The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB

Mitrokhin Archive #1

by Christopher Andrew, Vasili Mitrokhin

The Sword and the Shield is based on one of the most extraordinary intelligence coups of recent times: a secret archive of top-level KGB documents smuggled out of the Soviet Union which the FBI has described, after close examination, as the "most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source." Its presence in the West represents a catastrophic hemorrhage of the KGB's secrets and reveals for the first time the full extent of its worldwide network. Vasili Mitrokhin, a secret dissident who worked in the KGB archive, smuggled out copies of its most highly classified files every day for twelve years. In 1992, a U.S. ally succeeded in exfiltrating the KGB officer and his entire archive out of Moscow. The archive covers the entire period from the Bolshevik Revolution to the 1980s and includes revelations concerning almost every country in the world. But the KGB's main target, of course, was the United States. Though there is top-secret material on almost every country in the world, the United States is at the top of the list. As well as containing many fascinating revelations, this is a major contribution to the secret history of the twentieth century. Among the topics and revelations explored are: The KGB's covert operations in the United States and throughout the West, some of which remain dangerous today. KGB files on Oswald and the JFK assassination that Boris Yeltsin almost certainly has no intention of showing President Clinton. The KGB's attempts to discredit civil rights leader in the 1960s, including its infiltration of the inner circle of a key leader. The KGB's use of radio intercept posts in New York and Washington, D.C., in the 1970s to intercept high-level U.S. government communications. The KGB's attempts to steal technological secrets from major U.S. aerospace and technology corporations. KGB covert operations against former President Ronald Reagan, which began five years before he became president. KGB spies who successfully posed as U.S. citizens under a series of ingenious disguises, including several who attained access to the upper echelons of New York society.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Espionage, Russia, Politics, Military Fiction, Russian History

738 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Christopher Maurice Andrew, FRHistS is an Emeritus Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Cambridge with an interest in international relations and in particular the history of intelligence services. (military.wikia.org)

Reviews

[Marvin Goodman · Rating 2 out of 5]

First of all, I'm filled with respect for the dedication it took for Vasili Mitrokhin to painstakingly copy thousands upon thousands of documents, as a KGB archivist, and secretly store them under his home. The trove most assuredly has been of incalculable value to historians and western intelligence agencies. Because I've always been a fan of the espionage genre - both historical and fictional - I expected to binge-read this book, growing drunk on previously unavailable levels of detail and accuracy in real-life spy drama. Well, I don't "binge-read" anything, considering how methodically I read and how quickly I fall asleep when I finally make my way to bed, but getting through this book was an arduous slog. More than its daunting 600 page length, it was the awkward pacing that continually tripped me up. Because of the organization (traversing the period of history detailed in Mitrokhin's archive not chronologically, but rather by adversary country or espionage method) I was constantly bouncing from decade to decade, and had difficulty in applying a timeline to what I was reading.

You'll find this criticism shallow, I suspect, but I was particularly off-put by the rendering (in brackets) of the multiple code names assigned to every character described in the book. Undoubtedly this was done to underscore the credibility of the information, and to position the book as a reference source, but it quickly started to aggravate me, and made the sentences clumsy to read and digest. By the time I had gotten halfway through the book, I was really sick of it, and found myself wishing, on every page, that I had a digest version of the thing, half the length, and arranged more chronologically. Still, I doggedly slogged on, more at the prospect of picking up fascinating little espionage stories (which I frequently did) than out of some stubborn insistence on finishing what I'd started.

I really believe that the way this book is edited and arranged, combined with its vast length, would cause perhaps a fourth of well-intentioned readers to abandon it before they complete it. I now despair of what to do with the sequel, "The World Was Going Our Way," which now mocks me from my to-be-read shelf. I suspect that I'll do little more than flip through a chapter or two, unless the structure and style turn out to be very different.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting read for those interested in Russian or Cold War history or espionage. This book is very thorough, so be prepared for a long read. The writing style is consistent, so my flagging interest at the midway point in the book was a result of my general lack of interest of the post-Stalin Cold War period.

