30 characters rather than the standard 25.
There are currently no known surviving K-37 machines, although a
photograph of one was published in the memoires of Boris Hagelin.
 More information
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The M-125 (codename: Fialka) was one of the most beautiful and compact
electro-mechanical cipher machines produced by the USSR during the Cold War.
It was used by most Warsaw Pact countries, including Russia itself.
It has a built-in printer, paper puncher, paper tape reader and a
10-wheel cipher machine with irregular wheel stepping.
More information
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The M-105 (AGAT) was an off-line cipher machine developed in the USSR
in the mid-1960s and used by all countries of the Warsaw Pact.
The machine uses a wide 11-level punched paper tape as the key.
More information
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The M-130 (codename: Koralle) was used for the encrypted distribution of
weather reports between the former Warsaw Pact countries. It was intended to
be used in case a war broke out between East and West.
As the weather reports were further distributed via other cipher machines,
the enemy could exploit them as a possible crib. For that reason, the
meteorological data had to be encrypted.
More information
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At the height of the Cold War, the Americans and the Russians installed
a Direct Communication Link (DCL) between Washington and Moscow. It allowed
direct exchange of teleprinter messages between the two nations.
The DCL became known as the Washington-Moscow Hotline,
or Hotline for short.
More information
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© Copyright 2009-2013, Paul Reuvers & Marc Simons. Last changed: Saturday, 05 July 2014 - 12:11 CET
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