the Soviet Union
Boris Iofan – cunning apparatchik of a loathsome regime
The invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces has rendered what might otherwise have seemed a fairly niche study of a…
Glasnost merely confirmed Russia’s deep-seated suspicion of democracy
Thirty years ago the Soviet Union was guttering to its close. Those of us who were there remember the exhilarating…
Betrayal was a routine business for George Blake
Kim Philby once remarked to the journalist Murray Sayle that ‘to betray, you must first belong. I never belonged’. Kim,…
The internet was never intended to spy on us
There is a trend in non-fiction — in fact my editor has been on to me about this lately —…
1983: the year the world nearly ended
In 1983, Soviet spies skulked in our midnight streets to check the lights were out. The Kremlin, convinced the West…
Trahison des clercs — a phrase that dates back all the way to 1927
I had long associated the phrase trahison des clercs with the writer Geoffrey Wheatcroft, though I can’t put my finger…
Heroines of the Soviet Union
Klara Goncharova, a Soviet anti-aircraft gunner, wondered at the end of the second world war how anyone could stand to…
The four men who averted the Apocalypse
Robert Service’s account of the greatest turning point in modern history is unlikely to be bettered, says Sherard Cowper-Coles
Alger Hiss: Tricky Dick’s scapegoat
In the more than 40 years since Richard Nixon resigned as president — disgraced as much by his inveterate lying…
The Boston marathon bombers: Muslim radicals or ordinary American citizens?
As Masha Gessen herself admits — and as friends and journalist colleagues repeatedly told her — it was a strange…
Bond would be bored in today’s MI6, says Malcolm Rifkind
Spying may be one of the two oldest professions, but unlike the other one it has changed quite a lot…
Uncle Joe is revered in Putin’s Russia as a benevolent dictator
‘Lately, the paradoxical turns of recent Russian history… have given my research more than scholarly relevance,’ remarks Oleg Khlevniuk in…
Both Belgium and the United States should be called to account for the death of Patrice Lumumba
For decades, all the outside world knew was that Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence leader, had been done away with.…