The notes secreted away from the archives and published in the West reveal some very important historical facts. In a broad context, it is clear that the Soviet system was never able to become a sustainable reality, terror and deception allowed the system to propagate itself. That is not to say that there weren't some great achievements in the USSR. But inhumanity, impracticality, and the inefficiencies of the system are obvious to anyone who can objectively observe historical facts. Only utopians and revisionists believe that it was not the Soviet system and ideology that were flawed, but rather the practical policies of the USSR and particularly the horrors of Stalinism.

Yet to dismiss the KGB (in any of its incarnations) as propagandists of a dying state would be too simplistic. There are a number of areas that KGB actions did enormous harm to the West, including propagating the belief that the JFK assassination was a plot by American intelligence agencies or that the CIA created the AIDS virus in a lab and intentionally infected blacks. These among other operations fuel the conspiracy theory thinking so prevalent with many people today and propagate mistrust in our government and our fellow citizens.

But these actions are the natural consequence of an agency born of suspicion, by men who lived the shadowy lives of underground revolutionaries. I believe the paranoia endemic of the Soviet regime, though partially a natural result of the Russian character, was primarily a result of the revolutionary character. That years of clandestine meetings, arrests, informing on friends, exile, and criminal conspiracy created the impetus to use the secret services (Cheka, KGB, ect.) as a primary tool of the state to monitor and protect political doctrine. The numerous examples of the great resources that went into discrediting expatriate Soviet artists and writers, who were critical of the USSR, are a perfect example of how diseased the Soviet system was. Plotting to maim a defected ballerina is not a sign of strong state or a successful culture.

Finally, I think this book is a great companion to our present conflict with Russia. Mr. Putin was a KGB man and his thinking is much rooted in the culture of the KGB. I think a review of this book and the history of KGB operations in it provide a valuable insight into how Russia operates today. Before I read this book, I thought reports that the FSB bombed a Russian apartment complex to create a casus belli were the stuff of conspiracy. After reading this book, and getting a unique insight into the KGB culture this book provides, I now believe it entirely possible that the FSB was responsible for bombing civilians as a pretext for the Chechen war in an effort to reestablish the greatness of the Russian state by disaffected members of Russia's security services. If so, that conspiracy would be entirely in accord with the actions taken by the KGB so often in Soviet history, using cynical and manipulative means to suppress the human spirit.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 3 out of 5]

the problem with some works like this is you have to accept every person in the chain is accurately reporting what they did...

people still haven't confirmed how much if any KGB influence if any hapenned with Romano Prodi, the former Prime Minister of Italy.

And we've seen boasting about Oppenheimer being a feather in the cap by some spies too...
and nothing conclusive happens either....

The following might make you question some of the usefulness of the information at times....

There's been a fair deal of CIA and KGB people who just fabricate information on rare occasion to make use they look busy and productive too... Sometimes telling the truth, doesn't help your career

Information collecting and stealing technology is something they excel at, but where you deal with operational issues, there is a lot less clarity

I still think the main utility of the Mitrokin Archive was the exposing of a large amount of Soviet agents.

A lot of projects never bear much fruit, others are information goldmine, but the important thing to ask is 'why you're doing it' and 'what you really believe is going on'

James Angleton is a very interesting case in how objective one may or may not be.

.......

here's an interesting bit from wikipedia

The Mitrokhin Commission was an Italian parliamentary commission set up in 2002 to investigate alleged KGB ties of some Italian politicians. Set up by the Italian Parliament, then led by Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition, the House of Freedoms, and presided by Paolo Guzzanti (senator of Forza Italia), its focus was on alleged KGB ties to opposition figures in Italian politics, basing itself on the Mitrokhin Archive, which was controversial and viewed with scepticism, and various other sources including the consultant Mario Scaramella.

