Shield and sword: The amazing career of a Soviet agent in the Nazi secret service

by Vadim Kozhevnikov

English (translation)
Original Russian

Genres: War, Russia, Russian Literature, Historical Fiction

416 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Vadim Mikhailovich Kozhevnikov (Russian: Вадим Михайлович Кожевников) Soviet writer. His daughter Nadezhda Kozhevnikova is also a writer.

Vadim Kozevnikov was born to a Russian family in the Siberian town of Narym, Tomsk Governorate (present-day Kolpashevsky District, Tomsk Oblast), where his revolutionary-minded father, a physician, had been sent as an internal exile by the authorities of the Russian Empire.

Kozhevnikov studied literature and ethnology at Moscow State University, graduating in 1933. Kozhevnikov worked as a war correspondent for Pravda from 1941 to 1945, joining the Communist Party of the Soviet Union halfway into the German-Soviet War in 1943. He was elected secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1949.

Kozhevnikov was officially recognized as a Hero of Socialist Labor for his contributions to Soviet literature and was elected to one term as a politician to the Soviet Union's Supreme Soviet. He was awarded the USSR State Prize following the publication of two of his novels in 1971.