CAUGHT IN THE TURMOIL OF HISTORY

Caccia and Mihovilović present a multigenerational chronicle of how a Croatian family’s progressive ideals led two brothers to become Soviet spies.

In 1880, Vilma Miskolczy was born in Osijek in northern Croatia, and as a child, she displayed intellectual energy and independence that led her to routine “defiance of prescriptions.” She rebelled against the “hypocritical attitudes of her immediate petit bourgeois surroundings” and against the conventions of the times, insisting on obtaining a university education at the age of 31 and pursuing her literary ambitions. Her worldview became increasingly shaped by socialist ideas, and her love of social justice was eventually imparted to her sons, Branko and Slavko. This dramatically engrossing and intellectually scrupulous history tells of how both brothers became deeply active in the Soviet intelligence sphere, working for the GRU, its principal agency. Branko posed as a journalist in Tokyo and was part of a spy ring that uncovered important information on Nazi Germany’s designs to go to war with the USSR. However, Soviet authorities treated both siblings poorly, despite their devotion and service. Slavko was imprisoned for harboring anti-Soviet positions—a ludicrous charge, according to the authors—and Branko was all but abandoned by his handlers when he was exposed as a spy and arrested by Japanese authorities in Tokyo. Caccia and Mihovilović furnish a remarkable portrait of one family’s commitment to justice and the grim price they paid for their idealism. Readers will find it difficult not to be impressed by their collective bravery, even if their ideological allegiances were intellectually suspect; Branko, in particular, was blindly loyal to Soviet ideals and seemed to believe, despite his general inclination toward philosophical skepticism, that “everything that came from Lenin’s homeland was bound to be unconditionally good.” The book’s presentation of minute details can be overwhelming at times, but it’s still an extraordinarily diligent study that offers an affecting look at the Soviet Union and its acolytes.

A historically exacting and compulsively readable portrait of the price of espionage.