The Mitrokhin Commission alleged, among other things, that Romano Prodi, former centre-left Prime Minister of Italy and President of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004, was the "KGB's man in Italy".

The commission was disbanded in March 2006, without any concrete evidence given to support the original allegations of KGB ties to Italian politicians.

In five years, the commission had heard 47 witnesses, for a total cost of 1.9 million euros.

Scaramella was arrested in late December 2006 and charged with libel and illegal weapons' trade, with wiretaps of phone calls between Scaramella and Guzzanti published by the Italian press in late 2006, showing that the two planned to discredit various political opposition figures by claiming ties with the KGB.

The 2006 Italian general election, held on 9–10 April, was won by Prodi's centre-left coalition, The Union. In November 2006, the new Italian Parliament instituted a commission to investigate the Mitrokhin Commission for allegations that it was manipulated for political purposes.

.........

Scaramella has a strange history all his own

On 1 November 2006, Scaramella met the Russian former FSB agent and defector Alexander Litvinenko for lunch at Itsu, a sushi restaurant in Piccadilly, London.

Litvinenko's brother Maxim, who lives in Italy, told that Scaramella wanted to use his brother as a source for his research into Italian politicians and their alleged links to the Russian intelligence services.

According to Maxim, one of the things Litvinenko did for Scaramella was sit down in front of a video camera in early 2006 in Rome. Litvinenko said that the video should not be leaked to the press. In front of the camera, he went on saying that former FSB deputy chief Anatoly Trofimov warned him in 2000 that he should not move to Italy because Romano Prodi was "one of their men".

......

In a December 2006 interview given to the television program La storia siamo noi, colonel ex-KGB agent Oleg Gordievsky, whom Scaramella claimed as his source, confirmed the accusations made against Scaramella regarding the production of false material relating to Prodi and other Italian politicians, and underlined their lack of reliability.

Around the same period, there was the publication of telephone interceptions between Paolo Guzzanti, the chairman of the Mitrokhin Commission and Forza Italia senator, and Scaramella.

In the wiretaps, Guzzanti made it clear that the true intent of the Mitrokhin Commission was to support the hypothesis that Prodi would have been an agent financed or in any case manipulated by Moscow and the KGB.

As a result, Scaramella was charged for calumny. [defamation]

In addition to the calumny charge, the result of the claim regarsing a Ukrainian official that he and Guzzanti were victim of an assassination attempt, he was charged of arms trafficking.

On 24 December 2006, Scaramella returned to Italy where he was immediately arrested by DIGOS, a division of the Italian national police. He was charged with calumny.

According to prosecutor Pietro Salvitti, cited by La Repubblica and who indicted Scaramella, Nicolò Pollari, head of SISMI indicted in the Abu Omar case, as well as SISMI no. 2, Marco Mancini, who was arrested in July 2006 for the same reason, were some of the informers, alongside Scaramella, of Guzzanti.

According to Salvitti, beside targeting Prodi and his staff, this network also aimed at defaming General Giuseppe Cucchi (the then director of the CESIS), Milan's judges Armando Spataro, in charge of the Abu Omar case, and Guido Salvini, as well as La Repubblica reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe D'Avanzo.

In February 2008, Scaramella struck a plea bargain deal to a four-year sentence; he did not serve any dail in jail due to a pardon.

......

Closure and creation of a new commission

The Mitrokhin Commission was shut down in March 2006 without any concrete result provided, and not one political figure was exposed by the allegations, despite months of press speculation alimented by Berlusconi family newspaper Il Giornale.

Following the 2006 general election and the nomination of Prodi as head of the new government, a parliamentary commission was instituted to investigate about this controversial Mitrokhin Commission.

