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Spymaster: My Thirty-two Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West
Oleg Kalugin oversaw the work of American spies, matched wits with the CIA, and became one of the youngest generals in KGB history. Even so, he grew increasingly disillusioned with the Soviet system. In 1990, he went public, exposing the intelligence agency's shadowy methods. Revised and updated in the light of the KGB's enduring presence in Russian politics, Spymaster is Kalugin's impressively illuminating memoir of the final years of the Soviet Union.
483 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 13, 1994
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909 people want to read
About the author
Oleg Kalugin
7 books8 followersOleg Danilovich Kalugin (Russian: Олег Данилович Калугин), is a former KGB general. He was a longtime head of KGB operations in the United States and later a critic of the agency.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
November 26, 2017
This book affirmed what I already thought of ex-KGB "defector" Oleg Kalugin: that he's a creep who can't truly repudiate and let go of his Soviet past. He holds Soviet defectors in contempt, yet think there's nothing wrong with spilling KGB secrets. He despises Putin and pretty much any political events in Russia that took place after 1993. It seems to me he would have preferred that the Soviet Union stay in existence, just "reform" (how this reform would have taken place, he doesn't say). And, of course, he doesn't miss an opportunity to say that he didn't support the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 (even though this event is completely and utterly extraneous to this book). In short, he wants to have his cake and eat it too.
Not that I had any respect for Kalugin before, but I definitely don't have any now. People like Dmitry Polyakov, the GRU officer who passed secrets to the US for about twenty years and were executed for it are the kinds of people I respect, not this sniveling coward who pretends to be pro-America, pretends to have left the KGB behind, pretends to be anti-Russia when it suits him.
Not that I had any respect for Kalugin before, but I definitely don't have any now. People like Dmitry Polyakov, the GRU officer who passed secrets to the US for about twenty years and were executed for it are the kinds of people I respect, not this sniveling coward who pretends to be pro-America, pretends to have left the KGB behind, pretends to be anti-Russia when it suits him.
August 31, 2017
This book was an unequivocal 5/5. It is a Non-Fiction account of the past as Oleg Kalugin experienced it. Be warned I will be discussing mostly the later part of the book and thus discussing aspects of Kalugins life, which one may deem as spoilers. It is the final disillusionment that intrigues me the most about this book. I don't really mention the Stalin era, mostly because I had too much to write about in the latter part of this. I also don't go into too many details of the spy cases etc. I'll leave those intrigues to the readers to enjoy. (Some are rather funny).
In essence this book follows the rising career of Oleg Kalugin, who would eventually find himself as a KGB General. Ronald Landes of Saint Mary's University recommended this excellent book to me and I'm glad he did. He has recommended many books to me, and all have turned out to be excellent in quality, content, and readability. This one was among the best so far.
This was an excellent read because here we have an accounting of a young Russian, fanatically in favor of Soviet communism! Oleg was a proud Russian. He was one of a generation who would do anything, say anything, for his homeland, for the socialist cause. This included going over to America and posing as a mere journalism student at Columbia University, when in reality he was there as a foreign intelligence KGB officer. He was involved in espionage operations, as well as a whole host of other KGB related intrigues. His involvement with Kim Philby is particularly interesting. I won't spoil those details because it's actually rather interesting what they did to the old Cambridge spy.
He spent 5 years in America at one point. These 5 years would forever change him, though it would be a long time after 1958, over 30 years, before he realized his belief in the Soviet Communist system was misplaced nonsense. He became disillusioned by the KGB, and how powerful it had become, how it had its corrupt fingers in every crevice of Russia. He came to eventually believe, in his later years, that the only way for Russia to truly succeed and thrive was as a democratic nation, with a market economy, and with the KGB's power vastly reduced, its corruption and stranglehold removed.
To this day, Oleg is critical of Russia's Putin for returning Russia to the old ways in many regards. I'll let the book explain that in more detail. You see, Putin is ex-KGB, and very much KGB minded in his regard to Russia. With the Andropov and Gorbachev, and the August Coup failure of 1991, it seemed as if Russia had hope each time, as if it would rise like a phoenix from the flames of the destructive totalitarian communism that reigned. For a thousand years Russia had struggled as a country under the thumb of corrupt rulers. Now seemed the time for it to thrive.
Crushing the coup d'etat of Kryuchkov and his lackeys was a major blow, but it was not a death blow. With Putin we see a reversal, a backwards step for Russia. We see a Russia that, if it continues as it is, will not rise to illustrious freedom and thrive as Oleg Kalugin had so hoped it would. With Putin you get a mix of the old ways coming back, but with no real effort to extensively reform the country for the better. Personally I have yet to study up on the extent of these statements, but this is essentially the opinion I gathered from Oleg when I read his words.
To quote the book "We cannot begin a serious restructuring of society until we rid ourselves of the restraints imposed by an organization which has penetrated every sphere of our lives, which interferes with all aspects of state life, political life, the economy, science, arts, religion, even sports." - P.388
He immediately goes on to quote himself as saying "Today, just as ten or twenty years ago, the hand of the KGB is everywhere. And any talk of perestroika without reforming the KGB is nothing but a lie. All the much-ballyhooed changes in the KGB are cosmetic, a disguise on the ugly face of the Stalin-Brezhnev era. In fact, all the elements of the old dictatorship are still in place. the chief assistant and handmaiden of the Communist Party remains the KGB. In order to secure genuine changes in our country, this structure of violence and falsehood must e dismantled." - P.388 These two quotes come from a speech Kalugin gave in 1990.
In fact because of his actions, like this speech are precisely why Oleg attests "There is no doubt that as my anti-KGB campaign gathered strength, both my phone and my apartment were bugged. The old ladies who stood watch in our building later described how strange men with government papers gained entry to our apartment when we weren't home, claiming our phone lines were faulty." - P.386
Kalugin had great hope in the mid to late 80's with Gorbachev but suffered an unfortunate turn of opinion of him around 1990, him "whom I had once viewed as a bold reformer", states Kalugin, "I realized that Gorbachev had become a timid reformer and had no intention of tackling the problem of the KGB. He was under enormous pressure from Kryuchkov and others ... he wasn't about to alienate them" - P.390. And remember, it was Kryuchkov and his fellow filth who orchestrated the August Coup. Because what happened was, "two weeks after the speech, Gorbachev issued a decree stripping me of my rank of major general, revoking all my KGB awards, and cutting off my pension" - P.390
Now I realize I have quoted some passages out of order, but I did that intentionally to get my point across, the way I wanted to. What I'm trying to do is demonstrate herein, the disillusionment, the fight against the KGB way of communism, and the consequences Kalugin paid for his new ways of thinking, for his fight against the KGB.
