The Spy in the Archive: How one man tried to kill the KGB

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The compulsively readable new book from The Rest is Classified host Gordon Corera. About how one man Vasili Mitrokhin turned first disaffected dissident and then traitor to the KGB, stealing the most secret Soviet archives and smuggling them to the West.

How do you steal a library Not just any library but the most secret, heavily guarded archive in the world. The answer is to be a librarian. To be so quiet, that no-one knows what you are up to as you toil undercover and deep amongst the files. The work goes on for decades but remains so low key, that even after your escape, aided by MI6, no-one even notices you are gone.

The Spy in the Archive tells the remarkable story of how Vasili Mitrokhin an introverted archivist who loved nothing more than dusty files ended up changing the world. As the in-house archivist for the KGB, the secrets he was exposed to inside its walls turned him first into a dissident and then a spy, a traitor to his country but a man determined to expose the truth about the dark forces that had subverted Russia, forces still at work in the country today.

Bestselling writer and historian Gordon Corera tells of the operation to extract this prized asset from Russia for the first time. It is an edge-of-the-seat thriller, with vivid flashbacks to Mitrokhins earlier time as a KGB idealist prepared to do what it took to serve the Soviet Union and his growing realisation that the communist state was imprisoning its own people. It is the story of what it was like to live in the Soviet Union, to raise a family and then of one mans journey from the heart of the Soviet state to disillusion, betrayal and defection. At its heart is Mitrokhins determination to take on the most powerful institution in the world by revealing its darkest secrets. This is narrative non-fiction at its absolute best.

Reviews

REVIEWS FOR RUSSIANS AMONG US

This [is a] superb study of the illegals system In the West it was erroneously assumed that the illegals programme ended with the Cold War, but as Corera proves it was ramped up and modernised by Putin for the 21st century Alexander Poteyev was a veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan who rose to become deputy head of Directorate S. His story, told here for the first time, is an extraordinary one Corera tells this astonishing tale with deft authority, placing it in the wider context of Russian intelligence strategy. Few are better versed in the intricacies of the continuing spy war between East and West Ben Macintyre, The Times

Extremely readable A lively and disturbing account of the extraordinary events that led to, and the terrible ones that followed, the Vienna spy swap in 2010, an episode perhaps best remembered in the West for Anna Chapman, the strikingly beautiful socialite who turned out to be a Russian spy' Telegraph

A lively and engrossing account of the FBIs decade-long counterintelligence operation Corera correctly notes that the US and UK were slow to appreciate Russias malign intent once Putin became president Offers a persuasive account of how Moscow had adapted its espionage toolkit A compelling book that combines good storytelling with subtle understanding of spy methods old and new Luke Harding, Observer

Author Bio

Gordon Corera was BBC security correspondent for over twenty years covering intelligence, terrorism and security issues before leaving to launch The Rest is Classified podcast, which he writes and hosts with David McCloskey. He is the author of Russians Among Us: Sleeper Cells, Ghost Stories and the Hunt for Putins Agents, Secret Pigeon Service: Operation Columba, Resistance and the Struggle to Liberate Europe, Intercept: The Secret History of Computers and Spies (entitled Cyberspies in the US), MI6: Life and Death in the British Secret Service (also entitled The Art of Betrayal), and Shopping for Bombs. He was educated at Oxford and Harvard universities, and lives in London. Mitrokhins priceless archive is now housed in Cambridge.