[sologdin · Rating 2 out of 5]

whiney mccarthyists given access to secret archives. decent narrative of soviet espionage efforts, including assassinations of monarchists and then Trotskyists. this volume doesn't cover operations such as overthrowing foreign governments, which is the meat of the second volume's allegations.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Those poor, hapless KGB agents throwing bombs at Trotsky’s grandson (and missing), getting drunk and losing their microfilm nickels to Brooklyn newsboys, and falling in love so hard they gave up their contacts to the Canadian Mounties. Didn’t expect this to be funny, but it was hilarious.

[Antonio Nunez]

Quite recently a colleague told me that he resented a newspaper columnist who had referred to a relative of his as a communist spy. My colleague believed his relative had been an innocent victim of McCarthyist red baiting. I knew that his relative was no innocent but a high-level KGB operative. It said so in the Mitrokhin Archive vol. I, "The Sword and the Shield".

One of the tragedies of the Cold War is that many western communist spies, traitors to their own countries and dupes to one of the worst systems humanity has ever known, managed to rebrand themselves as victims of persecution. The paradigm for this view is Miller's "The Crucible", where for “witches" one should read "spies". Except that there were no real witches but there sure were real spies. The Rosenbergs were spies and they did help Stalin put together his nuclear weapons. Alger Hiss was a spy. And so on and on. And as we have known or suspected for a long time, many NGOs such as the World Council of Churches and many political parties and publications were also preferred haunts for KGB agents and contacts in its neverending propaganda war.

Volume I of the Mitrokhin files is bulky and longwinded. The writing is what used to be described as workmanlike in that it goes to some lengths to avoid rethoric and even elegance. It just piles on fact upon fact. The facts are fascinating. As noted above, many of us knew that the governing and the chattering classes of the West were filled with spies and fellow travelers, but the sheer magnitude of that presence is impressive. We also knew that the Soviet leadership often did not manage to make the best possible use of the extraordinary intelligence these spies provided (remember Sorge's warning about operation Barbarossa, and how Stalin dismissed him as a stooge to the British?). The book goes in mind-numbing detail on just how often political or personal prejudice stood in the way of taking advantage of the information.

As a Latin American I am a much bigger fan of volume II of the files. But volume I is a good place to start, and to never let us forget that the Cold War was a real war, that it could have been lost, and what it could have been like if that had happened.

[Cary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vasili Mitrokhin took a lot of work home with him--and not just his--took notes, sometimes verbatim, and then smuggled the notes out with him when he defected.

Ranging from bone-chilling and frightening to ridiculous and laughable, this book may not have all the KGB's secrets, but it has a lot of them. The KGB could be brutally efficient, but at times its efforts were wildly out of proportion with any sort of rational estimation of the level of threat something presented. Paranoia and conspiracy theories will do that to you, and the KGB was nothing if not prone to both.

The only caution I would give is not to dive into this without some background in the Cold War (which I had from various other readings) and some knowledge of the KGB's history (which I did not have). This is a down in the bushes and weeds book, not a holistic history. If you're like me you'd appreciate a bit of framework to hang all the events and names and places on to.

The writing is good. The tone of Andrew's writing tracks well the seriousness and absurdity of the events. If you've had a taste of the Cold War and/or Russian/Soviet history and want something juicier (in more ways than one), definitely pick this up.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume (1999) continues and substantially recapitulates Andrew's previous 'KGB' (1991). Like the former, Andrew consulted with a former KGB agent, this time with one who had had long-term access to the KGB archives. Both books are histories beginning with the overthrow of the Czar in 1917, the former going up to Gorbachev, the latter to Yeltsin. Both also discuss the allied intelligence agencies of the Warsaw Pact countries. Reading one right after the other I found the repetition helpful in navigating and remembering much of the detail.