When Kalugin was nominated to the USSR Congress of People's Deputies in Krasnodar, he would enter the world of Russian politics. "My candidacy would be a challenge to the old order - a system that had sought to publicly demolish my dignity as an officer and a human being by stripping me of the awards, rank, and pension I had earned in many years honest work." - P.393.
In politics Klugin was able to attack the KGB. But they would fight back and attempt to sully his name. He was even accused of being an spy for America. With the Cook espionage case coming back to
threaten him. Putin by the way had decreed Kalugin a traitor and a jail sentence, later on. But by then Kalugin was in America, away from Putin's Russia.
This is the man Oleg Kalugin became. He went from being a devout communist, to a pro-democratic supporter. He didn't exactly dismiss the ideas of socialism, but he realized that communism just wasn't going to work the way it was engineered.
Most of my quotes are later in the book, when I thought to actually take note of some. But if we turn back the pages to a look at young Oleg Kalugin and his trip to America in the 50s, we see a glimmer of what's to come. "That trip-and all my time in America-gave me a brief twinge of doubt about the Communist system. The freedom I experienced to poke around America, to engage people in discussions on any topic-all of it contrasted sharply with the mood in my country, where a friendly, open attitude often was met with a stiff rebuke or a door slammed in one's face. As the years went by and I would return to the USSR from operations abroad, I increasingly experienced the sense that I was slipping behind some gloomy Communist curtain. In 1958, I knew our life was grimmer but just figured we had a longer way to go than the more fortunate people of America." - P.30. There you have it. The gripping hope of a KGB Soviet communist, getting a glimpse of the contrast between democracy and Soviet socialism.
A few other passages that stood out for me, which I will note with more brevity:
"I increasingly began to feel like millions of other Soviets who had been unjustly accused of crimes, though most of them had experienced a far worse fate ... As someone once said, the revolution devours it's own children" - P.340.
"(mysheniye voznya)... mice games... were about the only thing our local KGB officers were engaged in as they tried to control and instill fear in the common people of their districts." - P.342. In the outlying regions of Leningrad and other places, if the hunt for spies turned up nothing, the KGB had to justify their vast existence with mice games. Busy work. False accusations. Witch hunts where there were no witches. In effect, totalitarianism.
Andropov "fought against petty corruption, though he never attacked the deeply engrained corruption within the Communist Party. 'The better we work, the better we shall live,' pronounced Comrade Andropov, but the fact remained that our system was, our system was, for all intents and purposes, dead" - P.355
"All I could see was incompetence, drift, and rot"- P.356. This is the feeling we get from Kalugin of 1984. A concise and poignant statement of the state of Soviet Russia and of Kalugin's own opinion of the time.
"I date my utter disillusionment with the KGB to early 1984, with Andropov's demise and several other events forced me to see that there was no hope of reviving my career or redeeming the old Soviet system" - p.355. I find it incredibly ironic that it is 1984 in which he becomes disillusions, when you consider George Orwell's book, titled 1984. It's remarkably coincidental and could easily be an extensive study of comparison and contrast. Future reality versus Fiction. It should also be noted that Andropov was highly thought of by Kalugin. He was in essence his understudy.
There is so much more I'd like to write about with this book, but I see no end of this review in sight if I do so. You should read it. You should all read it. It's a remarkable book with so much to say to the world. We live in our sheltered little bubbles without really thinking about other nations and how their systems work, how other people are persecuted (ie. Stalins purges, the mice games of the KGB and the innocent lives ruined). While we sit around debating "white wishing" in Hollywood, or SJWs mull about thinking of petty things to gripe about, there is REAL suffering in the world, outside of America, Canada, The West etc. We are so bloody comfortable we have the luxury to sit around and complain about nonsense that bothers us. Have many of us truly had to worry about starving to death? or being blown up in the dead of night, your body erupting in a fiery inferno of splayed biomatter? (I'm not just meaning terrorism here, I also mean what people suffered through both the wars, and all the other military conflicts the world over).
Think about the Stalinist era in Soviet Russia. I know I didn't cover that in my review, but this review is huge as it is. Think about the purges. Think about the idea of millions pointlessly killed. My city only has HALF a million people in it, to contrast with millions. Next time you want to complain about silly issues, think about the real problems other people have to live with.
As a Canadian like myself, or as an American, or any of the "western" countries, reading this should make you really appreciate the world you have. Sure things can always be better. They can also be far worse. Look up the Cambodian Genocide of the Khmer Rouge for instance. You think life is unpleasant? Google that.
I hope you enjoyed my rantings, and I hope you read this book. It's a remarkable one which I cannot praise enough.
In essence this book follows the rising career of Oleg Kalugin, who would eventually find himself as a KGB General. Ronald Landes of Saint Mary's University recommended this excellent book to me and I'm glad he did. He has recommended many books to me, and all have turned out to be excellent in quality, content, and readability. This one was among the best so far.
This was an excellent read because here we have an accounting of a young Russian, fanatically in favor of Soviet communism! Oleg was a proud Russian. He was one of a generation who would do anything, say anything, for his homeland, for the socialist cause. This included going over to America and posing as a mere journalism student at Columbia University, when in reality he was there as a foreign intelligence KGB officer. He was involved in espionage operations, as well as a whole host of other KGB related intrigues. His involvement with Kim Philby is particularly interesting. I won't spoil those details because it's actually rather interesting what they did to the old Cambridge spy.
