Oleg Gordievsky – författare

Oleg Gordievsky was the highest ranking KGB officer ever to work for Britain.For eleven years, from 1974 to 1985, he acted as a secret agent, reporting to the British Secret Intelligence Service while continuing to work as a KGB officer, first in Copenhagen, then in London.He provided Western security organizations with such a clear insight into the mind and methods of the KGB and the larger Soviet government that he has been credited with doing more than any other individual in the West to accelerate the collapse of Communism.In this thrilling memoir, Gordievsky lays out his extraordinary, meticulously planned escape from Russia, a story that has been described as 'one of the boldest and most extraordinary episodes in the history of spying.' (Ben Macintyre - The Times)Peopled with bizarre, dangerous and corrupt characters, Gordievsky introduces the reader to the fantastical world of the Soviet Embassy, tells of the British MPs and trade unionists who helped and took money from the KGB, and reveals at last what the author told Margaret Thatcher and other world leaders which made him of such value to the West.Gordievsky's autobiography gives a fascinating account of life as a secret agent. It also paints the most graphic picture yet of the paranoid incompetence, alongside the ruthless determination, of the all-encompassing and sometimes ridiculous KGB.

During the decade that preceded Mr Gorbachev's era of glasnost and perestroika, the KGB headquarters in Moscow was putting out a constant stream of instructions to its Residencies abroad. Unknown to the KGB, however, many of these highly classified documents were being secretly copied by Oleg Gordievsky, at that time not only a high-ranking KGB officer based in London but also a long-serving undercover agent for the British. The selected documents in this volume, translated and analysed by the editors with a commentary by Christopher Andrew to set them in context, offer a revealing insight into the attitudes, prejudices and fears of the KGB during what were to prove its declining years.

A Stanford University Press classic.

During the decade that preceded Mr Gorbachev's era of glasnost and perestroika, the KGB headquarters in Moscow was putting out a constant stream of instructions to its Residencies abroad. Unknown to the KGB, however, many of these highly classified documents were being secretly copied by Oleg Gordievsky, at that time not only a high-ranking KGB officer based in London but also a long-serving undercover agent for the British. The selected documents in this volume, translated and analysed by the editors with a commentary by Christopher Andrew to set them in context, offer a revealing insight into the attitudes, prejudices and fears of the KGB during what were to prove its declining years.