Operation Kronstadt

Operation Kronstadt PDF Author: Harry Ferguson
Publisher: ABRAMS
ISBN: 1468303147
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
An MI6 officer’s account of a heart-pounding mission to rescue a spy trapped in Russia, “as exciting as anything found in fiction” (Daily Mail). Paul Dukes, a thirty-year-old concert pianist, was a master of disguise—dubbed ‘The Man with a Hundred Faces’—and an English spy in Russia. As the First World War was drawing to a close, and as the revolutionaries sought to consolidate their newfound power, Dukes was cut off in Petrograd after infiltrating the Bolshevik Government and stealing top-secret information. With the government in London desperately in need of the documents in Dukes’s possession, and the Bolshevik secret police closing in, a seemingly suicidal plan was hatched to rescue him. Young naval lieutenant Gus Agar and his handpicked team of seven men boarded plywood boats—the fastest naval vessels in existence, most armed with only two machine guns and a single torpedo. They set out for the island fortress of Kronstadt, the most well-defended naval target in Russia—and into the jaws of the Soviet police. Written by a former MI6 officer, Operation Kronstadt tells the full story, making for an extraordinarily gripping nonfiction thriller.

Operation Kronstadt

Operation Kronstadt PDF Author: Harry Ferguson
Publisher: ABRAMS
ISBN: 1468303147
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Get Book Here

Book Description
An MI6 officer’s account of a heart-pounding mission to rescue a spy trapped in Russia, “as exciting as anything found in fiction” (Daily Mail). Paul Dukes, a thirty-year-old concert pianist, was a master of disguise—dubbed ‘The Man with a Hundred Faces’—and an English spy in Russia. As the First World War was drawing to a close, and as the revolutionaries sought to consolidate their newfound power, Dukes was cut off in Petrograd after infiltrating the Bolshevik Government and stealing top-secret information. With the government in London desperately in need of the documents in Dukes’s possession, and the Bolshevik secret police closing in, a seemingly suicidal plan was hatched to rescue him. Young naval lieutenant Gus Agar and his handpicked team of seven men boarded plywood boats—the fastest naval vessels in existence, most armed with only two machine guns and a single torpedo. They set out for the island fortress of Kronstadt, the most well-defended naval target in Russia—and into the jaws of the Soviet police. Written by a former MI6 officer, Operation Kronstadt tells the full story, making for an extraordinarily gripping nonfiction thriller.

Battle in the Baltic

Battle in the Baltic PDF Author: Steve Dunn
Publisher: Seaforth Publishing
ISBN: 1526742764
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Though, for most participants, the First World War ended on 11 November 1918, the Royal Navy found itself, despite four years of slaughter and war weariness, fighting a fierce and brutal battle in the Baltic Sea against Bolshevik Russia in an attempt to protect the fragile independence of the newly liberated states of Estonia and Latvia. This new book by Steve R Dunn describes the events of those two years when RN ships and men, under the command of Rear Admiral Walter Cowan, found themselves in a maelstrom of chaos and conflicting loyalties, and facing multiple opponents – the communist forces of the Red Army and Navy, led by Leon Trotsky; the gangs of freebooting German soldiers, the Freikorps, intent on keeping the Baltic states under German domination; and the White Russian forces, bent on retaking Petrograd and rebuilding the Russian Empire. During this hard-fought campaign there were successes on both sides. For example, the Royal Navy captured two destroyers that were given to the Estonians; but the submarine L-55 was sunk by Russian warships, lost with all hands. Seeking revenge in a daring sequence of attacks and using small coastal motor boats, the RN sank the cruiser Oleg and badly damaged two Russian battleships. Today few people are aware of this exhausting campaign and the sacrifices made by Royal Navy sailors (three VCs were won), but the pages of this book retell their exciting but forgotten stories and, using much first-hand testimony, bring back to life the critical naval operations that prevented the retaking of the new Baltic countries that Churchill saw as an essential shield against the encroachment of the Bolsheviks into Europe. An uneasy peace prevailed until 1939.

Six

Six PDF Author: Michael Smith
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1849542643
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
The first part of acclaimed author Mick Smith's epic, completely unauthorised history of Britain s external intelligence community. Six tells the complete story of the service's birth and early years, including the tragic, untold tale of what happened to Britain's extensive networks in Soviet Russia between the wars. It reveals for the first time how the playwright and MI6 agent Harley Granville Barker bribed the Daily News to keep Arthur Ransome in Russia, and the real reason Paul Dukes returned there. It shows development of tradecraft and the great personal risk officers and their agents took, far from home and unprotected. In Salonika, for example, Lieutenant Norman Dewhurst realised it was time to leave when he opened his door to find one of his agents hanging dismembered in a sack. This first part of Six takes us up to the eve of the conflict, using hundreds of previously classified files and interviews with key players to show how one of the world's most secretive of secret agencies originated and developed into something like the MI6 we know today.