He spent 5 years in America at one point. These 5 years would forever change him, though it would be a long time after 1958, over 30 years, before he realized his belief in the Soviet Communist system was misplaced nonsense. He became disillusioned by the KGB, and how powerful it had become, how it had its corrupt fingers in every crevice of Russia. He came to eventually believe, in his later years, that the only way for Russia to truly succeed and thrive was as a democratic nation, with a market economy, and with the KGB's power vastly reduced, its corruption and stranglehold removed.
To this day, Oleg is critical of Russia's Putin for returning Russia to the old ways in many regards. I'll let the book explain that in more detail. You see, Putin is ex-KGB, and very much KGB minded in his regard to Russia. With the Andropov and Gorbachev, and the August Coup failure of 1991, it seemed as if Russia had hope each time, as if it would rise like a phoenix from the flames of the destructive totalitarian communism that reigned. For a thousand years Russia had struggled as a country under the thumb of corrupt rulers. Now seemed the time for it to thrive.
Crushing the coup d'etat of Kryuchkov and his lackeys was a major blow, but it was not a death blow. With Putin we see a reversal, a backwards step for Russia. We see a Russia that, if it continues as it is, will not rise to illustrious freedom and thrive as Oleg Kalugin had so hoped it would. With Putin you get a mix of the old ways coming back, but with no real effort to extensively reform the country for the better. Personally I have yet to study up on the extent of these statements, but this is essentially the opinion I gathered from Oleg when I read his words.
To quote the book "We cannot begin a serious restructuring of society until we rid ourselves of the restraints imposed by an organization which has penetrated every sphere of our lives, which interferes with all aspects of state life, political life, the economy, science, arts, religion, even sports." - P.388
He immediately goes on to quote himself as saying "Today, just as ten or twenty years ago, the hand of the KGB is everywhere. And any talk of perestroika without reforming the KGB is nothing but a lie. All the much-ballyhooed changes in the KGB are cosmetic, a disguise on the ugly face of the Stalin-Brezhnev era. In fact, all the elements of the old dictatorship are still in place. the chief assistant and handmaiden of the Communist Party remains the KGB. In order to secure genuine changes in our country, this structure of violence and falsehood must e dismantled." - P.388 These two quotes come from a speech Kalugin gave in 1990.
In fact because of his actions, like this speech are precisely why Oleg attests "There is no doubt that as my anti-KGB campaign gathered strength, both my phone and my apartment were bugged. The old ladies who stood watch in our building later described how strange men with government papers gained entry to our apartment when we weren't home, claiming our phone lines were faulty." - P.386
Kalugin had great hope in the mid to late 80's with Gorbachev but suffered an unfortunate turn of opinion of him around 1990, him "whom I had once viewed as a bold reformer", states Kalugin, "I realized that Gorbachev had become a timid reformer and had no intention of tackling the problem of the KGB. He was under enormous pressure from Kryuchkov and others ... he wasn't about to alienate them" - P.390. And remember, it was Kryuchkov and his fellow filth who orchestrated the August Coup. Because what happened was, "two weeks after the speech, Gorbachev issued a decree stripping me of my rank of major general, revoking all my KGB awards, and cutting off my pension" - P.390
Now I realize I have quoted some passages out of order, but I did that intentionally to get my point across, the way I wanted to. What I'm trying to do is demonstrate herein, the disillusionment, the fight against the KGB way of communism, and the consequences Kalugin paid for his new ways of thinking, for his fight against the KGB.
When Kalugin was nominated to the USSR Congress of People's Deputies in Krasnodar, he would enter the world of Russian politics. "My candidacy would be a challenge to the old order - a system that had sought to publicly demolish my dignity as an officer and a human being by stripping me of the awards, rank, and pension I had earned in many years honest work." - P.393.
In politics Klugin was able to attack the KGB. But they would fight back and attempt to sully his name. He was even accused of being an spy for America. With the Cook espionage case coming back to
threaten him. Putin by the way had decreed Kalugin a traitor and a jail sentence, later on. But by then Kalugin was in America, away from Putin's Russia.
This is the man Oleg Kalugin became. He went from being a devout communist, to a pro-democratic supporter. He didn't exactly dismiss the ideas of socialism, but he realized that communism just wasn't going to work the way it was engineered.
Most of my quotes are later in the book, when I thought to actually take note of some. But if we turn back the pages to a look at young Oleg Kalugin and his trip to America in the 50s, we see a glimmer of what's to come. "That trip-and all my time in America-gave me a brief twinge of doubt about the Communist system. The freedom I experienced to poke around America, to engage people in discussions on any topic-all of it contrasted sharply with the mood in my country, where a friendly, open attitude often was met with a stiff rebuke or a door slammed in one's face. As the years went by and I would return to the USSR from operations abroad, I increasingly experienced the sense that I was slipping behind some gloomy Communist curtain. In 1958, I knew our life was grimmer but just figured we had a longer way to go than the more fortunate people of America." - P.30. There you have it. The gripping hope of a KGB Soviet communist, getting a glimpse of the contrast between democracy and Soviet socialism.
A few other passages that stood out for me, which I will note with more brevity:
"I increasingly began to feel like millions of other Soviets who had been unjustly accused of crimes, though most of them had experienced a far worse fate ... As someone once said, the revolution devours it's own children" - P.340.
"(mysheniye voznya)... mice games... were about the only thing our local KGB officers were engaged in as they tried to control and instill fear in the common people of their districts." - P.342. In the outlying regions of Leningrad and other places, if the hunt for spies turned up nothing, the KGB had to justify their vast existence with mice games. Busy work. False accusations. Witch hunts where there were no witches. In effect, totalitarianism.
Andropov "fought against petty corruption, though he never attacked the deeply engrained corruption within the Communist Party. 'The better we work, the better we shall live,' pronounced Comrade Andropov, but the fact remained that our system was, our system was, for all intents and purposes, dead" - P.355
"All I could see was incompetence, drift, and rot"- P.356. This is the feeling we get from Kalugin of 1984. A concise and poignant statement of the state of Soviet Russia and of Kalugin's own opinion of the time.
"I date my utter disillusionment with the KGB to early 1984, with Andropov's demise and several other events forced me to see that there was no hope of reviving my career or redeeming the old Soviet system" - p.355. I find it incredibly ironic that it is 1984 in which he becomes disillusions, when you consider George Orwell's book, titled 1984. It's remarkably coincidental and could easily be an extensive study of comparison and contrast. Future reality versus Fiction. It should also be noted that Andropov was highly thought of by Kalugin. He was in essence his understudy.
