In The Labyrinth Of The Kgb

2024 Winner, Kjetil Hatlebrekke Memorial Book Prize, King's College Centre for the Study of Intelligence This book focuses on the generation of the sixties and seventies in Kharkiv, Soviet Ukraine, a milieu of writers who lived through the Thaw and the processes of de-Stalinization and re-Stalinization. Special attention is paid to KGB operations against what came to be known as the dissident milieu, and the interaction of Ukrainians, Jews, and Russians in the movement, their persona friendships, formal and informal interactions, and the ways they dealt with repression and arrests. This study demonstrates that the KGB unintentionally facilitated the transnational and intercultural links among the Kharkiv multi-ethnic community of writers and their mutual enrichment. Post-Khrushchev Kharkiv is analyzed as a political space and a place of state violence aimed at combating Ukrainian nationalism and Zionism, two major targets in the 1960s–1970s. Despite their various cultural and social backgrounds, the Kharkiv literati might be identified as a distinct bohemian group possessing shared aesthetic and political values that emerged as the result of de-Stalinization under Khrushchev. Archival documents, diaries, and memoirs suggest that the 1960s–1970s was a period of intense KGB operations, “active measures” designed to disrupt a community of intellectuals and to fragment friendships, bonds, and support among Ukrainians, Russians, and Jews along ethnic lines domestically and abroad.

This book focuses on the generation of the sixties and seventies in Kharkiv, Soviet Ukraine, a milieu of writers who lived through the Thaw and the processes of de-Stalinization and re-Stalinization. Special attention is paid to KGB operations against what came to be known as the dissident milieu, and the interaction of Ukrainians, Jews, and Russians in the movement, their persona friendships, formal and informal interactions, and the ways they dealt with repression and arrests. This study demonstrates that the KGB unintentionally facilitated the transnational and intercultural links among the Kharkiv multi-ethnic community of writers and their mutual enrichment. Post-Khrushchev Kharkiv is analyzed as a political space and a place of state violence aimed at combating Ukrainian nationalism and Zionism, two major targets in the 1960s-1970s. Despite their various cultural and social backgrounds, the Kharkiv literati might be identified as a distinct bohemian group possessing shared aesthetic and political values that emerged as the result of de-Stalinization under Khrushchev. Archival documents, diaries, and memoirs suggest that the 1960s-1970s was a period of intense KGB operations, "active measures" designed to disrupt a community of intellectuals and to fragment friendships, bonds, and support among Ukrainians, Russians, and Jews along ethnic lines domestically and abroad.

“A riveting look at today’s Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Putin.”—The Kingston Observer In Putin’s Labyrinth, acclaimed journalist Steve LeVine, who lived in and reported from the former Soviet Union for more than a decade, provides a gripping account of modern Russia. In a penetrating narrative that recounts the lives and deaths of six Russians, LeVine portrays the growth of a “culture of death”—from targeted assassinations of the state’s enemies to the Kremlin’s indifference when innocent hostages are slaughtered. Interviews with eyewitnesses and the families and friends of these victims reveal how Russians manage to negotiate their way around the ever-present danger of violence and the emotional toll that this lethal maze is exacting on ordinary people. The result is a fresh way of assessing the forces that are driving this major new confrontation with the West.

In Russia, everything has a price. In Far East Siberia, Russia, a sense of independence from the central government prevailed, even under harsh Communist rule. Now, with the nation in political turmoil, poachers operate in brazen defiance of the law. Their targets—rare Siberian tigers—fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars on the black market. American biologist Chris Harmon is part of a joint Russian-American research team investigating the tigers’ survival in the Sikhote-Alin preserve. Harmon’s recent discovery of a tiger and her three young cubs is threatened by a politician’s lucrative thirty-year logging contract, which could destroy their habitat. His petition to oppose the deal is dismissed, but Harmon’s efforts to protect the endangered animals are getting someone’s attention. Former KGB hit man Sergei Lemenov is a dangerous man, not just a hunter of unusual animals, but of men too. He saves a piece of each of his victims—man or beast—giving him the gruesome nickname, The Collector. He’s been ordered to obtain the tigers and to silence Harmon, permanently. Now, Harmon must navigate a labyrinth of bureaucratic red tape, ruthless Communist sympathizers, and a complicated international trafficking ring to save the tigers, and himself.

