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‘Only a physical barrier, reinforced by armed guards in their watchtowers, could keep the East Germans in their socialist paradise and stop them fleeing to the West.’
Witnessing the building of the Berlin Wall had been shocking enough, but the invasion of Czechoslovakia offered even more blatant proof of the true nature of the regime he served. Alienation from the communist system turned, very swiftly, to loathing: ‘This brutal attack on innocent people made me hate it with a burning, passionate hatred.’
For many years, the KGB used the acronym MICE to identify the four mainsprings of spying: Money, Ideology, Coercion and Ego.
The Russian euphemism for the summary death sentence was vyshaya mera, ‘highest measure’:
Jack Jones was one of the most respected figures in the trade union movement, a crusading socialist once described by the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown as ‘one of the world’s greatest trade union leaders’. He was also a KGB agent.
Agent BOOT was the Right Honourable Michael Foot, distinguished writer and orator, veteran left-wing MP, leader of the Labour Party and the politician who, if Labour won the next election, would become Prime Minister of Britain. The Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition had been a paid KGB agent.
Lenin is often credited with coining the term ‘useful idiot’, poleznyi durak in Russian,
At the height of the miners’ strike in 1984–5, Gordievsky learned that the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) had contacted Moscow to request financial support.
Quisling’, the wartime Nazi collaborator whose name became an English noun meaning traitor.
The term ‘Finlandization’ had come to mean any small state cowed into submission by a much more powerful neighbour, retaining theoretical sovereignty but effectively in thrall.
‘Never engage in a pissing match with a skunk: he possesses important natural advantages,’
Among those affected was Vladimir Putin, a product of the Leningrad KGB who saw most of his friends, colleagues and patrons purged as a direct consequence of Gordievsky’s escape.