There is so much more I'd like to write about with this book, but I see no end of this review in sight if I do so. You should read it. You should all read it. It's a remarkable book with so much to say to the world. We live in our sheltered little bubbles without really thinking about other nations and how their systems work, how other people are persecuted (ie. Stalins purges, the mice games of the KGB and the innocent lives ruined). While we sit around debating "white wishing" in Hollywood, or SJWs mull about thinking of petty things to gripe about, there is REAL suffering in the world, outside of America, Canada, The West etc. We are so bloody comfortable we have the luxury to sit around and complain about nonsense that bothers us. Have many of us truly had to worry about starving to death? or being blown up in the dead of night, your body erupting in a fiery inferno of splayed biomatter? (I'm not just meaning terrorism here, I also mean what people suffered through both the wars, and all the other military conflicts the world over).
Think about the Stalinist era in Soviet Russia. I know I didn't cover that in my review, but this review is huge as it is. Think about the purges. Think about the idea of millions pointlessly killed. My city only has HALF a million people in it, to contrast with millions. Next time you want to complain about silly issues, think about the real problems other people have to live with.
As a Canadian like myself, or as an American, or any of the "western" countries, reading this should make you really appreciate the world you have. Sure things can always be better. They can also be far worse. Look up the Cambodian Genocide of the Khmer Rouge for instance. You think life is unpleasant? Google that.
I hope you enjoyed my rantings, and I hope you read this book. It's a remarkable one which I cannot praise enough.
Read
August 2, 2011An entertaining and highly believeable accoun t of a life as a KGB employee. From his early idealism as a KGB agent in the USA through to his growing dissolution. Kalugins account is interesting coming as it does from a dissident within the the system. From someone who acted out of what he saw to be his patriotic duty to his homeland and who increasingly fought against the rot he saw spreading from the centre of the of the Soviet system. Especially interesting is the chapter dealing with his relationship with Kim Philby whom Kalugin dragged back from the abyss in which he had been abandoned by a "grateful" USSR. The real rot that set in with Breshnev's mafioso chums, following the coup that deposed Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev is amply illustrated. This bunch were by Kalugin's reckoning the real saboteurs and wreckers and even agents of the West. Kalugin eventually was sidelined by Breshnev''s toadies and finally stripped of his rank and pension. The book ends just before Kalugin left for the USA and ironically he was tried in his absence by Russia and found guilty of spying for the West a charge leveled against him for many years and strongly rejected by Kalugin.
November 20, 2020
I was totally blindsided by the quality of this book. Before reading it, I had never heard of Oleg Kalugin and wasn't sure what to expect from his memoir. I have read a handful of CIA memoirs as well as Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin's "The Sword and the Shield." This was, in my opinion, just as good as some of the CIA memoirs I have read. I put this on par with "The Main Enemy" by Milton Bearden and James Risen. (Note: this book is very different when compared with both books previously mentioned.)
Oleg's writing is clear and engaging. As far as I am aware, he wrote the book in English himself and his word choice is impeccable. The book started off slowly but really hit its stride about halfway through. The final chapter, while good, feels rushed and comes to hasty close. I was disappointed to see the 1993-2008 years summarized in a few pages after the detail provided by Mr. Kalugin in the previous chapters.
The content of the book is fascinating. Oleg was a covert operative in the United States for nearly a decade before returning to Moscow as the head of the KGB's foreign counterintelligence operations. He offers an interesting take on the USSR and Russia in this book. He really presses home his initial commitment to Communism and the Soviet Union in the beginning, but as the book goes on his writing begins to feel almost apologetic. For example, he describes how he "always knew" that certain KGB administrators were rotten. While this may be true, it feels like that would be easy to say as a naturalized US citizen writing about his years wrestling against the CIA. Let me clarify that I believe Mr. Kalugin's writing is genuine. I think he really was conscious of his peers' cronyism and corruption. I believe that Mr. Kalugin became disenfranchised with the system and tried to work from the inside to fix it. Unfortunately, it just sounds like rose-colored 20/20 vision in the current era.
This book deserves a read. It's a hidden gem (at least from my perspective) and I think it deserves more attention than it gets.
Oleg's writing is clear and engaging. As far as I am aware, he wrote the book in English himself and his word choice is impeccable. The book started off slowly but really hit its stride about halfway through. The final chapter, while good, feels rushed and comes to hasty close. I was disappointed to see the 1993-2008 years summarized in a few pages after the detail provided by Mr. Kalugin in the previous chapters.
The content of the book is fascinating. Oleg was a covert operative in the United States for nearly a decade before returning to Moscow as the head of the KGB's foreign counterintelligence operations. He offers an interesting take on the USSR and Russia in this book. He really presses home his initial commitment to Communism and the Soviet Union in the beginning, but as the book goes on his writing begins to feel almost apologetic. For example, he describes how he "always knew" that certain KGB administrators were rotten. While this may be true, it feels like that would be easy to say as a naturalized US citizen writing about his years wrestling against the CIA. Let me clarify that I believe Mr. Kalugin's writing is genuine. I think he really was conscious of his peers' cronyism and corruption. I believe that Mr. Kalugin became disenfranchised with the system and tried to work from the inside to fix it. Unfortunately, it just sounds like rose-colored 20/20 vision in the current era.
This book deserves a read. It's a hidden gem (at least from my perspective) and I think it deserves more attention than it gets.
Read
January 5, 2019Thrilling. Ominous. Inspiring. I have a lot of respect for Kalugin.
May 14, 2018
This book written by Oleg Kalugin and was interesting on several levels. It was written by a Russian who did attend Columbia University and he had no cowriter, yet, the book flows easily and if the reader did not know better, they would assume that it was an American writer.
