The Sword And The Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive And The Secret History Of The Kgb (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "This book is based on unprecedented and unrestricted access to one of the world's most secret and closely guarded archives-that of the foreign intelligence arm..." (more)
Key Phrases: illegal residency, illegals directorate, undeclared members, Soviet Union, United States, Cold War (more...)

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In early 1992, a Russian man walked into the British embassy in a newly independent Baltic republic and asked to "speak to someone in authority." As he sipped his first cup of proper English tea, he handed over a small file of notes. Eight months later, the man, his family, and his enormous archive had been safely exfiltrated to Britain. When news that a KGB officer had defected with the names of hundreds of undercover agents leaked out in 1996, a spokesperson for the SVR (Russia's foreign intelligence service, heir of the KGB) said, "Hundreds of people! That just doesn't happen! Any defector could get the name of one, two, perhaps three agents--but not hundreds!"

Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin worked as chief archivist for the FCD, the foreign-intelligence arm of the KGB. Mitrokhin was responsible for checking and sealing approximately 300,000 files, allowing him unrestricted access to one of the world's most closely guarded archives. He had lost faith in the Soviet system over the years, and was especially disturbed by the KGB's systematic silencing of dissidents at home and abroad. Faced with tough choices--stay silent, resign, or undermine the system from within--Mitrokhin decided to compile a record of the foreign operations of the KGB. Every day for 12 years, he smuggled notes out of the archive. He started by hiding scraps of paper covered with miniscule handwriting in his shoes, but later wrote notes on ordinary office paper, which he took home in his pockets. He hid the notes under his mattress, and on weekends took them to his dacha, where he typed them and hid them in containers buried under the floor. When he escaped to Britain, his archive contained tens of thousands of pages of notes.

In 1995, Mitrokhin, by then a British citizen, contacted Christopher Andrew (For the President's Eyes Only), head of the faculty of history at Cambridge University and one of the world's foremost historians of international intelligence. Andrew was allowed to examine the archive Mitrokhin created "to ensure that the truth was not forgotten, that posterity might some day come to know of it." The Sword and the Shield is the earthshaking result. The book details the KGB's foreign-intelligence operations, most notably those aimed at Great Britain and the "Main Adversary"--the United States. In the 700-page book, Andrew reveals operations aimed at discrediting high-profile Americans, from Martin Luther King to Ronald Reagan; secret arms caches still hidden--and boobytrapped--throughout the West; disinformation efforts, including forging a letter from Lee Harvey Oswald in an attempt to implicate the CIA in the assassination of JFK; attempts to stir up racial tensions in the U.S. by sending hate mail and even bombs; and the existence of deep-cover agents in North America and Europe--some of whom were effectively "outed" when the book was published.

Mitrokhin's detailed notes are well served by Andrew, who writes forcefully and clearly. The Sword and the Shield represents a remarkable intelligence coup--one that will have serious repercussions for years to come. As Andrew notes, "No one who spied for the Soviet Union at any period between the October Revolution and the eve of the Gorbachev era can now be confident that his or her secrets are still secure." --Sunny Delaney

From The Washington Post

"The defection of KGB researcher Vasili Mitrohin, who brought out six trunks of notes and copied documents recounting some of the KGB's most highly sensitive activities against Britain and the United States, was described by former Western and Russian spies-who gathered here [in Berlin] this weekend for a conference on Cold War espionage-as one of the most extraordinary events in the intelligence game since the Soviet Union collapsed." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 736 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1st edition (September 23, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465003109
• ISBN-13: 978-0465003105
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.9 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #269,878 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #60 in	Books > History > Europe > Former Soviet Republics & Siberia
  #66 in	Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Political Science > Levels of Government > Intelligence Agencies

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Don't make this the first book you read on the topic..., June 28, 2000

By	taking a rest - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

This is a large body of work containing an enormous amount of information. The reason for the 4 stars is that I just don't feel that all the information from the KGB files can be taken without any skepticism at all. This is not really harsh criticism just an acknowledgement that with the flood of documents coming from the former Soviet Union and it's Republics, some prudent skepticism is called for. It also is not a comment on Mr. Mitrokhin, truth versus deception, disinformation, and lies, was part of the daily life in the Soviet Union. It is possible all his information is uncorrupted, but a bit of a jaundiced view is reasonably called for.

The book is interesting and loaded with information. I don't suggest this as a first book about the KGB because it reads more like a textbook; it is very meticulous to the point tedious in detail at times. If the subject is one you have some familiarity with, this volume could serve as an excellent reference work. If this were the first book you were to read on the topic, reaching the end would be challenging.

Vasily Nikitich Mitrokhin oversaw 300,000 files on an exhaustive list of prominent names in American History. If there was a person who had access to a library of information, Mr. Mitrokhin certainly qualifies. His willingness to remove information on a daily basis for years on end is both a testament to his courage, and an amazing period of luck.

The work is excellent in depth and breadth of material covered. It is not light reading as the subjects that are covered, or sometimes mentioned briefly, have been the topic of entire books. If you are willing to make the effort and devote the time, your knowledge of this particular man's cache of information will greatly expand your knowledge of what some of the KGB's activities were. With the passing of time a more complete picture will emerge of this opponent of The Cold War. It certainly is not the final word on the matter, but an excellent piece of the story.

Well worth reading if given the time.

52 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating Look Behind The Closed Doors of the KGB!, June 28, 2000

By	Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

From this book we learn of one of the most incredible stories to yet emerge from the history of the Cold War; the tale of this Russian defector who had laboriously hand-scribed an astonishing archive detailing the history of hundreds of thousands of secret KGB files. One is breathlessly swept along by two elements in this true story; first, by the tale of the defector himself, who calmly, deliberately and systematically copied the records of so many cases of surveillance, mistreatment, harassment, torture, and murder by KGB agents over the decades at great personal risk to himself and his family, and second, by the tales of horror these files contain.

The defector himself worked for decades as the chief archivist for the foreign intelligence division of the KGB. Part of his duties was to extensively check and then seal each of the hundreds of thousands of cases on file, which gave him unhindered access to all of the secrets of the decades of KGB activity. Of course, one has to ask oneself the most important question; why? Apparently the defector had long ago become badly disillusioned by the nature of the Soviet government and its ritualistic suppression of human rights, especially by its record of systematic silencing of both domestic and international dissidents. Faced with a series of decisions about what to do, he eventually drifted into copying the records as a quiet act of protest, soon the records, smuggled out in his clothing, pockets, inside his socks,shoes, or his underwear, soon grew to fantastic proportions.

The tales of KGB abuse and excess are horrifying to read about, staggering the imagination both in terms of the extent they reached, and also in terms of the absolute lunacy of much of it. It extended from assassination attempts to infiltration of civil rights leader's entourages, from tales of murder and mayhem in the days of the Bolsheviks to stories of deep-cover agents still active when the book was published, from secretly booby-trapped arm caches to hate mail and bomb campaigns in the United States. As amazing as the laundry list of misdeeds may be, what is so incredible is that most of it was so singularly unsuccessful in both conception and execution, illustrating just how culturally inept the KGB was, and how badly misconceived most of this mayhem was.

This is a fascinating book, written in a very readable and entertaining fashion. The difficulties in writing it and the risks associated with smugglingit out of the Soviet Union read like something out of a John LeCarre novel. Yet because of its considerable length and its subject matter, it is a slow and time-consuming read. I enjoyed reading it, and recommend it for anyone interested in just how energetic and devilishly inspired yet motley cast of KGB characters were over a period of almost eighty years.

46 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We had a right to be scared during the so-called Red Scare ., November 7, 1999

By A Customer

We had a right to be scared during the so-called "Red Scare" as the Left likes to call KGB infiltration into almost all walks of American life. Most interesting to me was the character assassination of KGB nemesis J. Edgar Hoover who was described as a sexual pervert by a woman with a long record of spreading false news stories. Her calumnies were immediately accepted as true by many in the American media some of whom had wittingly or unwittingly been suborned by the KGB. It's also shocking to note that when these false charges were made there were very few who stood up for the late FBI Director and they apparently had a problem getting their defense heard by the public. This book can be heavy going to those unfamiliar with the world of espionage. Readers might look in the extensive index and seek out at first the names of spies whose names are well known such as Alger Hiss. From there the reader might be able to start at the beginning and really delve into what is revealed. This is not a book to be taken from the public library on a two week loan. It should be purchased and become part of the library of anyone who wants to know the truth about foreign spies in the USA