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 gave Western security organizations such a clear insight into the mind and methods of the KGB and the whole system of Soviet Government that he has been credited with doing more than any other individual in the West to accelerate the collapse of Communism.
Here for the first time his extraordinary, meticulously planned escape from Russia is described.
Peopled with bizarre, dangerous and corrupt characters, Gordievsky’s story 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 paranoia and incompetence, intrigues and sheer nastiness of the all-encompassing and sometimes ridiculous KGB.
'Gripping.' – Luke Harding, Guardian correspondent and author of Mafia State: How one reporter became an enemy of the brutal new Russia.
'Only Gordievsky could...persuade the powers that mattered.' – The Spectator
Oleg Gordievsky was born in Moscow in 1938. He attended the Moscow State Institute of International Relations where he specialized in German. He was sent to East Berlin as a diplomatic trainee in August 1961. Two days after his arrival, the Wall went up. In 1962 he joined the KGB and was posted to Copenhagen and London. He worked as a secret agent for eleven years until his dramatic escape to the West in 1985. He is the author of KGB: The Inside Story.
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 gave Western security organizations such a clear insight into the mind and methods of the KGB and the whole system of Soviet Government that he has been credited with doing more than any other individual in the West to accelerate the collapse of Communism.
Here for the first time his extraordinary, meticulously planned escape from Russia is described.
Peopled with bizarre, dangerous and corrupt characters, Gordievsky’s story 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 paranoia and incompetence, intrigues and sheer nastiness of the all-encompassing and sometimes ridiculous KGB.
Praise for Oleg Gordievsky
'Gripping.' – Luke Harding, Guardian correspondent and author of Mafia State: How one reporter became an enemy of the brutal new Russia.
'Only Gordievsky could...persuade the powers that mattered.' – The Spectator
Oleg Gordievsky was born in Moscow in 1938. He attended the Moscow State Institute of International Relations where he specialized in German. He was sent to East Berlin as a diplomatic trainee in August 1961. Two days after his arrival, the Wall went up. In 1962 he joined the KGB and was posted to Copenhagen and London. He worked as a secret agent for eleven years until his dramatic escape to the West in 1985. He is the author of KGB: The Inside Story.
