Resisting the KGB Mythmakers: Willy Fisher, spy fiction, and the myth of Rudolf Abel

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB) suffered a shocking setback when the head of its deep cover (illegal) agent networks in the United States Rudolf Abel, whose real name was William (Willy) Fisher, was arrested in Brooklyn in 1957. After Fisher was swapped for the downed CIA U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers and an American PhD student Frederic Pryor in 1962, the KGB attempted to turn the setback into a public relations victory by constructing the myth of an ideal Soviet intelligence officer. However, the myth required that Fisher continue his public life under the assumed identity of Rudolf Abel until his death and beyond. Drawing on KGB archival documents, memoirs of former KGB officers, Fisher’s published personal letters, and Russian language journalistic accounts, this article chronicles and analyses both the KGB activities to make Fisher into the mythic Abel and the former officer’s seemingly hopeless but remarkably persistent struggle to preserve his personal identity and integrity. A struggle that culminated in a little-known spy fiction novella which, using allusions and metaphors, articulated his critique of the KGB.