Moscow Rules: Secret Police, Spies, Sleepers, Assassins

by Douglas Boyd

After the guns fell silent in May 1945, the USSR resumed its clandestine warfare against the western democracies. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin installed secret police services in all the satellite countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Trained by his NKVD – a predecessor of the KGB – officers of the Polish UB, the Czech StB, the Hungarian AVO, Romania’s Securitate, Bulgaria’s KDS, Albania’s Sigurimi and the Stasi of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) spied on and ruthlessly repressed their fellow citizens on the Soviet model. When the resultant hatred exploded in uprisings – in GDR 1953, Hungary 1956 and Czechoslovakia 1968 – they were put down by brutality, bloodshed and Soviet tanks. What was at first not so obvious was that these state terror organisations were also designed for military and commercial espionage in the West, to conceal the real case officers in Moscow. Specially trained operatives undertook mokrye dyela or ‘wet jobs’, including assassination of émigrés and other anti-Soviet figures. Perhaps the most menacing were the sleepers who settled in the West, married and had children while waiting to strike against their host countries. Many of them are still among us.Here, historian and author Douglas Boyd explores for the first time the relationship between the KGB and its ghastly brood of ‘daughters’ – a true family from hell.

Genres: History, Russia, Nonfiction, Espionage

224 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 2015

Reviews

[A · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading this it makes me realise how hideously cruel human beings can be and also how much we need to preserve democracies in the 21st Century. The writing of the author could have done with some more editing but definitely communicated the history well.

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting read but very heavy going. I will probably need to read this one again at some point in the future!

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Daughters of the KGB has provided a most excellent Stephen's Day read - despite it promising potentially rather bleak and sombre subject matter. Boyd - himself a victim of East Block counter-espionage efforts, provides an overview and operational analysis of the various security services active in the Eastern Bloc/Warsaw Pact countries following the conclusion of WW2.
Boyd does an excellent job of establishing the context for each country's service with quick thumbnail sketches of their unique experience before WW2 and leading to their existence under Societ domination in the subsequent new world order. The book begins with a well-scoped and delivered look at Stalin's position at the end of WW2 and where he looked for global geopolitical advantage. East Germany (Boyd's nemesis) received disproportionate attention) followed by the other protagonists in the sequence are examined for how close they were tied to Soviet control and evidence presented looking to individual experiences for colour.
The area of this work's attention is an excellent topic for exploration - although I would argue that the title is somewhat misleading in terms of eventual delivery - a lot of promise there and a great cover by the way.
The author has framed the broader book in light of his own experience. Despite substantial research, compilation, and bringing to light an illustrative swath of personal stories, it does in my opinion, suffer from a lack of a good editor. There are great tales, and all the notable individuals are highlighted, but there is an overall lack of focus that would provide an identifiable and engaging arc to the presentation. It seems somewhat anecdotal in presentation, with colourful vignettes, but each seems to lack a helping illustration of what this illustrates about the regime being questioned. This is probably best demonstrated by the decreasing lack of detail and attention to specific countries as the book teeters to a close. Albania, for example, gets a scant 5-page treatment from King Zog to the demise of the Maoist Enver Hoxha - yet also contains the privileged conclusion to the book - a single paragraph that does not and could not pull it all together.
Ultimately, there is rich primary material here, some of which is presented very well. However, it lacks an overall structure aside from chapter headings assigned to specific countries, seemingly not attempting to derive broad conclusions from the exploration.
There is rich material for a random read here, but in the end, a sense of missed potential.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly a fascinating subject and a quite informative read. While the first part of the book focussed on the GDR and most of what was discussed there was known to me, I learned a lot from the second half of the book. Occasional factual errors, typos and persistent misspellings of German terms were somewhat annoying.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a hard time rating this; it is well written, but the topic is so complex that the book is almost incomprehensible for most readers, including me. The daughters referred to by the author are not women but the buffer countries in Eastern Europe separating the free world from communism. This book tackles the interwoven fabric of spies during the Cold War and summarizes the political climate in each country beginning in the '30s that led to the maze of espionage and accusations of espionage during the last half of the Twentieth century. The information here is not difficult to read but mind boggling in the intricacy of the topic. Thus, there is too much to digest in one reading and without a lot of prior knowledge. Makes James Bond a bedtime tale for kiddies.
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[RealDeadpool,The · Rating 3 out of 5]

Concise

Very well referenced. Rigorously explored display of work. Very educational. Highly enjoyed. Much better than I could of hoped. Interesting author.

[Jintong Shi · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a good book about the soviet hegemony in the eastern europe, and it shed some light about understanding the current central and eastern europe. The legacy is still there.

[Bonnie Szirtes · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much I didn't know about post Second World War Eastern Europe - what an eye opener to the oppression felt by millions!