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The Spy in the Archive: How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB
Not yet published
Expected 6 Jan 26The story of how one man—a librarian for the KGB—became a traitor to the intelligence agency, stealing the most prized Soviet-era archives and smuggling them to the West.
How do you steal a library? Not just any library but the most secret, heavily guarded archive in the world. The answer is to be a librarian. To be so quiet, that no-one knows what you are up to as you toil undercover and deep amongst the files. The work goes on for decades but remains so low key, that even after your escape, aided by MI6, no one even notices you are gone.
The Spy in the Archive tells the remarkable story of how Vasili Mitrokhin—an introverted archivist who loved nothing more than dusty archives—ended up changing the world. As the in-house archivist for the KGB, the secrets he was exposed to inside its walls turned him first into a dissident and then a spy; a traitor to his country but a man determined to expose the truth about the dark forces that had subverted Russia, forces still at work in the country today.
Historian and journalist Gordon Corera tells of the operation to extract this prized asset from Russia for the first time. It is an edge-of-the-seat thriller, with vivid flashbacks to Mitrokhin’s earlier time as a KGB idealist prepared to do what it took to serve the Soviet Union and his growing realisation that the communist state was imprisoning its own people. It is the story of what it was like to live in the Soviet Union, to raise a family there, and then of one man’s journey from the heart of the Soviet state to disillusion, betrayal, and defection.
At its heart is Mitrokhin’s determination to take on the most powerful institution in the world by revealing its darkest secrets. This is narrative nonfiction at its absolute best.
How do you steal a library? Not just any library but the most secret, heavily guarded archive in the world. The answer is to be a librarian. To be so quiet, that no-one knows what you are up to as you toil undercover and deep amongst the files. The work goes on for decades but remains so low key, that even after your escape, aided by MI6, no one even notices you are gone.
The Spy in the Archive tells the remarkable story of how Vasili Mitrokhin—an introverted archivist who loved nothing more than dusty archives—ended up changing the world. As the in-house archivist for the KGB, the secrets he was exposed to inside its walls turned him first into a dissident and then a spy; a traitor to his country but a man determined to expose the truth about the dark forces that had subverted Russia, forces still at work in the country today.
Historian and journalist Gordon Corera tells of the operation to extract this prized asset from Russia for the first time. It is an edge-of-the-seat thriller, with vivid flashbacks to Mitrokhin’s earlier time as a KGB idealist prepared to do what it took to serve the Soviet Union and his growing realisation that the communist state was imprisoning its own people. It is the story of what it was like to live in the Soviet Union, to raise a family there, and then of one man’s journey from the heart of the Soviet state to disillusion, betrayal, and defection.
At its heart is Mitrokhin’s determination to take on the most powerful institution in the world by revealing its darkest secrets. This is narrative nonfiction at its absolute best.
336 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication January 6, 2026
10 people want to read
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September 2, 2025
A strange book to be sure. Such an author as this, you would think, would write a book which was succinct and wouldn’t flounder. But it does. The basic outline is - KGB officer falls out of love with communism and decides to catalogue its horrors. Fast forward to the early 1990’s and he approaches MI6 with his catalogue. He’s then exfiltrated out of Russian for a new life in the West. But that takes over 300 pages to explain in this book. In my opinion there’s not enough detail in the book to warrant its publishing, but what do I know? It’s an interesting book don’t get me wrong and that’s why it has a four star rating from me but I feel I’m being generous due to my high regard for the author and his previous journalistic work.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 of 1 review