The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West

This book contains important information about Soviet espionage in the West during the Cold War, and is co-written by a Soviet defector who brought a large number of official records with him and historian Christopher Andrew, some of whose lectures on modern European history I attended as a student long ago, and a very good lecturer he was too. He was since appointed official historian of British intelligence. So, this book ought to be good.Unfortunately, for some reason it just did not enthrall me. I can't say why, it just didn't.It does though show how up to the 1950s, Soviet Intelligence gained a lot of information from successful people of ability in the West who, however mistakenly, genuinely believed in Communism.Thereafter, as the cruel repression and economic failures of the Eastern bloc became more generally known, fewer people were willing to pass information out of ideological commitment. Soviet intelligence had to rely more on often junior people with purely mercenary or grudge motives to sell secrets. Such people, having no more loyalty to the Soviet Union than they had to their own countries, were less reliable agents.Even where the Soviets received information, their ideology could get in the way of using it effectively. Having shot many of their own senior people in the 1930s for supposedly spying for Britain, it was embarrassing to be told by their agents inside British intelligence Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Cairncross and Blunt that Britain had no espionage operation inside the USSR at that time. This caused some in Soviet intelligence to question the reliability of reports from Philby and the others.During World War II, Stalin refused to believe that senior Nazi Rudolf Hess's flight to Britain was not part of some British plot to make a separate peace with Germany, or else to make Hess the head of a British controlled puppet government in Germany.During the War the NKVD (later called KGB) probably helped the Soviet war effort less by providing reliable intelligence about the enemy than by internal terror against anyone, civilian or soldier, suspected of disloyalty, ensuring that unlike in 1917 there would be no internal revolt.Subsequently, in the Cold War, KGB intelligence did not prevent Soviet leaders and generals from believing dangerous fantasies that NATO was plotting a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union.If you want to read a really interesting and more lively book that touches on Soviet agents and sympathisers in the USA during the Cold War, if you can cope with her flippant and partisanly right-wing style, then I recommend the brilliant but controversial Ann Coulter's book 'Treason'.

The Mitrokhinarchives opens up an additional perspective on understanding global politics. I read the part on India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and it helped me understand the politics of the left in the three countries. More important, it helped me understand why intelligence is critical for policymaking, especially good intelligence. The KGB had become too top heavy and regimented which is why it began to err in analysing intel.

If you aren't familiar with this top notch history derived from extensive and carefully corroborated KGB archival material, you aren't qualified to comment authoritatively on late 20th century history, simple as that.

Really strong analysis of the impact of his papers and, to some extent, the impact they have had on our understanding of what has happened. Just wish I could dig a bit deeper! Very interesting and highly recommended.

Gosh - what a tangle web we we when we first try to deceive, incredible detail and outlandish truths how the Politically driven Secret Services socialise their doctrine and carve the territories for selfish gain - a riveting read.

I can’t help here as it was a gift for somebody else...... sorry!

A really interesting book regarding the KGB. highly recommended. Worth checking out Yuri Bezmenov too.

A good book, but some of the detail is tedious