The KGB Careerist Who Turned to the West

This book begins and ends at the same moment. On Nov. 7, 1992, an odd group of people – several tough-looking thugs, a well-dressed Englishman, an elderly Russian grandmother, a youth in a wheelchair, among others – engaged in a confrontation on the docks of the little Lithuanian port of Klaipeda. Then things escalate, and one of the thugs roughly breaks the youth’s grip on his wheelchair, slings him over his shoulder and carries him bodily aboard a ship.

This recounts the strange defection of lifelong KGB careerist Vasili Mitrokhin. What follows is the complex life story that brought him to this point at this crucial period of transition in Russian history, unexpected and now, it seems, totally misunderstood. Mitrokhin’s thoughts and experience are complex and ambiguous – and so it seems are those of Russia itself.

This reviewer’s own thoughts on reading this were thrown back to my visit to Lithuania in 2002, when I happened to follow the same drive taken by the defectors a decade earlier, from Vilnius, past the “Fortress of Death” Memorial, to Klaipeda. In particular I thought of my visit to the museum at the former KGB headquarters in Vilnius, with its cellar with the blood-absorbent sand floor where executions were carried out, the cells where the inmate couldn’t stand upright; or with floor covered in icy water making it impossible to lie down and sleep, all in full use in 1992. But most interesting of all was the room devoted to KGB workers displaying certificates of merit to members for outstanding work – sometimes with the added reward of a paid vacation at the beach in the Crimea. Talk about “the banality of evil” when torture and murder are simply a good respectable job! And all those who did it were then enjoying a comfortable retirement, unpunished, untouched, unidentified, at a time when guards at Nazi concentration camps were still being unearthed, prosecuted, imprisoned. Mitrokhin’s purpose in his spying and defection was “to see top Soviet and KGB officers put on trial in the equivalent of the Nuremberg trials for Nazis at the end of World War II . . . .”(p. 168) My own thoughts at the time were that morality is an irrational thing at best, but when combined with politics, always hypocritical. Humans call evil the things that their enemies do in the service of their causes, yet applaud these same things when they use them to further their own. Well, retribution never happened. But what did happen?

First, Mitrokhin’s Russia. According to Corera, three powers dominated Soviet Russia: the “nomenklatura” – the elite, people with power, privilege, and influence, perhaps a million all told out of the Russian people, then the Party, and then the “chekhists”. The Chekha, predecessor of the KGB, was founded by Lenin who named Felix Dzerzhinsky as its first head. To quote the latter “We stand for organized terror – this must be said very clearly.”(p. 32) Mitrokhin found a career in it as a prosecutor in the Ukraine in WWII, sending many suspected of disloyalty to their deaths. He was, at the same time a true believer, yet also found a profitable career in it. And also, apparently, was moved by guilt at the horror of it. This last was suppressed for many years, however.

The change came from the next stage of his career. Judged to be good material, he was invited to join the KGB elite of foreign spies. He was very proud of this, and was given a number of important missions, at which, unfortunately for himself, he failed. Perhaps he was just not quite good enough material for this difficult job – too much rigidity of mind, possibly. He was demoted to the KGB archives, to his overwhelming shame and concealed resentment. Here, all the secrets of the KGB were open to him, and he had decades to brood upon them in lonely isolation – and slowly his feelings changed to hatred – of the institution, its deeds, and his willing complicity. And, sharing these thoughts and feelings with no one, he determined to destroy it.

Contradictory? Yes, so Corera presents his dark, lonely, intelligent, passionate recluse of a subject. This reviewer has puzzled over this at length and begs to be allowed to contribute his two cents. We westerners tend to be glib, logical, and accept human motives as generally self-serving - we don’t see good and evil the way the Russians do. As Dostoevsky tells us, our minds can argue us into thinking evil is good, but our hearts know the difference and won’t let us forget it. Tarnowsky’s great film “Andrei Rublev” shows us a great medieval painter of icons. Stricken with a crisis in faith, he cannot paint and finish a prince’s commission. His assistants give up in frustration, and leave. But they are pursued by the prince’s soldiers, who blind them all with their daggers. Andrei blames himself and is again stricken with guilt; does this mean that there is no action in the world that does not lead to evil? Could it be that only the suffering victims are themselves free of evil?

And what is happening to Russia today? Certainly not what we thought in 1992. Our hopes that Russia would become free and prosperous if they imitated us seems as futile as Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen points. Things turned out for Russia a lot like they did for Germany at the end of WWI -- with them humiliated, betrayed by America’s fatuous idealism, a “stab in the back” from their West-loving intellectuals, their economy and currency in collapse, democracy barely working. A strong charismatic nationalist arises to restore national pride through war and the recreation of the old empire - and the people seem to be embracing both his war and his repression. The Communist Party collapsed, the nomenklatura ran wild, but the Chekist institution survived and seems to be providing a new basis for national unity. Can it be that our western gods of peace, freedom, and a high material standard of living are less important than identity? Than RUSSIA?

The Spy in the Archive gives us a penetrating look into the heart of Russia through a look into the heart of a single Russian. It is fascinating reading with a clear, fluent style. What is not so easy is putting your finger on what it all means for us and the future. But definitely – read it.

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Our Reviewer: Robert P. Largess is the author of USS Albacore; Forerunner of the Future, and articles on the USS Triton, SS United States, the origin of the towed sonar array, and the history of Lighter-than-Air. He has contributed book reviews to ‘The Naval Historical Foundation’ (http://www.navyhistory.org) and The International Journal of Naval History (http://www.ijnhonline.org). His earlier reviews here include The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command, King Arthur’s Wars: The Anglo-Saxon Conquest of England, Clouds above the Hill: A Historical Novel of the Russo-Japanese War, Winning a Future War: War Gaming and Victory in the Pacific War, The Fate of Rome, "Tower of Skulls", A History of the Asia-Pacific War, Volume I: From the Marco Polo Bridge Incident to the Fall of Corregidor, July 1937-May 1942, Nathaniel Lyon’s River Campaign of 1861, Korea: War without End, Exterminating ISIS, Admiral Canaris, and Armies Afloat: How the Development of Amphibious Operations in Europe Helped Win World War II.

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