There being much talk now of the Russians attempting to influence the recent presidential elections it is worth noting two things: First, that the U.S.A. has interfered with the internal politics of other countries as a matter of course. Second, that the U.S.S.R. was also in the habit of interfering with presidential elections in the U.S.A. However, while the U.S.A. has often been successful (think of post-war France and Italy), the efforts of the U.S.S.R. were pretty much confined to helping to fund the Communist Party of America's campaigns, none of which have had much of an effect. If indeed our domestic intelligence agencies are correct about the recent Trump vs. Clinton contest, this may be the first occasion in which the Russians have had some real influence.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Discipline and determination needed. One could suggest that this is better as a reference; a pool one can dip into now and then. But I feel one must read it from cover-to-cover first off. I did not find that effortless.

It is a treasure of information, and I’m glad I took the leap. Many eye-openers, if you’re as keen on the subject as I am.

Counter-espionage is, I believe, a priority: ‘The Defence of the Realm’.

The book, for me, is the proof that the work of SIS and the KGB’s First Directorate (foreign intelligence gathering), is just a game. Played by many and at an exorbitant cost. A game neither side wishes to lose, but does not want to win. They play the game for sake of the game. What does it achieve? Nothing.

[Kevin · Rating 1 out of 5]

So disorganized as to be unreadable

[Ally Betts · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wild and astonishing history that was frighteningly not that long ago. There was a time when spies lived in our midst and deception ruled the roost. Is it still like this? I don’t think we’ll know until another age comes crashing down. This is not fantasy…it is reality.

[CD · Rating 3 out of 5]

A subtitle that should be considered by any potential reader is "The Paranoia of Stalin". The information alone in the odd way it is presented regarding the activities of Stalin alone make this book worth investigating for those interested in this part of Russian/Soviet history.

Three stars is a higher rating than this work merits on all counts except raw information. And it is raw. Indeed this rates as one of the most poorly organized and constructed historical works of this caliber that has been released. Some editor is still talking with their therapist about how bad was the editing.

In minor defense of the author, the opening chapter details the history of the book. The method that the author Christoper Andrew has to engage in lead to much of the problem. However most historians and researchers deal with disorganized and incomplete chronicles at one time or another and rewrite a narrative that is more coherent than the original. This work in places looks to be a translation that is merely cleaned up for colloquial English acceptability. In other places there is valuable coordination of new and previously known documentation that expands greatly the knowledge in the west of the Soviet era.

The sections on Trotsky and the obsessive madness of the opponents of his philosophy is quite revealing. The violence and body count is also shocking even decades and generations later.

Read this work with a notepad and pen or many ebook marks available to be able to jump around when reading. I've been through this three times now and have yet to read it straight through. Not a general introduction to Soviet era intelligence as one needs a rigorous founding in the entire Philby affair (the real, not fictional version) before reading much of this work.

Only recommended for those who are willing to cross reference and do side reading and are not in a rush.

[Jesse · Rating 2 out of 5]

An intriguing look into KGP espionage with the help of information brought to the US by a defector. Many sections were amusing in the bumbling, disorganized nature of spy work. Others were intense for the danger and proliferation of KGB penetration into sensitive areas. Overall, it’s hard to not see this type of espionage as something archaic and irrelevant given today's technology. If nothing else, the book provides a decent summary of the turmoil of the time and a link in the chain leading to today’s international relationships.

[Marin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vasill Mitrohhin is a hero among historians - he had the amazing courage to keep an astonishing amount of data about the relentless spying activities of the soviets from being hidden and deleted.

The result is this very detailed book, which shows how the soviets spied on a scale hard to imagine from the start until the collapse of communism and how so many westerners collaborated with them.

Once again the reality proves to be more fascinating and incredible than fiction.

[Michael Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book, speaks to how evil the Soviet Union was. Think of a mob family that possesses 10,000 nuclear warheads and you get an idea of what the hellish nation was all about. The book is not based on heresy or innuendo, it is built off of smuggled KGB documents that detail the endless crimes these hellishly evil people committed through the entire USSR existence.

Can be some tough places to wade through, but no pain, no gain.

[Isaac Clemente ríos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mis respetos por el trabajo de recopilarla, con el riesgo que supuso.

Si bien la información puede resultar de interés, la forma de presentarla la convierte en difícil de digerir. El texto, increíblemente, se convierte en aburrido por la forma en la que está escrito.

Supongo que algún día alguien se dará cuenta de la importancia de estructurar la información de forma que resulte agradable de leer.

Mi nota: 4/10.

[Alvar · Rating 3 out of 5]

This thing is dense. It's not really well written, but the information presented is amazing. It's the Mitrokhin papers, basically hand-copied archives from the KGB archivist, who defected in the early 1990s.
I pick it up every few months, read a couple of hundred pages, and put it down.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think we fully appreciate yet the revelations that are in this book.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had interesting parts but was kind of unstructured. It's not really a fully history of the KGB but a survey of the intel revealed by the Mitrokhin archive. That's cool and all, but the author didn't really tell you when the info was new stuff or when it was already established stuff. A lot of it is the normal running of agents stories that you get in lots of books about Cold War espionage, but I really liked the last sections about the KGB's harassment of Soviet dissidents. Good if you are a real espionage fan or really interested in Soviet intel/foreign policy, but not as good as books like the Spy and the Traitor or the Billion Dollar SPy.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a dense review of Soviet espionage taken from the detailed archive of a defector. The details from Cambridge Five to the (also British started) atomic spies top a bewildering beyond shows the USSR thoroughly penetrated Western organizations while at the same time failing to gain real understanding due to the conspiracy minded Stalin and his own adherents. The information and details is post-Stalin to include Aldrich Ames and many other less well-known spies.

[Arunayan Sharma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many secrets were revealed, but have doubts it's faithfulness.

[noblethumos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Christopher Andrew’s The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (1999), co-authored with the late Vasili Mitrokhin, represents one of the most ambitious and controversial projects in the historiography of Cold War intelligence. Drawing upon the extensive handwritten notes secretly compiled by Mitrokhin—a senior KGB archivist who defected to the West in 1992—the volume offers an unprecedented inside view into the operations, strategies, and internal culture of the Soviet Union’s principal security agency. As a leading British historian of intelligence and official historian of MI5, Andrew is uniquely positioned to interpret these materials with academic rigor, contextual expertise, and critical distance.


The book’s primary value lies in its access to an internal archive of the KGB that had hitherto been inaccessible to Western scholars. Mitrokhin, over a period of twelve years, secretly transcribed and smuggled out thousands of pages of notes from the KGB’s First Chief Directorate archives. These notes, though not original documents, constitute a meticulous record of operations, personnel files, codenames, and strategic objectives. Andrew weaves these fragments into a broad, chronological narrative covering the activities of Soviet intelligence from the Bolshevik Revolution to the collapse of the USSR.


Andrew structures the book around key themes and geographical areas, including Soviet espionage in the United States, Western Europe, the Third World, and within the Communist bloc itself. Particularly compelling is the attention given to “active measures,” psychological warfare operations aimed at destabilizing the West through disinformation, forgeries, and support for subversive movements. Andrew convincingly demonstrates that the KGB was not merely reactive but undertook proactive global campaigns to undermine liberal democracies and support Marxist-Leninist insurgencies, most notably in Latin America and Africa.


Among the most controversial revelations are allegations that prominent Western intellectuals and politicians, such as members of the British Labour Party and certain peace activists, were either witting or unwitting agents of Soviet influence. The book also details the extraordinary extent of KGB penetration into Western intelligence services, including the notorious Cambridge Five and various lesser-known operations. In doing so, The Sword and the Shield not only contributes to Cold War historiography but also to broader debates about the role of ideology, subversion, and the permeability of democratic institutions.


