Certainly not true among a lot of people I know (though not myself and most my closest friends. Certainly much of my family.). Fight fire with fire.
Historical Dictionary of Intelligence Failures By Glenmore S. Trenear-Harvey.
The book is from 2015, and as far as I can see on Google Books preview, it doesn’t cite a source. I’d guess the author picked up the story the way most of us in this thread have, from the thinly sourced newspaper accounts.
I’m inclined to believe the incident happened, but the documentation presented so far hasn’t been exactly overwhelming.
Never mind - Ninja’d. 
The idea that Hizbollah was intimidated into not attacking Russians is profoundly ignorant of the overall political alignment of things in the Middle East.
Hizbollah receives generous support from Iran. Due to the fact that Iran and Russia share a border, the relationship between the two countries is quite complex, but in general, Iran has very little to gain by having a pissed-off Russia breathing down its neck.
To the extent that Hizbollah goes off and messes with Russians, the Russians know that Iran can yank Hizbollah’s chain very hard, so the Russians would lean on Iran to have their proxies cut that shit out. And Iran would surely see the obvious self-interest in not having Hizbollah doing stupid stuff.
But the idea that a brutal murder would stop terrorists from doing their thing is patently absurd.
Iran and Russia share a border?
Pardon, my Soviet Union geography got the better of me there. I stand corrected on that point, but I stand by my comments on the overall Russian-Iranian relationship.
And yet, the kidnappings did occur.
Are you implying that Iran sanctioned the kidnappings since they occurred?
Or the much more widely reported Dubrovka Theater incident, though that is now primarily remembered for the authorities managing to kill a large number of the hostages.
Agree it’s a (defective) morality tale far more than it’s an accurate reporting of an identifiable event.
I suspect there are plenty of thugs in positions of authority in beastly regimes, or beastly corners of otherwise decent regimes who think brutality is just dandy.
I agree that civilized people able to think past the next move in tic-tac-toe will recognize the net harm that always flows eventually from brutality.
Sanctioned? Likely not directly. OTOH, there was the chaotic switching of sides that happend during the Lebanese Civil War - An Iranian-supported militia did do the kidnapping, with, or without Iran’s knowledge or permission. Whatever your reasoning IRT Iran & the USSR, ‘reason’ wasn’t very common on the ground in Lebanon.
People are forgetting a slightly different case - not long after the radical students invaded the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, they also overran the Soviet embassy. A few phone calls ensued, and the regular Iranian army went in and removed the protesters with apologies.
Nobody ever said what happened during those phone calls, but I assume it was along the lines of “We’re not nice guys like the USA. We have the biggest military in the world. We’re right next door. Stop it now.”
The Soviets/Russians, like the Israelis, it seems have a policy which generally says that whatever the outcome, the perpetrators are not going to be riding a bus or helicopter to freedom in exchange for the hostages.
I also wonder about the “immediate family” thing. Israel has had a policy of bulldozing the houses of those Palestinians who attack Israelis. Every radical knows this, knows they are creating severe hardship for their extended family, and go ahead anyway. My guess is that part of radicalization includes estrangement from their family and glomming onto a new “family” of radicals, so in essence, they don’t give a damn what happens to their relatives.
The author of Historical Dictionary of Intelligence Failures is Glenmore Trenear-Harvey a well respected intelligence writer, can’t see his footnotes on the Google Books page, but it seems like a reliable source.
This is an evolution. It wasn’t always so.
I love how still, even now, American perceptions of how other peoples think of America is so, utterly, endearingly, completely, wrong.
I think you’re misinterpreting the point of this story. The point of this story isn’t ‘look at how evil the KGB is, lets not be like them’. The point is ‘the KGB does what actually works when dealing with these people, we have to be more like them’. That is the underlying point I’ve noticed when I see people posting this story.
As others have said, it didn’t stop Islamic terrorism in Russia. There have been multiple bombings, hostage situations, assassinations, etc. committed by Islamic terrorists in Russia since 1986.
Citation? For overrun and the detials.
At the time the Soviet Union had a land border with Iran, didn’t it?
Never mind for a second whether the KGB really DID torture a terrorist’s relative to death. ASSUME they did. What’s the upshot? Do terrorists steer clear of Russia, knowing the KGB will come down hard on them and their families?
About 186 grieving families in Beslan will tell you “Nyet.”
I get that, but I would still maintain the primary purpose is Torture Porn — as in the Fat Boy’s “I want to make your flesh creep.” with a primal fear — and only half-heartedly as a recommendation. Plus some, “We fight too weakly, damn those soft liberal pointyheads in Washington for tying our hands.” No American reader would actually applaud Russians doing things, because Russians = Bad — even if they excused American actions at Abu Ghraib because Americans = Good.
And again, I am not denying the chekists could bring themselves to such things, not as late as the 1970s-80s though; and it does read as if scripted by a base thriller writer such as Clancy or Cussler for the purpose for the fantasies of the average Tea Party member.
Still it makes one feel old: I’ve read too much propaganda from all sides in my life.