In 1992 Vasili Mitrokhin defected to England and brought along an extensive archive of military intelligence from the Soviet Union. A career KGB officer who served as chief archivist for its foreign operations, Vasili Mitrokhin became disillusioned with the Soviet system and its constant repression of dissidents at home and abroad. Determined to preserve the truth, he secretly compiled a detailed record of the agency's worldwide espionage network. The Sword and the Shield offers an unprecedented look into the KGB's top-secret activities. It is described by the FBI as "the most complete and extensive intelligence ever achieved from any source."Supplementing this trove of KGB secrets with extensive research in other archives, published and unpublished, Christopher Andrew has written an extraordinary book which forces you to acknowledge that there was indeed an enemy - and that he was very much in our midst.
Revelations from The Sword and the Shield:
The massive role that the KGB played in the Cold War and the state-sanctioned paranoia behind itThe KGB's attempts to discredit J. Edgar Hoover, and their eavesdropping activities against Henry KissingerDetails of secret radio and arms caches buried throughout Western Europe and the United StatesThe real identities of the KGB's most senior spies in Britain and the United StatesThe internal repression of dissidents within the Soviet Union, including the KGB's own most capable and best educated officers