Despite its richness, the book has not been without criticism. Some scholars have questioned the evidentiary status of the Mitrokhin archive, noting that it is derivative rather than composed of original documents and lacks independent corroboration in many instances. Additionally, Andrew’s narrative, while lucid and authoritative, occasionally veers toward affirmation of Western intelligence services without sufficient critical balance. Critics have also pointed out that the emphasis on KGB failures and excesses may obscure the broader structural dynamics of East-West confrontation.


Nonetheless, the book’s academic merit is considerable. Andrew situates Soviet intelligence activity within the ideological framework of Leninist orthodoxy, showing how the Cheka’s revolutionary mission mutated into the globally expansive KGB apparatus. He supplements Mitrokhin’s revelations with archival material, secondary sources, and extensive footnotes, thereby anchoring the account in a broader scholarly discourse.


The Sword and the Shield is a landmark contribution to intelligence history. While the nature of its source material necessitates cautious interpretation, it remains an indispensable text for understanding the scale and ambition of Soviet espionage. Christopher Andrew’s synthesis of Mitrokhin’s archive provides scholars with both a trove of empirical data and a provocative reinterpretation of Cold War dynamics, challenging received narratives and raising critical questions about secrecy, loyalty, and the state. As a primary source-driven study, it will continue to provoke debate and shape scholarship for years to come.

GPT

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book I read was 1864 pages, free on archiv.org. It is well organized.

Christopher M. Andrew has done an excellent job of assembling into a readable account the smuggled voluminous notes made by former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin from official top secret KGB files at the risk of his life. They pertain to the period from about 1918 to 1992. The KGB changed names several times. Mitrokhin did not have direct access to GRU (military intelligence) files.

Any professional intelligence hand who fails to read this is derelict. It should interest any alert United States citizen.

Russia today is employing active techniques proven successful over many decades in order to disrupt any comity in the world that might constrain the increase of its (and its potentates') power and influence. They are very good at it despite limitations arising from the institutional paranoia and top-down doctrinaire bureaucracy that have historically plagued their intelligence services. Credit them with maintaining a doomed and brutal government in power for 70 years.

Andrew supplies parenthetically the KGB code names of many of its assets and agents for convenient cross reference to those decrypted in the Venona project, a U.S. counterintelligence program of the Army Signal Intelligence Service and then the National Security Agency from 1943 until 1980 which covertly intercepted over 3,000 NKVD, KGB, and GRU coded messages wherein true names were further encoded and then to some extent identified from context and other sources. Many Venona texts remain undeciphered today, and many true names are not yet worked out. We await the next momentous defection.

The Mitrokhin files largely confirm some accounts, previously of disputed accuracy, of defecting U.S. Communist party spies such as Elizabeth T Bentley and Whittaker Chambers in their books "Out of Bondage" and "Witness". Mention should be made of John D. Barron's account of the remarkable U.S. double agent Morris H. Childs in "Operation Solo: The FBI's Man in the Kremlin". "Witness" is deservedly on many Top Books lists.

Histories of the 20th century, and even of the cold war, generally have not addressed the magnitude of influence of Soviet intelligence activity as proved by these archives, resulting in some lamentable perspective these days (2019).

[Betsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I understand that this is an unprecedented coup for intelligence research, and I recognize that the author is an academic, but I feel like the blurbs rather oversold the book as a spy thriller. I knew going into it that it would be detailed and well-footnoted, but I also hoped that there would be a story or several. What happens instead is that the juicy stories get buried under piles of dates, names, and places that are just lists of facts.

Mitrokhin's own narrative of how he collected, hid, and then smuggled the records and documents out of the Soviet Union would make an amazing book on its own, and I hope someone is making a movie of that adventure. Then there are all the Soviet spies who took on completely different identities, romanced assets from other countries, and stole all kinds of secrets. And just as fascinating are the citizens of the US, Canada, Germany, Italy, Czechoslovakia, and Britain (especially Britain) who felt passionate about the Soviet cause or about money and went to great lengths to sell intelligence to the KGB. At times I thought the author was going to go in depth with one of these tales, but then he switched topics to more lists of code names or bureaucratic orders, and the thrill is gone.