The book chronicles the 30 some year career of a KGB spy and spymaster. As you read through this career, you could forget that we are talking about a Russian Bureaucracy and an organization notorious for terrorizing its own people and spying and killing others all over the world. The reviewer finds it humorous when the author talks about retirement at age 55, with pension, and sick and vacation leave. The organization he works for provides housing and as he rises through the ranks of the organization, he gets vacation homes and other perks of the job. This could be the US Department of transportation or some other US bureaucracy, if we didn’t know better!
This reviewer has read a number of tell all biographies in this genre from Kim Philby ‘s “My Silent War” to Spy handler by Victor Cherkaskin to Circle of Treason, the story of the exposure and capture of Aldrich Ames. All of them tell the same story of betrayal of country for ideology reasons and/or for money. Any analysis of workings of the CIA or the KGB reveals the same thing, they spy on us and we spy on them, we recruit their people, they recruit our people. We capture and kill their spy’s, they capture and kill our spy’s. Neither country has a secret that is not know by the other country, in the case of Kim Philby, he sat at the top of the British Secret Service and the CIA for years, nothing was a secret to him! And for the most part, all of the spies are known to each other, and if they are kept secret, it is not for long before an Aldrich Ames points them out to the other side. The spy game, as these professionals like to call it is clearly a march of folly, and with all of this cloak and dagger, all the spy agencies failed to see the major events of our history, case in point is 9/11. Unfortunately, this writer cannot provide an alternative to the folly.
The Spymaster narrates his career story, always emphasizing that he is one of the good guys! And yet, the reader is always aware that you don’t rise to the top of such an organization without getting his hands dirty.
Kalugin also tries to make the case about working to change his organization for the better, yet, he comes across as rather ingenuous when he frequently goes over his immediate boss and sometime the agency head, this is an intelligent man and these actions were naïve and his firing was easy to predict.
The writer does a good job of providing an insider look at the rise of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. He speaks to the hopes they prompted in the downtrodden citizens of Russia and the disappointments resulting from the failure to achieve reform. In his epilogue he addresses the rise of Putin and the oligarch grab of anything of value from the former Soviet Union. The author is vague about his own rise to oligarch status when he discusses how he was appointed to Boards or hired by large international corporations to represent they’re interests in Russia.
They book did go beyond the typical spy novel and it provided some historical perspective on the crises historically faced by Russia, as well as, all of the lost opportunities simply because the issues were beyond the ability of mortal men to control enormous events. A savior did not rise and those who tried were found inadequate for the task.
While I enjoyed this book, my cynicism of the genre is becoming clear and even current events in our CIA make you wonder why and if there isn’t a better way.
The book chronicles the 30 some year career of a KGB spy and spymaster. As you read through this career, you could forget that we are talking about a Russian Bureaucracy and an organization notorious for terrorizing its own people and spying and killing others all over the world. The reviewer finds it humorous when the author talks about retirement at age 55, with pension, and sick and vacation leave. The organization he works for provides housing and as he rises through the ranks of the organization, he gets vacation homes and other perks of the job. This could be the US Department of transportation or some other US bureaucracy, if we didn’t know better!
This reviewer has read a number of tell all biographies in this genre from Kim Philby ‘s “My Silent War” to Spy handler by Victor Cherkaskin to Circle of Treason, the story of the exposure and capture of Aldrich Ames. All of them tell the same story of betrayal of country for ideology reasons and/or for money. Any analysis of workings of the CIA or the KGB reveals the same thing, they spy on us and we spy on them, we recruit their people, they recruit our people. We capture and kill their spy’s, they capture and kill our spy’s. Neither country has a secret that is not know by the other country, in the case of Kim Philby, he sat at the top of the British Secret Service and the CIA for years, nothing was a secret to him! And for the most part, all of the spies are known to each other, and if they are kept secret, it is not for long before an Aldrich Ames points them out to the other side. The spy game, as these professionals like to call it is clearly a march of folly, and with all of this cloak and dagger, all the spy agencies failed to see the major events of our history, case in point is 9/11. Unfortunately, this writer cannot provide an alternative to the folly.
The Spymaster narrates his career story, always emphasizing that he is one of the good guys! And yet, the reader is always aware that you don’t rise to the top of such an organization without getting his hands dirty.
Kalugin also tries to make the case about working to change his organization for the better, yet, he comes across as rather ingenuous when he frequently goes over his immediate boss and sometime the agency head, this is an intelligent man and these actions were naïve and his firing was easy to predict.
The writer does a good job of providing an insider look at the rise of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. He speaks to the hopes they prompted in the downtrodden citizens of Russia and the disappointments resulting from the failure to achieve reform. In his epilogue he addresses the rise of Putin and the oligarch grab of anything of value from the former Soviet Union. The author is vague about his own rise to oligarch status when he discusses how he was appointed to Boards or hired by large international corporations to represent they’re interests in Russia.
They book did go beyond the typical spy novel and it provided some historical perspective on the crises historically faced by Russia, as well as, all of the lost opportunities simply because the issues were beyond the ability of mortal men to control enormous events. A savior did not rise and those who tried were found inadequate for the task.
While I enjoyed this book, my cynicism of the genre is becoming clear and even current events in our CIA make you wonder why and if there isn’t a better way.
January 7, 2020
Spymaster is an espionage thriller. It is also a true story—it is the autobiography of Oleg Danilovich Kalugin, Soviet General and head of foreign counterintelligence, First Chief Directorate of the KGB. The storyline focuses on Kalugin’s professional activities and timeline, which gives it the narrative coherence of a nonfiction novel (a genre more or less invented by Truman Capote with In Cold Blood). The literary quality is superb, which reinforces the nonfiction-novel feel of the book.
After college, Kalugin spent two years in the KGB’s Advanced Spy School. He learned how to set up radio transmitters, to use and detect bugging devices, to make microfilm and how to conceal microfilm and microdots in household items, how to cultivate intelligence assets, coding/decoding and cryptology, location orienting when dropped into unfamiliar locations, how to use a gun, how to tail people invisibly, how to detect when being tailed, how to evade all kinds of surveillance, and how to pass a package without being noticed even when being tailed.
In addition to his native Russian, Kalugin was proficient in English, German, and Arabic; typical of KGB operatives who had to “fight the West” in all corners of the world.
