World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World [Bargain Price] [Paperback]

Christopher Andrew (Author), Vasili Mitrokhin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 30, 2006

In 1992 the British Secret Intelligence Service exfiltrated from Russia a defector whose presence in the West remained a secret until the publication of The Sword and the Shield in 1999. That man was Vasili Mitrokhin, the KGB's most senior archivist. Unknown to his superiors, Mitrokhin had spent over a decade making notes and transcripts of highly classified files which, at enormous personal risk, he smuggled out of the KGB archives. The FBI described the archive as "the greatest single cache of intelligence every received by the West." In The Sword and the Shield, Christopher Andrew revealed the secrets of the KGB's operations in the United States and Europe; now in The World Was Going Our Way, he has written the first comprehensive account of the KGB and its operations throughout the Third World. Our understanding of the contemporary world remains incomplete without taking into account the vast impact of the KGB in developing nations: Andrew reveals the names of political leaders on the KGB payroll as well as the KGB's successful penetration of numerous foreign governments. He also points to the many absurdities of KGB operations-such as agents attempting to assess the spread of influence of rival Chinese communism by visiting African capitals and counting the number of posters of Mao Tse Tung. For decades the KGB believed that the world was going their way-and Americans at the highest reaches of government lived in fear that they were losing the Cold War in the Third World. This extraordinary book will transform our understanding of the history of the twentieth century.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This second volume of the post-war history of the KGB-based on the "Mitrokhin Archive" of secret documents purloined by the late co-author, a KGB dissident-surveys the Soviet spy agency's skullduggery in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Historian Andrew portrays Russian policy toward the Third World as largely the creation of the KGB, which hoped that the spread of Soviet influence and revolutionary upheavals would make these regions the decisive Cold War battleground. The Cuban Revolution inspired these ambitions, and by 1980, after the American defeat in Vietnam and with leftist regimes installed in Nicaragua and Grenada, Cuban troops fighting in Africa and Russian forces occupying Afghanistan, both American and Soviet officials saw communism on the march. Still, in Andrew's account, Soviet initiatives-with a few exceptions, like the Afghanistan intervention-seem cautious, reactive and uncomfortably dependent on fickle client regimes; wary of confronting the United States, Russia often exerted a restraining influence on local allies. Andrew's engaging, occasionally gossipy narrative provides new evidence of Soviet sponsorship of Latin American insurgencies and Palestinian terrorists, along with details of KGB spycraft and dirty tricks. The world-wide communist conspiracy he depicts was far from a juggernaut, but he sheds new light on the hidden history of the Cold War. Photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Christopher Andrew is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Cambridge University. In addition to The Sword and the Shield, his previous books include Her Majesty’s Secret Service, KGB, and For the President’s Eyes Only. He lives in Cambridge, England.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 676 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (October 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465003133
• ASIN: B0017HSXXQ
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.7 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #537,984 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Christopher Andrew is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History and Chair of the Faculty of History at Cambridge University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary largely for showing contractors as the weak link, September 28, 2005

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World (v. 2) (Hardcover)

This is, like the first book, an extraordinary piece of scholarship. While it can be tedious in both its detail and in the drollness of the "accomplishments" that enjoyed so much Politburo attention and funding, it joins books such as Derek Leebaert's The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World in documenting the insanity and waste that characterized much of the so-called "secret wars" between the US Intelligence Community (within which the CIA is a $3 billion a year runt against the larger defense budget approaching $50 billion a year) and the KGB and GRU.

For those who have the patience or speed to get through this entire book, the single most important revelation and documentation concerns the ease with which the Russians were able to recruit traitors within the US defense community contractors. Ralph Peters has written about this in New Glory : Expanding America's Global Supremacy but speaks mostly of legal treason--corruption and waste. This book carefully addresses the sad reality that DoD is totally penetrated by foreign spies (one would add, Third World and allied spies including France, Germany, and Israel, never mind China and Iran) via the contracting community.

One day someone will do a careful calibration of both the good and the bad of secret intelligence. When that day comes, this book will be as good a place as any with which to start.

Best General Couonterintelligence Books:
Traitors Among Us: Inside the Spy Catcher's World
Merchants of Treason America's Secrets for Sale from the Pueblo to the Present

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nice continuation to Volume I, May 15, 2008

By 

Diogo M. Liberal "D-MAN" (Lisbon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the the Third World: Newly Revealed Secrets from the Mitrokhin Archive (Paperback)

The book is a very interesting continuation to the first volume of the metrokin archive. I would howerver like to point out that at the middle of the book the form of writting of the book becomes very dull because all the charpters are prepared in the same way. To be fair probably from a scientific point of view this is the most correct form to do so, however at some point the reader becomes a bit bored. Chapters that speak of Iraq, Syria, Israel and Afganistan are very interesting, specially because they purport the russian or soviet point of view for strategical analisys. Nevertheless its a good book and provides good information.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent :better than prequel, September 1, 2010

By 

H. Williams - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the the Third World: Newly Revealed Secrets from the Mitrokhin Archive (Paperback)

This book is even better than the first one (in my own opinion).For years,we were told that the front lines of the cold war were in Europe with the third world serving as a battlefield where the superpowers can fight proxy wars.Before this book came out we were very familiar with the CIA's role in Iran,Guatemala,Guyana,indonesia,Chile and other places using dirty tricks and covert operations to promote american interests.This book details the KGB 's equivalent operations.We learn that the KGB sponsored a "Hostile takeover " of india;that it was in close contact with Salvador Allende and Fidel Castro and that it was the main support for the ANC during the apartheid struggle.The book shows that although the KGB had numerous tactical successes ,in the long run this could not help the Soviet system as communism was a flawed ideology and doomed anyway.