Spymaster: Startling Cold War Revelations of a Soviet KGB Chief

Cold War reminiscences from the Soviet side are generally best read with caution—they add to autobiography a fundamental unverifiability that makes them dubious as historical documents. That said, Sergey Kondrashev’s memoirs, as told to friend and former CIA officer Bagley (Spy Wars), are a vivid mosaic of the Soviet intelligence apparatus in its heyday. Kondrashev was recruited to the KGB during WWII as an interpreter; in 1947 his English skills led to an assignment targeting the American embassy. Stalin’s purge of the security apparatus brought Kondrashev promotion; that it was a “recurring nightmare” led him to transfer to the less visible Foreign Intelligence section. “Handling” British mole George Blake, then moving to the Austro/German Department, Kondrashev built simultaneous reputations as a loyal apparatchik and a sophisticated operative. The combination eventually returned him to Moscow and the KGB’s “active measures” department, responsible for disinformation operations in the West. Kondrashev’s discussions of their genesis and implementation comprise the book’s most valuable element. There are no startling revelations—Bagley regularly refers to “drama still largely hidden”—but the details flesh out still-unfamiliar aspects of the espionage war while illuminating a man who “made internal peace” with the system he served so well. (Nov.)