Customer Reviews

Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness - A Soviet Spymaster

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

4/28/99 Pavel Sudoplatov joined the secret police as a boy, and rose to be one of Beria's most trusted assistants, in charge of sabotage, assassinations, and atomic bomb espionage. Though Sudoplatov sometimes gets things wrong (not suprising when working from memory fifty years later), he has a wealth of information on how Stalin's secret police worked, and presents a chilling picture of the kind of people who thought they were building a better world through mass murder. After reading this, you'll have better understanding of how so many Westerners could betray their countries to the USSR, and why so many are still trying to pretend it didn't happen. This new edition has some interesting material that answers criticisms made of the first edition, especially his claim that Los Alamos director J. Robert Oppenheimer passed on information about the atomic bomb (I seem to be the only serious student of the Oppenheimer case who believes Sudoplatov on this). Recommended.

I read the first edition and bought the second edition just to read the reactions which are printed in the book. Predictably, many still cling to their version of sugar-coated history. Fortunately, historians like Robert Conquest know the real truth. And Conquest said "This is the most sensational, the most devastating, and in many ways the most informative autobiography ever to emerge from the Stalinist milieu". In the updated foreword he again defends the overall veracity of this document. He has good reason to do this.

You won't believe the documentation in the back of the book. Atomic espionage documents, Katyn Forest Massacre, and more.

This book is ESSENTIAL to understand Power in the former Soviet Union. It's almost the history of the first decades of the soviet intelligence services written in a reasonably detailled manner. It's revealing on the nature of Power under Stalin rule. I also recommend the Portuguese translation (if you happen to speak Portuguese) since it was very carefully done. If you study this subject in particular get every translation you are able to read! Great book!

Irrespective of any criticisms regarding memory failures or potential misinformation, the book gives a remarkable insight into what the Soviet regime was all about.

Murder, denouncements and constant fear of rather regular jailings and executions while the select few treated themselves to dachas, special stores and, most importantly, good advanced education. All in the name of ideals.

This book gives real nightmares to those who had the ill fortune to live under one of the soviet regimes at a time. Others should read it as a warning.

An interesting read, gives a good feel for "everyday" soviet life. Ugh . . . .

Sudoplatov has written a book which, in its simplistic style and throroughness, compels the reader to see through the haze that has surrounded the turbulent years of Stalins rule. Too often here in the West, our narratives describing this period have been tainted by the prejudicial judgement of our authors, the lack of availability of proper documentation, and the almost universal unwillingness to rewrite past assertions. The timeframe of his book being published, in my opinion, hopefully shall spur renewed interest by researchers from all countries to begin anew the quest to find answers to questions long thought unanswerable. This is an excellent book!!!

Sudoplatov ran the NKVD's Administration for Special Tasks, which carried out some of the Soviet Union's darkest operations --- assassination, kidnapping, murder, and frequently, terrorism (the author's own words, no less). Sudoplatov also directed undercover and partisan operations behind German lines during WWII. Later he supervised all atomic espionage operations against the US and Britain after the war.
Still a Stalinist at heart, Sudoplatov offers few regrets for a career filled with death up close and personal. One of his first solo operations entailed infiltrating a Ukrainian nationalist group. After befriending one it's leaders for the better part of a year, he dispatched him in Rotterdam with a box of chocolates loaded with explosives. Later, he went on to supervise large roving killer squads himself, such as the team that assassinated Trotsky outside Mexico City in 1940.
The book is filled with surreal scenes, such as in the "Komandatura" in the Lyubianka, where prisoners were executed. One section was outfitted more as a hotel than a prison. But as prisoners were given a "routine" medical examination, they were administered a lethal injection, then quickly cremated. Sudoplatov, himself arrested on bogus charges after Beria'a arrest, describes receiving not one, but two spinal taps while pretending to be catatonic (so as to avoid interrogation). His simple, direct language in describing these kinds of sequences is chilling.
More than a few of the author's historical claims are either suspect or simply false based on information long available elswhere. For instance, his assertion that Stalin was not involved in the murder of Leningrad Party leader Sergei Kirov can't be taken seriously. He also offers suspect versions concerning the demise of various defectors and other Soviet "enemies" such as Agabekov and Krivitsky. In other cases he seems to want to have it both ways. He admits Alger Hiss was a paid Soviet agent -- but before WWII, not when he was actually accused.
Regardless, these sorts of flaws can be overlooked. This work is critical for an understanding of the mentality behind of some of the Soviet Union's most notorious policies, actions, and crimes.

This book was an interesting look at the KGB during the first part of the cold war. I think we all have a view of the KGB, which was formed during the years of the cold war, a large, well run organization that many times was one step ahead of the U.S. This author does not go against that view. The author is relating his experiences in the arm of the KGB that was responsible for information gathering, primarily against the U.S. and NATO. There are some interesting bits and you get a good look that this authors insight to "the game". This book details what actually happened in the KGB during this time with an inside account of the methods of the KGB and a run down of some of the missions they took part in.

The author does a good job in providing the reader with many of the interesting tradecraft bit about the KGB. Overall this is an interesting book that gives the espionage junky an another look into the KGB. The book is well written and does not drag or stumble. It keeps the readers interest through out. If you are an armchair expert on the topic then this is another of the titles you will undoubtedly already have or will need to pick up. If you are the general reader then this is a good broad description of the KGB that is interesting, but not the definitive one volume work.

The end of the Cold War has brought some interesting books into the light of day, and none is more fascinating than this memoir by a Cold War veteran who directed the assasination of Trotsky, himself assasinated Ukranian dissidents, and controlled the efforts to steal the secrets of the Atomic Bomb from the USA. The man is apparently the last living Bolshevik (at least he was alive at the time of writing, whether he survives today I don't know.) as he joined the Soviet army, if you can believe this, at age 12 in 1919, and survived to pen this memoir in 1993. The whole thing takes on a sort of moral play aspect, as the main character kills people, then directs other killers, finally is denounced and unfairly punished himself (not for murders but for disloyalty, which was untrue) and in the end, is partially redeemed and pardoned. It's an absolutely amazing story, only partially weakened by the writers' inability to resist providing interludes explaining what happened to people in the story later. This sometimes breaks the narrative badly, as some of the interludes take a page or two right in the middle of Sudoplatov directing atomic espionage or something. These should have been relegated to footnotes or something, but even so the story itself is so incredible it speaks for itself.

The truth of the matter is that this book makes for awesome reading and I do not know if I should love it for the fact that the tales of political intrigue,espionage,deception and special operations make for interesting reading or if I should be horrified and chilled at the tales of murder,betrayal and the use of racism for political purposes and be grateful that Stalin is dead and that the murderous ideology that he lead at the height of its power is no longer relevant in today's world.Sudoplatov provides a vivid tale of his career in detail.He talks about his rise through the ranks of cheka to become an assassain in Stalin's secret service where he played a role in killing a Ukrainian nationalists in a manner similar to what the israeli mossad uses to kill Palestinian terrorists.He describes his role in the murder of leon trotsky and in the leadership of the Administration of Special Tasks.What I find incredible about the administration of Special Tasks is that it would have been the counterpart on the Eastern front of the British Special Operations Executive (guerilla warfare against the nazis) and the XX commitee (counterintelligence and deception).What I find remarkable about this is that whilst the Brits used a number of agents to deceive the nazis in the lead up to the invasion of sicily and the invasion of normandy,Sudoplatov used one agent to deceive the Germans during the battle of Stalingrad .Sudoplatov also list some details of the exploits of his organization on the eastern front where it took part in Sabotage and targted killings of Nazi officials.He then lists his exploits after the war when he was the head of atomic espionage and also in charge of sabotage operations in case world war ii breaks out.He makes the claim that scientists such as Oppenheimer were involved in the passing of information which I find credible although it has been denied by the FBI and SVR.He also describes the behind the scenes events in the USSR's politics during those years.The one question i do have about this book and the reason I only give it 4 stars is that sudoplatov was in his 80s when he wrote this,so the question remains how much is the real deal and how much is fabricated?

More than any other work I've seen, Special Tasks illuminates the Soviet experience. Its author lived it from beginning to end, joining the Red Army in 1919 at the age of 12 and offering his opinion 7 decades later on what Gorbachev did wrong in his attempts to keep the Soviet Union together.

During those 70 years Sudoplatov is at or close to the very center of all the Soviet leadership was known for. He lived through the purges of the Thirties, directed the assassins of Trotsky, played a major role in the defeat of the Nazis, coordinated the theft of atomic secrets from the US, was arrested and imprisoned and tortured, then spent another 20 years in a sort of twilight struggle for rehabilitation, which was finally granted him just days after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The breadth of this memoir is truly astounding. And while at times it becomes difficult to read due to his tendency to digress into details about persons most readers would not know the significance of, the details about well-known persons and events keep one reading past the digressions: Oppenheimer and Fermi feeding atomic secrets to the Russians in the altruistic belief that a balance of power was preferable to an American monopoly (one thinks of the recent Pakistani scientist who spread nuclear knowledge around for the same reason); Ramon Mercador killing Trotsky with an ice ax while his mother waited in a car outside; then giving all the details of the assassination to Sudoplatov in person in 1969--thirty years later--when they'd both done many, many hard years in prison: the control of emigre scientists in America such as George Gamow through threats to their families in Russia...

Sudoplatov makes no apologies nor seems to have any regrets about what he and Stalin and the others did. He states plainly in the Prologue: "We did not believe there was any moral question involved in killing Trotsky or any other of our former comrades who had turned against us. We believed we were in a life and death struggle for the salvation of our grand experiment..."

So we are left to wonder whether Sudoplatov, who seems to be a basically decent person playing rough in the service of his country really believes that 10-15 million of his former comrades had really turned against communism and deserved to die for the "salvation" of the "grand experiment". Are we to believe that he believes all of Stalin's purges were justified and Kruschev's were not?

Like Albert Speer, Sudoplatov is more than a little reticent about the mass murders he was a witness to. A Ukranian by birth, he says nothing about the millions of Ukranians who died during Stalin's collectivization and subjugation of that country, though he worked in Ukraine for the Party through the Twenties, when those horrors took place. There is not the slightest mention of the famines or the shipping off of entire Ukranian villages to death camps.

In a way, one can't blame him. There is a limit to the amount of such things a person can deal with. He was very young and no doubt counted himself lucky to have escaped it. Still, one would like to know what he thinks about it now.