Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe

by Valentina Glajar (Editor), Alison Lewis (Editor), Corina L. Petrescu (Editor)

During the Cold War, stories of espionage became popular on both sides of the Iron Curtain, capturing the imagination of readers and filmgoers alike as secret police quietly engaged in surveillance under the shroud of impenetrable secrecy. And curiously, in the post–Cold War period there are no signs of this enthusiasm diminishing.

The opening of secret police archives in many Eastern European countries has provided the opportunity to excavate and narrate for the first time forgotten spy stories. Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe brings together a wide range of accounts compiled from the East German Stasi, the Romanian Securitate, and the Ukrainian KGB files. The stories are a complex amalgam of fact and fiction, history and imagination, past and present. These stories of collusion and complicity, betrayal and treason, right and wrong, and good and evil cast surprising new light on the question of Cold War certainties and divides.
 

Genres: History, Espionage

384 pages, Hardcover

Published August 1, 2019

Reviews

[niste eroi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is mostly for romanians interested in the romanian KGB - Securitate, romanian Stasi , the following story is haunting :
1
The File Story of the Securitate Officer
Samuel Feld
Valentina Glajar
"On February 29, 1960, Major Samuel Feld, a Jewish-Romanian
secret police officer, was discharged from MAI (Ministerul Afacerilor
Interne [Ministry of Internal Affairs]) Region Stalin (Braşov)."
Samuel Feld a jewish Securitate officer had chose to help his ethnics and inform them about Securitate actions.
Samuel Feld was hunted and betrayed by his stupid and illiterates romanian collegues only because he was their superior and of course a jew with studies which the brainless romanian securitate officers couldnt stand having “inferiority complex” ... think of stupid Ceausescu as an exemple. Communism in Romania was made by this illiterates killers and thugs.

[Sami Tissari · Rating 3 out of 5]

The angle of the piece is interesting: cold war spy narratives through file cases, an autobiography (Marcus Wolff) and fictional works.

I found the passage about the STASI's secret literature critic most entertaining.

Sometimes it seems, the writers don't really know the others are writing of. Outside the occasional repetitiveness and formality, I found it informative and curious here and there.

[Tim Moore · Rating 1 out of 5]

instead of stories about the act of spying, this book is more about the movies and other stories about spies.

[Antonio Pereira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Takes you to the past... nice facts telling but a bit boring at times...