By 1958, Kalugin was a KGB operative stationed in New York City. Almost immediately undercover FBI agents were feeling out the young Kalugin to determine if he was KGB, and whether he might be interested in defecting. Thus began Kalugin’s 30-year career navigating the dangerous and labyrinthine cold-war monde d’espionnage of spy versus spy, double agents, and foreign counterintelligence.
Kalugin admits to a certain amount of luck in his meteoric rise to becoming the youngest agent to achieve the rank of Soviet General. Almost immediately in New York Kalugin acquired a valuable “volunteer” spy: a well-placed scientist who gave Kalugin classified research on the manufacture of solid fuel for missiles. The volunteer spy remained a reliable source for many years. Kalugin’s main targets for recruitment were the White House, Congress, the CIA, FBI, the Pentagon, leading scientific research centers, and major corporations. These were penetrated with varying degrees of success.
Kalugin’s book often refers to “Active Measures.” The KGB term Active Measures referred to activities that we in the US call Dirty Tricks. They included disinformation, fomenting social unrest, electronic surveillance of leaders and institutions, re-recruitment of Soviet defectors, assassination, and any other activity that would undermine the United States.
The most common and least risky Active Measure was fomenting social unrest. The KGB intercepted CIA documents, then added racist comments and other insults referring to minority leaders, labeled the documents “Top Secret,” and leaked them to leftwing journalists, who had a field day with them. The KGB playbook was simple: 1. write thousands of racist letters, primarily against African Americans and Jews; 2. claim to be from a white-supremacist group; 3. the American newspaper publishes stories about the white-supremacist letters; 4. the Soviet press reports on it as another sign of ailing America and Western decay. The same pattern was used in other types of propaganda: “seed” the negative stories, let the legitimate press pick it up and use it, then amplify it in the Soviet press.
In other cases KGB writers infiltrated American media. Many articles from prestigious news outlets were actually written by the KGB (without the news organizations realizing it). In one year alone, the KGB had published 70 books, 4,865 articles, 66 feature and documentary films, 1,500 radio and TV programs, 3,000 conferences and exhibitions, and 170,000 reports to the public of various types. In that same year, the KGB faked defections (for propaganda purposes), staged countless “American activist” protests, pickets, and strikes, manufactured public scandals, and formed solidarity groups against the US government. These media, social, and political Active Measures were all in addition to the standard government overthrows, assassinations (several examples given), kidnappings, paramilitary operations, civil wars, economic and energy disruptions. These were typical of the many-faceted, daily, cold-war exchanges between the US and the USSR.
All good things must come to an end
Oleg Kalugin eventually returned to Russia and was assigned to Leningrad. The unfortunate effect of placing the idealistic Kalugin back in Russia, was that he found corruption at every turn in his own country. He had been naïve, working mainly on foreign soil, never aware of Soviet corruption, specifically KGB corruption. He had risen high enough to believe he could expose and fight the corruption. This was his downfall in the eyes of his government, which stripped Kalugin of his rank and pension. In the larger view, however, it was not a downfall at all. After “retiring” from the KGB, he won election into the Soviet Parliament because of his outspoken demands for reform. After 30 years as a spy, he became a reformist politician.
Kalugin rose from the ashes, while the Soviet Union collapsed forever. Today Kalugin is an American Citizen, has worked in international communications (AT&T / Intercon), taught espionage techniques to American spy students, and, naturally, he is on the board of the International Spy Museum.
I hope this taste of Kalugin’s story, and the intrigue in the autobiography, will encourage more people to read it. Boring history books are all too common. Here is access to a wealth of historical knowledge, without the pain of endless dry reportage. Here is a fascinating journey of a flesh-and-blood cold warrior filled with insights as well as facts about the US/Russia realities from the late 1950s through the early 2000s. The Epilogue was added in 2009, and provides new insights into the Putin government in Russia, which is still current and very relevant today.
Oleg Kalugin lived in the very heart of the dangerous and labyrinthine cold-war monde d’espionnage of spy versus spy, double agents, and foreign counterintelligence. Anyone interested in the cold war, the general history of the period, US-Russia relations, or just a great spy story, will love this book.
After college, Kalugin spent two years in the KGB’s Advanced Spy School. He learned how to set up radio transmitters, to use and detect bugging devices, to make microfilm and how to conceal microfilm and microdots in household items, how to cultivate intelligence assets, coding/decoding and cryptology, location orienting when dropped into unfamiliar locations, how to use a gun, how to tail people invisibly, how to detect when being tailed, how to evade all kinds of surveillance, and how to pass a package without being noticed even when being tailed.
In addition to his native Russian, Kalugin was proficient in English, German, and Arabic; typical of KGB operatives who had to “fight the West” in all corners of the world.
By 1958, Kalugin was a KGB operative stationed in New York City. Almost immediately undercover FBI agents were feeling out the young Kalugin to determine if he was KGB, and whether he might be interested in defecting. Thus began Kalugin’s 30-year career navigating the dangerous and labyrinthine cold-war monde d’espionnage of spy versus spy, double agents, and foreign counterintelligence.
Kalugin admits to a certain amount of luck in his meteoric rise to becoming the youngest agent to achieve the rank of Soviet General. Almost immediately in New York Kalugin acquired a valuable “volunteer” spy: a well-placed scientist who gave Kalugin classified research on the manufacture of solid fuel for missiles. The volunteer spy remained a reliable source for many years. Kalugin’s main targets for recruitment were the White House, Congress, the CIA, FBI, the Pentagon, leading scientific research centers, and major corporations. These were penetrated with varying degrees of success.
Kalugin’s book often refers to “Active Measures.” The KGB term Active Measures referred to activities that we in the US call Dirty Tricks. They included disinformation, fomenting social unrest, electronic surveillance of leaders and institutions, re-recruitment of Soviet defectors, assassination, and any other activity that would undermine the United States.
The most common and least risky Active Measure was fomenting social unrest. The KGB intercepted CIA documents, then added racist comments and other insults referring to minority leaders, labeled the documents “Top Secret,” and leaked them to leftwing journalists, who had a field day with them. The KGB playbook was simple: 1. write thousands of racist letters, primarily against African Americans and Jews; 2. claim to be from a white-supremacist group; 3. the American newspaper publishes stories about the white-supremacist letters; 4. the Soviet press reports on it as another sign of ailing America and Western decay. The same pattern was used in other types of propaganda: “seed” the negative stories, let the legitimate press pick it up and use it, then amplify it in the Soviet press.
