What do you think?
Rate this book
Defectors: How the Illicit Flight of Soviet Citizens Built the Borders of the Cold War World
A broad-ranging history of defectors from the Communist world to the West and how their Cold War treatment shaped present-day restrictions on cross-border movement.
Defectors fleeing the Soviet Union seized the world's attention during the Cold War. Their stories were given sensational news coverage and dramatized in spy novels and films. Upon reaching the West, they were entitled to special benefits, including financial assistance and permanent residency. In contrast to other migrants, defectors were pursued by the states they left even as they were eagerly sought by the United States and its allies. Taking part in a risky game that played out across the globe, defectors sought to transcend the limitations of the Cold War world.
Defectors follows their treacherous journeys and looks at how their unauthorized flight via land, sea, and air gave shape to a globalized world. It charts a global struggle over defectors that unfolded among rival intelligence agencies operating in the shadows of an occupied Europe, in the forbidden border zones of the USSR, in the disputed straits of the South China Sea, on a hijacked plane 10,000 feet in the air, and around the walls of Soviet embassies. What it reveals is a Cold War world whose borders were far less stable than the notion of an "Iron Curtain" suggests. Surprisingly, the competition for defectors paved the way for collusion between the superpowers, who found common cause in regulating the spaces through which defectors moved. Disputes over defectors mapped out the contours of modern state sovereignty, and defection's ideological framework hardened borders by reinforcing the view that asylum should only be granted to migrants with clear political claims.
Although defection all but disappeared after the Cold War, this innovative work shows how it shaped the governance of global borders and helped forge an international refugee system whose legacy and limitations remain with us to this day.
Defectors fleeing the Soviet Union seized the world's attention during the Cold War. Their stories were given sensational news coverage and dramatized in spy novels and films. Upon reaching the West, they were entitled to special benefits, including financial assistance and permanent residency. In contrast to other migrants, defectors were pursued by the states they left even as they were eagerly sought by the United States and its allies. Taking part in a risky game that played out across the globe, defectors sought to transcend the limitations of the Cold War world.
Defectors follows their treacherous journeys and looks at how their unauthorized flight via land, sea, and air gave shape to a globalized world. It charts a global struggle over defectors that unfolded among rival intelligence agencies operating in the shadows of an occupied Europe, in the forbidden border zones of the USSR, in the disputed straits of the South China Sea, on a hijacked plane 10,000 feet in the air, and around the walls of Soviet embassies. What it reveals is a Cold War world whose borders were far less stable than the notion of an "Iron Curtain" suggests. Surprisingly, the competition for defectors paved the way for collusion between the superpowers, who found common cause in regulating the spaces through which defectors moved. Disputes over defectors mapped out the contours of modern state sovereignty, and defection's ideological framework hardened borders by reinforcing the view that asylum should only be granted to migrants with clear political claims.
Although defection all but disappeared after the Cold War, this innovative work shows how it shaped the governance of global borders and helped forge an international refugee system whose legacy and limitations remain with us to this day.
328 pages, Hardcover
First published July 21, 2023
6 people are currently reading
86 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 20, 2025
This was a very interesting look at the phenomenon of the defector from the Soviet Union. The author's argument is that the attempt to control defectors led to cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union on a variety of subjects (how embassies are run, how to respond to airplane hijackings, etc.)
I would have liked a listing of defections, how many were there a year, did they respond to "big" events, like the fall of Khrushchev or the Helsinki Accords. The author doesn't really get into that, essentially agreeing with both the CIA and KGB, who held that most defections were from personal reasons, not political ones. Indeed, a lot of defectors seem to have had messy personal lives and problems with authority.
What the book does is make the reader think about the American attitude toward Russians. As the book points out, American immigration law in this era was biased against people from Eastern Europe. The government did not want a lot of "displaced persons" coming to the United States after World War II. During the Cold War, despite its "freedom" rhetoric, the US government was very hesitant to let defectors come to America, preferring to keep them in Europe. After the Cold War, when it became possible to leave the former Soviet Union, American pop culture delighted in depicting Russians as gangsters or other criminal types. The image of the suffering ballerina unable to express herself under Communism vanished.
If you are interested in the Cold War, this is a very thought-provoking book.
I would have liked a listing of defections, how many were there a year, did they respond to "big" events, like the fall of Khrushchev or the Helsinki Accords. The author doesn't really get into that, essentially agreeing with both the CIA and KGB, who held that most defections were from personal reasons, not political ones. Indeed, a lot of defectors seem to have had messy personal lives and problems with authority.
What the book does is make the reader think about the American attitude toward Russians. As the book points out, American immigration law in this era was biased against people from Eastern Europe. The government did not want a lot of "displaced persons" coming to the United States after World War II. During the Cold War, despite its "freedom" rhetoric, the US government was very hesitant to let defectors come to America, preferring to keep them in Europe. After the Cold War, when it became possible to leave the former Soviet Union, American pop culture delighted in depicting Russians as gangsters or other criminal types. The image of the suffering ballerina unable to express herself under Communism vanished.
If you are interested in the Cold War, this is a very thought-provoking book.
January 16, 2025
Not sure why this book received such a low rating. I listened to the audiobook and I enjoyed it very much. The style is not as dry as the others mentioned. I learned a few things on the subject.
The length of the book is acceptable, minimum repetition. It is very focused to the topic, and doesn't feel biased.
Nearing the end, I was thinking to skip the final chapter "Conclusion", because it is marked 1 hour of reading, but it I was wrong. Turned out I
It wasn't a "summary" kind of conclusion, but rather an "aftermath", which I throughly enjoy reading / listening to it until the very end.
The length of the book is acceptable, minimum repetition. It is very focused to the topic, and doesn't feel biased.
Nearing the end, I was thinking to skip the final chapter "Conclusion", because it is marked 1 hour of reading, but it I was wrong. Turned out I
It wasn't a "summary" kind of conclusion, but rather an "aftermath", which I throughly enjoy reading / listening to it until the very end.
November 27, 2023
An abundant amount of nuanced research, but reads like a thesis.
March 23, 2024
I think there was definitely a way to give this more direction. Extremely well researched, but I definitely saw more potential
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews