The sword and the shield: the Mitrokhin Archive and the secret history of the KGB

Abstract

Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin. The Sword and Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and Secret History of KGB. New York: Basic Books, 1999. xix, 700 pp. Appendices. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $32.50 US, $47.50 CAD, cloth. Here it is, another history of Committee of State Security (Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti-KGB), Soviet secret police. This one, the secret is based on notes laboriously made over a twelve-year period from files process of being consigned to KGB archives. After collapse of Soviet Union, Vasili Mitrokhin's partly handwritten, partly typed archive was brought to Britain and now has had a narrative written around it by renowned Cambridge specialist on intelligence history, Christopher Andrew. Apparently no specific criteria were used to sift dross from 300,000-odd files seen by Mitrokhin between 1972 and 1984 as he archived them for First Chief Directorate (i.e., foreign intelligence). Christopher Andrew has therefore wisely decided to fit archival material into a straightforwardly chronological history of KGB's foreign operations. It begins with Cheka, original Soviet ancestor of KGB. In this and many later chapters, there is some obvious repetition of Andrew's earlier collaborative writing with another defector, Oleg Gordievsky, as well as opportunity to answer critics and to incorporate newer Russian works on subject. The story continues with accounts of Great Illegals of 1930s, magnificent five (Kim Philby et al.) recruited at Cambridge University by Anthony Blunt, pursuit of Trotsky, war, and Cold War. Throughout these early chapters, as well as later, we discover or rediscover some of great Soviet espionage successes, and occasional failures. The failures resulted from intelligence being sidelined by ideology, with Stalin, Khrushchev, and even Andropov acting as their own analysts, and with residencies providing Moscow with what it wanted to hear rather than what it needed to know. Christopher Andrew does a phenomenal job of matching data handmade archive with rest of literature, current and past, field of intelligence studies. Intelligence agencies West will be pulling up names and aliases from this book to match up with their files, if they have not already done so, as a check on their own past counterintelligence records. For non-specialist, neither historian nor analyst, however, it is all just a long, sad story of betrayal and deception based on misplaced faith a false cause or, more recently, purely mercenary motives. It shakes one's faith human intelligence and intelligence of humans as none of deceptions, spying, active measures, or theft of scientific and technical knowledge prevented decay and eventual collapse of USSR The author skillfully brings very many bits and pieces of information together to answer a vast array of questions, as well as to debunk numerous myths about overblown reputations. There is much to ponder this volume, but end this world of spies remains a hall of mirrors. The book devotes considerable attention to Soviet operations against its main adversary, United States. Moscow had greatly inflated expectations of its illegal agents. In fact, though, just how much can an unacculturated foreigner living undercover teeming New York City learn about American government secrets? One such illegal did work as a piano tuner for Steinway & Sons. And from archive we do learn how, exactly, Vladimir Horowitz liked to have his piano tuned. There is no indication as to whether this was a vital American secret or whether it influenced Soviet policy. Moscow was also for a long time convinced United States was planning to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike; its agents fed that preconception. Rather than its network of legal and illegal spies, KGB had better results from American citizens working intelligence trade, such as Aldrich Ames, who would walk in to Soviet residencies offering their services. …