Not enough rainy Sundays for this
Someone around here, in what is no doubt a deliberate attempt to sabotage my already poor time management, handed me a copy of "The Mitrokhin Archive" (Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, Penguin).
This is a "history of the KGB in Europe and the West", based mainly on files that Mitrokhin secretly collected during his long career as a KGB archivist, before defecting to the UK in 1992. The authors describe their work as dismissed by the successor to the KGB "as obvious enemy propaganda," implying that it must therefore be true.
True or not, I'm captivated by how many "own goals" the Chekists scored over the years, caught up in their own paranoia. How much time they wasted hunting down Trotskists before WWII; how much effort was spent spying on the "allies" US, UK and France during WWII; and how little effective spying on Nazi Germany and the Axis they carried out. And throughout, chasing down and attempting to punish defectors to the West
This is a long dry book, made up of seemingly endless (700+, plus extensive endnotes) pages of agents and codenames, patched together with background material about the Cold War. There are a few teasers-a thin chapter on SIGINT, a passing reference to the Petrovs-but overall I just couldn't wait for it to be finished.
Spying is revealed as a lonely unrewarding business, generally ultimately resulting in being blackmailed by your controllers and then eventually exposed, resulting in fines, imprisonment or execution for yourself and those around you.
My colleage promises Volume 2, which Andrews hints covers KGB operations in Asia, but I'm afraid to look at it.
This is a "history of the KGB in Europe and the West", based mainly on files that Mitrokhin secretly collected during his long career as a KGB archivist, before defecting to the UK in 1992. The authors describe their work as dismissed by the successor to the KGB "as obvious enemy propaganda," implying that it must therefore be true.
True or not, I'm captivated by how many "own goals" the Chekists scored over the years, caught up in their own paranoia. How much time they wasted hunting down Trotskists before WWII; how much effort was spent spying on the "allies" US, UK and France during WWII; and how little effective spying on Nazi Germany and the Axis they carried out. And throughout, chasing down and attempting to punish defectors to the West
This is a long dry book, made up of seemingly endless (700+, plus extensive endnotes) pages of agents and codenames, patched together with background material about the Cold War. There are a few teasers-a thin chapter on SIGINT, a passing reference to the Petrovs-but overall I just couldn't wait for it to be finished.
Spying is revealed as a lonely unrewarding business, generally ultimately resulting in being blackmailed by your controllers and then eventually exposed, resulting in fines, imprisonment or execution for yourself and those around you.
My colleage promises Volume 2, which Andrews hints covers KGB operations in Asia, but I'm afraid to look at it.