In other cases KGB writers infiltrated American media. Many articles from prestigious news outlets were actually written by the KGB (without the news organizations realizing it). In one year alone, the KGB had published 70 books, 4,865 articles, 66 feature and documentary films, 1,500 radio and TV programs, 3,000 conferences and exhibitions, and 170,000 reports to the public of various types. In that same year, the KGB faked defections (for propaganda purposes), staged countless “American activist” protests, pickets, and strikes, manufactured public scandals, and formed solidarity groups against the US government. These media, social, and political Active Measures were all in addition to the standard government overthrows, assassinations (several examples given), kidnappings, paramilitary operations, civil wars, economic and energy disruptions. These were typical of the many-faceted, daily, cold-war exchanges between the US and the USSR.
All good things must come to an end
Oleg Kalugin eventually returned to Russia and was assigned to Leningrad. The unfortunate effect of placing the idealistic Kalugin back in Russia, was that he found corruption at every turn in his own country. He had been naïve, working mainly on foreign soil, never aware of Soviet corruption, specifically KGB corruption. He had risen high enough to believe he could expose and fight the corruption. This was his downfall in the eyes of his government, which stripped Kalugin of his rank and pension. In the larger view, however, it was not a downfall at all. After “retiring” from the KGB, he won election into the Soviet Parliament because of his outspoken demands for reform. After 30 years as a spy, he became a reformist politician.
Kalugin rose from the ashes, while the Soviet Union collapsed forever. Today Kalugin is an American Citizen, has worked in international communications (AT&T / Intercon), taught espionage techniques to American spy students, and, naturally, he is on the board of the International Spy Museum.
I hope this taste of Kalugin’s story, and the intrigue in the autobiography, will encourage more people to read it. Boring history books are all too common. Here is access to a wealth of historical knowledge, without the pain of endless dry reportage. Here is a fascinating journey of a flesh-and-blood cold warrior filled with insights as well as facts about the US/Russia realities from the late 1950s through the early 2000s. The Epilogue was added in 2009, and provides new insights into the Putin government in Russia, which is still current and very relevant today.
Oleg Kalugin lived in the very heart of the dangerous and labyrinthine cold-war monde d’espionnage of spy versus spy, double agents, and foreign counterintelligence. Anyone interested in the cold war, the general history of the period, US-Russia relations, or just a great spy story, will love this book.
July 10, 2021
Going back to this book, this reads more like a fictional thriller than a true account. Oleg’s bias is thick in every word, sentence, & page. After reading more books about spies during the Soviet Union, I truly can’t go over Oleg’s ego enough to really grasp what he’s trying to say…
November 20, 2017
A tremendous read!!
Kalugin reveals KGB strategies, names names, in a well thought out weaving tale of the KGB actions taken during his long career as a KGB poobah.
Perhaps the most revealing element of his book is the strategies sure to be deployed by the current leadership of the Russian Empire. Reading the tea leaves, their foreign gambits may not be favorable for the West.
Kalugin has written a truly page turning book about the former Soviet Union and its "direct action" plays as it battled the west for superiority and survival. Alas, the Soviet system failed miserably. This book is a must read for anyone seeking to understand a history of the "Cold War".
An incredibly good book.
Kalugin reveals KGB strategies, names names, in a well thought out weaving tale of the KGB actions taken during his long career as a KGB poobah.
Perhaps the most revealing element of his book is the strategies sure to be deployed by the current leadership of the Russian Empire. Reading the tea leaves, their foreign gambits may not be favorable for the West.
Kalugin has written a truly page turning book about the former Soviet Union and its "direct action" plays as it battled the west for superiority and survival. Alas, the Soviet system failed miserably. This book is a must read for anyone seeking to understand a history of the "Cold War".
An incredibly good book.
June 4, 2018
I have read in the last year several cold war espionage / intelligence books, and I think that I have read almost all of the great stories. Many things are familiar from Kalugin's book, but his personal perspective, a pragmatic, intelligent, and morally principled one, really touched me.
This is a very intelligent autobiography. Of course, it is a justification for one man's life, but it is very illuminating.
While the whole book is a real page turner, for me the most news were from the very late 1980s and the chaos in Russia in the early nineties. It is a very different story from the later EU / NATO member East Bloc countries.
This is a very intelligent autobiography. Of course, it is a justification for one man's life, but it is very illuminating.
While the whole book is a real page turner, for me the most news were from the very late 1980s and the chaos in Russia in the early nineties. It is a very different story from the later EU / NATO member East Bloc countries.
March 24, 2023
Interesting overall. Pretty straightforward accounting of a senior KGB officer whose career spanned 1950s-1980s and was unsuccessful politically in the 1990s, emigrated to the US, and now has an audience of western journalists, historians, and spy afficionados. Not a ton of insights, though plenty of anecdotes. The most interesting part to me was the look at the inner thoughts/justifications of a committed communist in his 20s, then really a striving politico for the rest of his life. Not a lot of self-reflection and more than a lot of self-deception about his actions and motivations. Still, something I imagine many are vulnerable to - so worth it for that alone.
November 9, 2025
The author is billed as the youngest general in the KGB and "sort of defected" to the West /USA sometime in the mid-1990s, after being prematurely retired for criticizing the USSR (in late 1980s).
His autobiography is filled with anecdotes and gripping stories and is a must read for a Cold War aficionado.
If "The Main Enemy" showed the CIA's side of the board, this is the Red rook spilling the board's secrets.
His autobiography is filled with anecdotes and gripping stories and is a must read for a Cold War aficionado.
If "The Main Enemy" showed the CIA's side of the board, this is the Red rook spilling the board's secrets.
August 10, 2023
This book by Oleg Kalugin is a riveting firsthand account of his extensive experience in the Soviet KGB. Kalugin's candid narrative provides a unique and captivating perspective on the intricacies of espionage, offering readers an inside look into the world of Cold War espionage and its lasting implications.
