The death of Oleg Gordievsky at the age of 86 comes at a moment when relations between his native Russia and his adopted country Britain are just as fraught as they were in his heyday as the West’s most important double agent at the height of the Cold War.
Gordievsky’s life story reads like the plot of a John Le Carre spy thriller, and it has indeed been written up as such by the doyen of espionage chroniclers Ben Macintyre.
Gordievsky was born into the ranks of the Soviet secret state apparat. Like Vladimir Putin, his father was a member of the NKVD, the name the feared Soviet secret police bore under Stalin. Known as ‘Chekists’ from the original title of the Bolshevik terror elite, many members of the apparat come from Cheka dynasties and inherit the job from other family members.
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