“A cracking good read” and a chilling true story of Russia’s assassination program begun more than a century ago and which continues today (Tennent H. Bagley, former CIA chief of Soviet Bloc counterintelligence). In late November 2006, Alexander Litvinenko—a former lieutenant colonel of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation—was ruthlessly assassinated in London by radiation poisoning. The shocking murder was the most notorious crime committed by the Russian intelligence on foreign soil in more than three decades. Here, former Russian military intelligence officer and an international expert in special operations Boris Volodarsky—who was consulted by the Metropolitan Police during the Litvinenko investigation—offers readers a startling narrative of the Russian security services’ history of covert assassination by poisoning. Beginning in 1917 with Lenin and his dreaded Cheka secret police, Russian security services have committed killing after killing both in Russia and across the globe. In The KGB’s Poison Factory, Volodarsky proves that the Litvinenko’s poisoning—supposedly ordered by Russian strongman Vladimir Putin—is just one episode in a chain of murders going back decades. Some of these assassinations or attempted assassinations are already known, others are revealed here for the first time. With keen insight, Volodarsky brings readers inside the assassinations of twenty individuals killed by order of the Kremlin in a revealing tell-all that “will fascinate students as well as general readers interested in international espionage” (Library Journal).

“A riveting look at today’s Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Putin.”—The Kingston Observer In Putin’s Labyrinth, acclaimed journalist Steve LeVine, who lived in and reported from the former Soviet Union for more than a decade, provides a gripping account of modern Russia. In a penetrating narrative that recounts the lives and deaths of six Russians, LeVine portrays the growth of a “culture of death”—from targeted assassinations of the state’s enemies to the Kremlin’s indifference when innocent hostages are slaughtered. Interviews with eyewitnesses and the families and friends of these victims reveal how Russians manage to negotiate their way around the ever-present danger of violence and the emotional toll that this lethal maze is exacting on ordinary people. The result is a fresh way of assessing the forces that are driving this major new confrontation with the West.

From the capture of Sidney Reilly, the 'Ace of Spies', by Lenin's Bolsheviks in 1925, to the deportation from the USA of Anna Chapman, the 'Redhead under the Bed', in 2010, Kremlin and Western spymasters have battled for supremacy for nearly a century.In Deception Edward Lucas uncovers the real story of Chapman and her colleagues in Britain and America, unveiling their clandestine missions and the spy-hunt that led to their downfall. It reveals unknown triumphs and disasters of Western intelligence in the Cold War, providing the background to the new world of industrial and political espionage. To tell the story of post-Soviet espionage, Lucas draws on exclusive interviews with Russia's top NATO spy, Herman Simm, and unveils the horrific treatment of a Moscow lawyer who dared to challenge the ruling criminal syndicate there.Once the threat from Moscow was international communism; now it comes from the siloviki, Russia's ruthless 'men of power'.

The second sensational volume of 'One of the biggest intelligence coups in recent years' (The Times) When Vasili Mitrokhin revealed his archive of Russian intelligence material to the world it caused an international sensation. The Mitrokhin Archive II reveals in full the secrets of this remarkable cache, showing for the first time the astonishing extent of the KGB's global power and influence. 'The long-awaited second tranche from the KGB archive ... co-authored by our leading authority on the secret machinations of the Evil Empire' Sunday Times 'Stunning ... the stuff of legend ... a unique insight into KGB activities on a global scale' Spectator 'Headline news ... as great a credit to the scholarship of its author as to the dedication and courage of its originator' Sunday Telegraph 'There are gems on every page' Financial Times