Topics of Interest

A uniquely comprehensive and rich account of the Soviet intelligence services, Jonathan Haslam's "Near and Distant Neighbors" charts the labyrinthine story of Soviet intelligence from the October Revolution to the end of the Cold War. Haslam reveals how both were in fact crucial to the survival of the Soviet state. This was especially true after Stalin's death in 1953, as the Cold War heated up and dedicated Communist agents the regime had relied upon--Klaus Fuchs, the Rosenbergs, Donald Maclean--were betrayed. In the wake of these failures, Khrushchev and his successors discarded ideological recruitment in favor of blackmail and bribery. The tactical turn was so successful that we can draw only one conclusion: the West ultimately triumphed despite, not because of, the espionage war.

Yevgeni Vladimirovich Brik and James Douglas Finley Morrison were central figures in what was considered one of the most important, early Cold War operations in the West. Their story, which involves espionage, intelligence tradecraft, intelligence service penetrations, double agent scenarios, and betrayal, is a piece of Cold War intelligence history that has never been fully told.

SMERSH, acronym of the Russian phrase 'Death to Spies". No information was available on this organization until the fall of the Soviet Union, and its importance to WWII history is almost completely unknown to scholars and history readers alike. Ostensibly a military counterintelligence organization dedicated to fighting Nazis, SMERSH spent considerable time and effort terrifying its own. Its head, Viktor Abakumov, a shadowy and powerful figure whose biography is revealed here for the first time.

The spetsnaz Soviet special forces are one of the more shadowy and ruthless secret special forces in the world. Controlled by military intelligence (the GRU), spetsnaz units are recruited from the ranks of the toughest officers and men in the Soviet Army, the cutting edge of Soviety military might. In modern warfare their primary task is the destruction of enemy tactical nuclear weapons, but the training of anyone selected for spetsnaz prepares him or her for an unlimited range of tasks--from undercover activity as a member of a Soviet Olympic sports team to piloting a midget submarine. As an officer in the GRU, the author was directly involved in the control and planning of spetsnaz.

Blowing up Russia describes how the successor of the KGB fabricated terrorist attacks and launched war to have the unknown Putin's former superior at the Russian secret service - elected with a landslide victory.

After the guns fell silent in May 1945, the USSR resumed its clandestine warfare against the western democracies. Perhaps the most menacing were the sleepers who settled in the West, married and had children while waiting to strike against their host countries. Douglas Boyd explores for the first time the relationship between the KGB and its ghastly brood of 'daughters' - a true family from hell.

With original research guided by his insider's eye and scholarly care, Boris Volodarsky recounts scores of murders. Assassination emerges as state policy, as institutionalized bureacracy, as day-to-day routine, as laboratory science, as a branch of medicine researching ways not to stave off death but to deliver it in apparently innocent or accidental forms, and as engineering technology, devising ever-new devices to meet each new requirement, from umbrella tips and cigarette cases and rolled-up newspapers.

The security services have played a central-and often mysterious-role at key turning points in Russia during the tumultuous years following the Soviet collapse: from the Moscow apartment house bombings and theater siege, to the war in Chechnya and the Beslan school massacre. In this riveting investigation, two intrepid journalists penetrate the secret world of the FSB and illustrate how the security services have evolved into a ruthless, violently powerful force that is inextricably woven into modern Russia's fundamental makeup, and has become more shadowy than its predecessor, the Soviet KGB.

From the dark days of World War II through the Cold War, Sergey A. Kondrashev was a major player in Russia's notorious KGB espionage apparatus.