April 23, 2018
This book really covered a lot of ground and areas of Russian Intelligence. I appreciated Kalugin's unique perspective: he's not a defector, he's someone who became jaded with the Soviet project but still clearly loves his country. The book covers his time as a KGB officer and the different areas he worked: mostly foreign intelligence, but also a shorter stint in domestic work as well. His story touches on others' I have read (Polyakov, Yuri Andropov, etc)
There are a few things that kept this from being 5 stars. After awhile, it felt a bit repetitive. The chapters needed clearer sections--they are so long and often they just go from one name to another without anything in between.
There are a few things that kept this from being 5 stars. After awhile, it felt a bit repetitive. The chapters needed clearer sections--they are so long and often they just go from one name to another without anything in between.
April 28, 2021
A fantastic account of the Soviet intelligence machine. Kalugin’s life story touches so many historic events in Cold War espionage from the other side, and he’s very straight forward about his honest feelings and perspectives.
April 6, 2022
an excellent philosophical history of contemporary Russia
This book provides some excellent insight into the political and ideological shifts in the soviet region from the 60s-mid 2000’s.
This book provides some excellent insight into the political and ideological shifts in the soviet region from the 60s-mid 2000’s.
May 14, 2025
Absolutely fantastic book and amazing man. Kalugin's story is worth reading and the reality of this story really makes one think. He's an amazingly intelligent and moral man, and can't fit into today's Russia any longer.
October 18, 2018
It was OK
December 3, 2018
Interesting
June 21, 2020
Fascinating. Can't take anything at face value, though.
April 19, 2015
I read this in the 1990s and reviewed it from memory a couple of years ago, giving it two stars. I came across my copy a few weeks ago and got back into it. This time I think it deserves a major upgrade, but I need to include the obvious (?) caveat that it isn't great literature. In fact, as autobiography, it may only be self-serving bullshit. So why the difference you may ask. The answer is gin and tonic. I've been imbibing and I'm feeling generous.
Autobiography has, to me, been suspect ever since, about 25 years ago, when I began a social conversation with a fellow fraud auditor, with a comment that the UK and USA had been exceedingly fortunate to have had Winston Churchill during WWII. That comment was based solely on my reading of Churchill's wartime memoirs. My companion laughed and asked whether I would similarly trust the word of an auditee under pressure. Of course my answer was negative, as the slogan goes, "In God we trust, all others pay cash." At that point I remembered that Churchill lost the support of the UK public during the Pottsdam Conference; at that time I became a doubter. Such negativity inspired my initial review of Kalugin's memors.
Now my professional skepticism is dulled by retirement, old age and the aforementioned g&ts. Some of Kalugin's stuff is supported by the Christopher Andrew book supported, in turn, by the Mitrokhin archive. For the rest of it, well I don't see much reason for Oleg to lie.
Perhaps my favorite passage is the one in which the author rehabilitates Kim Philby, an ignored down and out alcoholic in Moscow. That has the ring of truth...maybe.
Autobiography has, to me, been suspect ever since, about 25 years ago, when I began a social conversation with a fellow fraud auditor, with a comment that the UK and USA had been exceedingly fortunate to have had Winston Churchill during WWII. That comment was based solely on my reading of Churchill's wartime memoirs. My companion laughed and asked whether I would similarly trust the word of an auditee under pressure. Of course my answer was negative, as the slogan goes, "In God we trust, all others pay cash." At that point I remembered that Churchill lost the support of the UK public during the Pottsdam Conference; at that time I became a doubter. Such negativity inspired my initial review of Kalugin's memors.
Now my professional skepticism is dulled by retirement, old age and the aforementioned g&ts. Some of Kalugin's stuff is supported by the Christopher Andrew book supported, in turn, by the Mitrokhin archive. For the rest of it, well I don't see much reason for Oleg to lie.
Perhaps my favorite passage is the one in which the author rehabilitates Kim Philby, an ignored down and out alcoholic in Moscow. That has the ring of truth...maybe.
March 20, 2023
Not a review but a fascinating insight to the KGB and communism as a whole.
April 7, 2017
I immensely enjoyed reading Oleg Kalugin's account of his experience in the KGB. The book was well thought out and the clarity of the writing is superb. Kalugin related his story from being a novice operator to being a high ranking KGB Officer. It's an informative no-holds barred, tell-all memoir about the behind-the-scenes, cloak and dagger activities of the KGB during the height of the Cold War to the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Kalugin's riveting revelation about the KGB's closely-guarded secrets and global modus operandi were an eye-opener to the uninitiated like myself, especially their intelligence collection, recruitment of foreign agents, assassination methods (referred to as "wet jobs"), etc. I am confident about its credibility and accuracy because Kalugin related events that took place decades ago that I followed as well. Additionally, he did not anonymize the identities of influential or political personalities who shaped world events or who got involved in the spy business whether Soviet, American, British, etc. It deserves a 5-star in my opinion.
August 16, 2012
Fascinating read of exactly what the title says, Kalugin's time spent spying against the West. The book is rife with entertaining anecdotes about individuals whose paths he crossed during his lengthy career. Not only that, but it has some great insights about failings of both the KGB and the communist system of government. Some other interesting parts were his opinions of the spying capabilities of his Western counterparts. Highly recommended.
March 13, 2012
An excellent read and cool look at the soviet machine and cold war era! A must read for anyone looking to glean insight into the crumbling USSR. I would recommend it to anyone interested in Russian history or espionage!
September 7, 2011
A unique perspective seeing the world from within the former Soviet Union's communist worldview...
May 28, 2011
Somewhat self-serving at times (unsurprising for an autobiography), but quite interesting look at the cold war from the Soviet perspective.
December 14, 2013
Absolutely fascinating. Clean clear writing, I was even able to keep all of the Russian names straight.
March 24, 2014
So many excellent insights into spying, the KGB, the Russian people, the possible future of Russia. Well written. Kept me turning the pages right to the last page.
January 23, 2015
Deep
this book was cool and deep this guy did it all and had the t-shirt. the world use to be a cool place .
this book was cool and deep this guy did it all and had the t-shirt. the world use to be a cool place .
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