Oddly timely, given the return of Russian spying to the front pages, and a first-rate study of the mechanics and psychology...
Swift-moving tale of true espionage in the most desperate years of the Cold War.
Oleg Gordievsky (b. 1938) seemed to be a true believer in communism, a man who had emerged from secondary school, writes Macintyre (Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain's Secret Special Forces Unit that Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War, 2016, etc.), as “a competent, intelligent, athletic, unquestioning and unremarkable product of the Soviet system.” Yet, after being admitted to the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations and groomed for service, Gordievsky revealed radical leanings toward democracy. Recruited as a KGB officer all the same, he was an appalled witness to the building of the Berlin Wall, but it “did not prevent him faithfully carrying out the orders of the KGB.” Then came the invasion of Czechoslovakia and a home visit to a country that seemed to be increasingly poor and shabby in what he called a “totalitarian cacophony.” At this point, Gordievsky was ripe for the turning. He became a valued asset of MI6, identifying Soviet spies and fellow travelers. So important was Gordievsky’s role, and so difficult for the spymasters to manage, that MI6 tried to conceal his identity from their CIA allies, which gave the Americans fits—until, in 1985, a disgruntled, shabby CIA officer named Aldrich Ames “chose to sell out America to the KGB in order to buy the American Dream he felt he deserved.” One of those he revealed was Gordievsky, who, for all his “knack for detecting loyalty, suspicion, conviction and faith,” was caught in the KGB’s net and returned to Moscow. The closing pages of Macintyre’s fluent yarn find Gordievsky attempting to escape captivity and flee to the West in a scenario worthy of John le Carré, even as another net tightens around the American spy whom Gordievsky scorns as a "greedy bastard.”
Oddly timely, given the return of Russian spying to the front pages, and a first-rate study of the mechanics and psychology of espionage.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-90419-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
HISTORY | TRUE CRIME | MODERN | MILITARY | GENERAL HISTORY
SEEN & HEARD
A useful and brief, but comprehensive, history of Bosnia from earliest times to the brutal present. Until its virtual dismemberment in the past three years, Bosnia was a unique political and cultural crossroads, a product of four great empires (from Rome through Austro-Hungary) and four major faiths. Some pundits suggest that this last situation is the one that has caused the small country so much grief, but in his tracing of Bosnia's history, Malcolm, a political columnist for the Daily Telegraph, thinks otherwise. He says that the lesson of history is ``not that Bosnia had to be kept in check by a larger power to prevent it from destroying itself from within, but...what had always endangered Bosnia was...the ambitions of larger powers and neighboring states.'' Although the truth of this statement applied to the familiar recent history is transparent, most readers will be less well acquainted with the events that led to Bosnia's current state. The book traces this history, full of upheavals and a swirling mix of ethnic and political tensions, methodically if a bit drily. Throughout, Malcolm makes the point that almost everything that occurs in Bosnian history gets interpreted to suit somebody's nationalist schema; to his credit, he is extremely careful in balancing claims and interpretations for the period leading up to this century. When the more familiar events of the First and Second World Wars, the Cold War, and the break-up of Yugoslavia in its aftermath, are reached, he is no less candid in expressing his own point of view, sympathetic to Bosnia, outraged at the manipulations of Milosevic, Karadzic, and the gangsterlike apostles of Greater Serbia and the criminal stupidity with which the EC and the US have handled the situation. A very serviceable introduction to a complicated history.
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1994
ISBN: 0-8147-5520-8
Page Count: 340
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
A superficial, unreliable profile of the PLO's often articulate, photogenic spokesperson during part of the Intifada, and particularly during the Madrid and Washington negotiations with Israel (199193). Victor, a novelist as well as a journalist specializing in the Middle East, maintains near the beginning of her book that Hanan Ashrawi ``was the one person who had made possible [Yasir] Arafat's presence'' on the White House lawn on Sept. 13, 1993, when his famous ``handshake'' with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin took place. Not only does she not make a case for this extraordinary claim, but Victor demonstrates how, throughout most of 1993, the PLO leader kept Ashrawi ``in the dark'' about the secret Oslo negotiations. Her book also is riddled with the kind of errors that make one question her knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For example, Victor twice claims that the 1917 Balfour Declaration was issued in 1921; the second time, she asserts that it ``provided for two states, Israel and Palestine, to exist side by side.'' Nonsense: The declaration made no reference to any ``state,'' only to Great Britain supporting the establishment of a ``Jewish homeland'' in Palestine, which was soon to be a British mandate. Equally irritating are Victor's stylistic excesses, her use of the kind of hyperbolic prose found in ``puff'' pieces, such as her assertion that Ashrawi's ``razor-sharp responses captured world opinion every time that she faced a camera.'' Earlier this year, Ashrawi resigned from the PLO leadership to establish and head an independent Palestinian human rights monitoring group. It is this, not the media glitz she enjoyed as a PLO spokesperson, that may lend her career its real significance. Until we know whether and how Hanan Ashrawi will contribute to the humanitarian nature of a possible Palestinian state, any biography of her, particularly one as lacking in historical and biographical depth as Victor's, is premature.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-15-103968-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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