Soviet tricks of trade

The very existence of The Mitrokhin Archive — material copied covertly from the KGB’s foreign intelligence files and brought to Britain in 1992 by a senior Soviet intelligence officer, Vasili Mitrokhin — represents a stunning intelligence success, something worth celebrating at a time when intelligence failures are a far more popular subject for discussion. Mitrokhin’s tenacity and courage in copying the material — over a period of nearly 20 years — and his exfiltration from Russia by the British Secret Intelligence Service are themselves the stuff of legend. The massive if unwieldy archive he brought with him provides a unique insight into KGB activities on a global scale between the 1920s and 1990s. In collaboration with Mitrokhin (until his death in 2004), the intelligence historian Christopher Andrew has used it to produce two volumes of authoritative narrative that set the material in context, drawing on his own extensive experience and knowledge of the subject matter.