The Secret War Against Red Russia

The Secret War Against Red Russia PDF Author: Brian Best
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 1399090682
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
The Armistice of November 1918 ended four years of slaughter that left armies exhausted and populations weary of war – but the fighting was not over. In Russia, civil war and revolution had divided the nation and the Allies sought to intervene on behalf of the ‘White’ Russians against the Bolsheviks and this conflict continued long after the war had finished elsewhere in Europe. A vital source of information from inside the Bolshevik-held territory came from British secret agents in Petrograd, the main one being Paul Dukes. Known as the ‘Man of a Hundred Faces’, Dukes had managed to infiltrate both the Communist Party and the political police. The problem which faced the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, Maurice Smith-Cummings, was getting Dukes’ information back to London. Carrying information overland was proving far too problematical, so Smith-Cummings hit upon the idea of using one of the Royal Navy’s new fast Coastal Motor Boat which was revealed just before the end of the war. He recruited Lieutenant Augustus Agar and through him he found five men, all unmarried, who could handle the two CMBs. Using an inlet on the Finnish coast as a base, Agar slipped past a series of forts, submerged breakwaters and the Russian Baltic Fleet to reach Petrograd and made contact with Dukes. A frequent courier service was soon established, with Agar carrying couriers in and out of Petrograd under the very noses of the Russians. So confident did Agar become, he even torpedoed the Russian cruiser Oleg. He followed this with support from Admiral Sir Walter Cowan in an all-out raid upon the Russian ships with eight larger CMBs and a bombing raid by the RAF. The raid resulted in the sinking of two battleships and the submarine depot ship Pamiet Azova. Agar was quietly given the Victoria Cross but told not to publish his memoirs until 1963. As for Paul Dukes, his cover was eventually blown, and he had to escape via Latvia in a number of hair-raising escapades. In 1920 he was knighted by King George V, who called Dukes the ‘greatest of all soldiers’. To this day, Dukes is the only person knighted based entirely on his exploits in espionage. This is their remarkable story.

MI6

MI6 PDF Author: Keith Jeffery
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0747591830
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 834

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Book Description
The first - and only - history of the Secret Intelligence Service, written with full and unrestricted access to the closed archives of the Service for the period 1909-1949.

Deception

Deception PDF Author: Edward Lucas
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408831031
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
From the capture of Sidney Reilly, the 'Ace of Spies', by Lenin's Bolsheviks in 1925, to the deportation from the USA of Anna Chapman, the 'Redhead under the Bed', in 2010, Kremlin and Western spymasters have battled for supremacy for nearly a century.In Deception Edward Lucas uncovers the real story of Chapman and her colleagues in Britain and America, unveiling their clandestine missions and the spy-hunt that led to their downfall. It reveals unknown triumphs and disasters of Western intelligence in the Cold War, providing the background to the new world of industrial and political espionage. To tell the story of post-Soviet espionage, Lucas draws on exclusive interviews with Russia's top NATO spy, Herman Simm, and unveils the horrific treatment of a Moscow lawyer who dared to challenge the ruling criminal syndicate there.Once the threat from Moscow was international communism; now it comes from the siloviki, Russia's ruthless 'men of power'.

International Catalogue of Scientific Literature

International Catalogue of Scientific Literature PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Physiology
Languages : en
Pages : 1218

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Book Description


Russian Roulette

Russian Roulette PDF Author: Giles Milton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1620405709
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Recounts the extraordinary and thrilling story of the British spies in revolutionary Russia, led by Mansfield Cumming, who would one day pioneer the field of covert action and become MI6, and their mission to foil Lenin's plot for global revolution. 40,000 first printing.

Churchill's Secret War With Lenin

Churchill's Secret War With Lenin PDF Author: Damien Wright
Publisher: Helion and Company
ISBN: 1913118118
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
An account of the little-known involvement of Royal Marines as they engaged the new Bolsheviks immediately after the Russian Revolution. After three years of great loss and suffering on the Eastern Front, Imperial Russia was in crisis and on the verge of revolution. In November 1917, Lenin’s Bolsheviks (later known as “Soviets”) seized power, signed a peace treaty with the Central Powers and brutally murdered Tsar Nicholas (British King George’s first cousin) and his children so there could be no return to the old order. As Russia fractured into loyalist “White” and revolutionary “Red” factions, the British government became increasingly drawn into the escalating Russian Civil War after hundreds of thousands of German troops transferred from the Eastern Front to France were used in the 1918 “Spring Offensive” which threatened Paris. What began with the landing of a small number of Royal Marines at Murmansk in March 1918 to protect Allied-donated war stores quickly escalated with the British government actively pursuing an undeclared war against the Bolsheviks on several fronts in support of British trained and equipped “White Russian” Allies. At the height of British military intervention in mid-1919, British troops were fighting the Soviets far into the Russian interior in the Baltic, North Russia, Siberia, Caspian and Crimea simultaneously. The full range of weapons in the British arsenal were deployed including the most modern aircraft, tanks and even poison gas. British forces were also drawn into peripheral conflicts against “White” Finnish troops in North Russia and the German “Iron Division” in the Baltic. It remains a little-known fact that the last British troops killed by the German Army in the First World War were killed in the Baltic in late 1919, nor that the last Canadian and Australian soldiers to die in the First World War suffered their fate in North Russia in 1919 many months after the Armistice. Despite the award of five Victoria Crosses (including one posthumous) and the loss of hundreds of British and Commonwealth soldiers, sailors and airmen, most of whom remain buried in Russia, the campaign remains virtually unknown in Britain today. After withdrawal of all British forces in mid-1920, the British government attempted to cover up its military involvement in Russia by classifying all official documents. By the time files relating to the campaign were quietly released decades later there was little public interest. