Through the Eyes of the Enemy: The Autobiography of Stanislav Lunev [Hardcover]

Stanislav Lunev (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 25, 1998

Russian spies still at work--highest ranking defector tells how espionage against the United States redoubled under Yeltsin.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Stanislav Lunev was a Soviet GRU (military intelligence) agent who defected to the United States in March of 1992 after a successful career of intelligence gathering from China and the United States. As the highest-ranking military defector to the U.S., he is in a unique position to detail the intelligence aspect of the cold war and the emergence of the Russian mafia as a threat to national security.

Through the Eyes of the Enemy is more than the autobiography of a highly skilled intelligence operative and defector; it is a "debriefing" on the new cold war being waged by the Russian mafia against American corporations. Lunev portrays organized crime as the only authority in modern Russia, and asserts that this element has infiltrated every level of American private and corporate life. He provides chilling details of seismic weapons, mass-scale corporate espionage, and deep-cover death squads. Through the Eyes of the Enemy could be dismissed as fantastic paranoid ravings were the source not so credible and the ramifications not so severe. --Brendan J. LaSalle

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing, Inc.; First edition. edition (August 25, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0895263904
• ISBN-13: 978-0895263902
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #849,653 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One won't understand Russia without reading this book., July 22, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Through the Eyes of the Enemy: The Autobiography of Stanislav Lunev (Hardcover)

With the knowledge of one who spent most of his professional life in Russia's most secretive intelligence agency, Colonel Lunev provides a riveting and disturbing -- and very credible -- look at the GRU and how it has resisted the reforms that have swept its country.

Lunev provides an equally troubling yet compelling analysis of how the corruption of the Soviet system hijacked economic reform in Russia and turned the country into what President Yeltsin himself once called the "superpower of crime."

There are few books about the GRU. The best-known ones, written under the pseudonym Suvorov by a former GRU officer named Rezun who defected to the United Kingdom, are excellent works but many scholars suspect that they rest heavily on material provided by British intelligence. While this does not diminish the value of the Suvorov books, it does contrast with that of Lunev who, with the help of a co-author, offers a perspective completely unique to his exper! ience.

Suvorov's books remain valuable, because the GRU has changed little if at all, and its mission remains the same. But being written in the Soviet period, they lack the context of the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War as we knew it.

U.S. intelligence was slow to realize the depth of criminalization within Russia's government and its security and intelligence services, and American policymakers have yet to accept this fact. Policymakers are also reluctant to admit that Moscow has preserved the Soviet-built mechanisms to decapitate the civilian and military leadership of the United States in the event of crisis.

Lunev describes the situation lucidly. One cannot understand the situation in Russia today without reading this book.

J. Michael Waller, Ph.D. Author, "Secret Empire: The KGB In Russia Today" (Westview, 1994). Executive Editor, "Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization." Vice President, American Fore! ign Policy Council, Washington, D.C.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars 4 pages "expanded" to 150 pages, August 28, 1998

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Through the Eyes of the Enemy: The Autobiography of Stanislav Lunev (Hardcover)

The book was a big disappointment! There is enough "good" information for perhaps a short magazine article. One gets the impression the author was trying to fill up the pages much the way we did when we had to write a 150-word essay in school.

I also question the validity of many of the so-called secrets he reveals. I've worked in the area of National Defense for many years. Much of what he claims as fact I seriously doubt is true. All-in-all the material should have been covered in about a 1000 word article.

A disappointment! A least it is a fast read - since there are only 172 pages of text.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars If you want good info. and detail - this is not the book, September 18, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Through the Eyes of the Enemy: The Autobiography of Stanislav Lunev (Hardcover)

The book was very disappointing. It lacks details and smacks of the GRU ego throughout. The accolades given the FBI and others makes it quite apparent who was involved in editing. Thus the lack of details, I assume. My recommendation to the author is to write another book but this time, tell the whole truth in detail - and don't let the government guys read and edit it first! Hell, it can't hurt - you have a price tag on your head anyway - maybe!