Mitrokhin, Vasili (Nikitich) 1922–2004

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MITROKHIN, Vasili (Nikitich) 1922–2004

PERSONAL: Born in 1922; defected to England, 1992; died January 23, 2004, in England.

CAREER: Soviet Foreign Intelligence Service, senior officer, 1948–84; defected to Great Britain, 1992.

WRITINGS:

I segreti del KGB in Italia, P. Manni (Lecce, Italy), 1999.

Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, Basic Books (New York, NY), 1999, published as The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West, Allen Lane (London, England), 1999.

(Editor) KGB Lexicon: The Soviet Intelligence Officer's Handbook, Frank Cass (Portland, OR), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: Vasili Mitrokhin began working as a Soviet intelligence agent when he was a young man, but early in his career, he learned of his government's persecution of dissidents and became disenchanted with Soviet ideology. With a position that gave him access to huge numbers of classified documents, Mitrokhin began a silent form of dissidence, memorizing and copying information, which he frequently smuggled out of the office in his shoe. For years he kept up his activities, hiding his papers around his home—under the floor, in a butter churn, and in other unlikely places.

Mitrokhin's chance to break for freedom came after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Mitrokhin tried to turn himself in to the United States's Central Intelligence Agency, but he was turned down. He instead surrendered himself to British authorities, who gave him asylum and provided him and his family with new identities. Mitrokhin was able to provide British intelligence with some of the most complete and extensive information on Soviet activities ever revealed in the West. His notes included the identities of thousands of spies, locations of hidden arms caches, facts about Soviet agents in England, various plots to disrupt international and internal politics, a plan to break the legs of ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev after he defected to the West, and documents from as early as 1971 identifying Cardinal Archbishop Karol Wojtyla—who later became Pope John Paul II—as a dangerous threat to the Soviet bloc.

Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB is derived from the documents smuggled out of the Soviet bloc by Mitrokhin. According to a writer for the Harvard International Review, Sword and the Shield is more important for what it tells us about the inner workings of Soviet intelligence than for any specific bit of intelligence smuggled out by Mitrokhin, and provides "a detailed, compelling, and at times startling account of what the KGB and its predecessors knew and did over their 75-year history." According to the reviewer, the book is divided into two phases: the first details the period from 1917 to 1945, when the Soviet Union's spying capabilities were the best in the world, while the second focuses on the period following World War II, when real achievements became rare. Sword and the Shield is "never an easy read," noted Donald P. Steury in History: Review of New Books, but it "nonetheless demonstrates convincingly the role of the KGB in corrupting the Soviet state."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

PERIODICALS

Alberta Report, October 11, 1999, Jeff M. Sellers, review of Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, p. 10.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May, 2000, Melvin A. Goodman, review of Sword and the Shield, p. 64.

Harvard International Review, spring, 2000, review of Sword and the Shield, pp. 84-85.

History: Review of New Books, winter, 2000, Donald P. Steury, review of Sword and the Shield, p. 77.

Insight on the News, October 18, 1999, Jamie Dettmer, review of Sword and the Shield, p. 6; March 25, 2002, Hans S. Nichols, review of Sword and the Shield, p. 6.

Los Angeles Times, October 24, 1999, Timothy Naftali, review of Sword and the Shield, p. 7.

Maclean's, September 27, 1999, review of Sword and the Shield, p. 53.

New Republic, October 25, 1999, Harvey Klehr, review of Sword and the Shield, p. 41.

New Statesman, October 4, 1999, Richard Gott, review of The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West, p. 53.

New York Times, October 31, 1999, Joseph E. Persico, review of Sword and the Shield.

Popular Mechanics, April, 2000, Jim Wilson, "Red Terror," p. 74.

Time, September 27, 1999, review of Sword and the Shield, p. 58.