I guess you are right. It seems they were selected based on family ties. I.e. those whose fathers were in the party or worked in the secret police or high ranking army officials.
At some point Cherkashin kind of mentions how he was fairly average and he was sent to the foreign language training academy and how it was at first very hard for him to pick up languages. But they just had very good teachers and eventually he mastered them.
So I guess I should correct it and say they picked what where thought to be "loyal" and "patriotic" people and then they trained them well. So if some got smarter it was often as a result of having to work with the best teachers.
At some point Cherkashin kind of mentions how he was fairly average and he was sent to the foreign language training academy and how it was at first very hard for him to pick up languages. But they just had very good teachers and eventually he mastered them.
So I guess I should correct it and say they picked what where thought to be "loyal" and "patriotic" people and then they trained them well. So if some got smarter it was often as a result of having to work with the best teachers.