Soviet tricks of trade

The very existence of The Mitrokhin Archive — material copied covertly from the KGB’s foreign intelligence files and brought to Britain in 1992 by a senior Soviet intelligence officer, Vasili Mitrokhin — represents a stunning intelligence success, something worth celebrating at a time when intelligence failures are a far more popular subject for discussion. Mitrokhin’s tenacity and courage in copying the material — over a period of nearly 20 years — and his exfiltration from Russia by the British Secret Intelligence Service are themselves the stuff of legend. The massive if unwieldy archive he brought with him provides a unique insight into KGB activities on a global scale between the 1920s and 1990s. In collaboration with Mitrokhin (until his death in 2004), the intelligence historian Christopher Andrew has used it to produce two volumes of authoritative narrative that set the material in context, drawing on his own extensive experience and knowledge of the subject matter.

Together these two volumes lay bare the wide-ranging scope of KGB activities overseas, while showing how this enormous intelligence-gathering effort on the part of the Soviet regime was frequently rendered valueless by a combination of poor analysis and the inability of successive Soviet leaders, and indeed the whole of the ruling Politburo, to cope with information that did not conform to their ideological expectations. In many ways the real importance of The Mitrokhin Archive lies in its stark demonstration of the ultimate ineffectiveness of the long and aggressive Soviet intelligence struggle against capitalism and in support of communism, rather than in the tantalising details of its influence over individuals, parties or governments in countries across the globe. That such a professional (mostly), well-funded and active (always) intelligence service should work so hard, for so long, yet be rewarded by so little ideological success is in itself an instructive and cautionary tale.