Maybe I could recommend here that someone with a good sense of narrative mine this book for some stories that could be told for a non-academic audience, so that those of us who don't need every date documented could have something to enjoy and leave this book to the historians who need that kind of information.

[Craig Fiebig · Rating 4 out of 5]

The greatest political philosophy about-face followed the announcement of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in 1939. CP members around the world shifted from "Hitler is evil" to "Hitler's our friend" in less than 48 hours, a position they endorsed and maintained until he invaded Russia in operation Barbarossa in 1941. After the invasion CPs reverted to their original position. Today we see almost the same behavior. Democrats inexplicably described Republican concerns over the USSR/Russian Federation suddenly see Putin as the embodiment of all evil. Republicans, meanwhile, went through the same 180 only in reverse. The CP behavior in the 1940s and the American behavior today rival one another in blind tribalism. Apparently our commitment to our ideology is based entirely on political convenience of the moment.

Andrew's analysis of the Mitrokhin archive reminds any serious student of the rivalry that it has been a contest since the October revolution. The behavior of the NKVD/KGB/FSB detailed in these archives presents all the compelling evidence one would require to objectively assess the rivalry. Although lengthy, this work is well-worth the investment of time because it pays off in detail. Better, more succinct narratives are available either from Conquest (Reflections on a Ravaged Century) or Gaddis (We Now Know). All three are worthy reads.

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

This a a huge work. Just holding it read was a marathon. Based on the gleanings from the KGB archives collected by Vasili Mitrokhin. This huge work takes the reader behind the scenes at the Soviet security agency variously called the Cheka, NKVD, MGB, KGB and SVR. It documents the highs and lows, the successes and failures of the agency in its various incarnations from the founding of the Bolshevik state.

The most interesting aspect I found was the way in which the agency had been used to prop up the one party state, and ensure its survival for almost seventy years. A phenomenal feat only made possible by the application of huge resources of time, money and manpower all aimed at suppressing dissent in any form. Going so far as to prevent Nobel prize winners collecting their prizes.

There is a warning too that the SVR, the latest incarnation is not a toothless organisation and "active measures" have always been its forte. And that Putin fellow? He was active in Germany for at least 15 years as a KGB agent during the cold war.

[Nick Black · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amazon 2008-12-29. I was kinda shocked this was published after The Cardinal in the Kremlin; it seems to set that entire book up. Andrew's editor seemed to have phoned the last few chapters in, with a string of noticeable errors splashed across the closing pages. Furthermore, the arrangement of material is pretty much abominable, lending to massive duplication and disjointedness. That having been said, the material itself is pretty much without peer, so far as I know, and I learned a tremendous amount over the two or three days spent tearing through this.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

A massive infodump. Unfortunately, unless you already have expert knowledge of European history the random barrage of facts and snippets without much context or explanation might prove hard to place in any meaningful whole. There is very little comment or analysis, mostly dry facts. I do not have enough historical knowledge and the book doesn't help with this (rather strangely it starts doing this near the end when explaining the fall of USSR, though again, some previous knowledge still required). There is some analysis and comment in the summary in the last chapter but that should in every chapter to be of any use. Maybe I'll come back to this book when I'm more well read in history.

[Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Based on Mitrokhin's extensive notes from the classified KGB archives, Andrew provides a comprehensive study of Soviet intelligence activities from its founding until the fall of the USSR and after. Taking a balanced chronological and topical/geographical approach allows Andrew to provide full coverage, though it sometimes makes the story difficult to follow. Andrew is especially strong in including the KGB's internal functions alongside its foreign intelligence-gathering, sabotage, and assassination activities.

[Bob · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure how he did it, but Andrew managed to write the most boring treatment of the decades-long history of Soviet spy agencies. He seems to have total contempt for the subject and it feels like he was forced to write this under duress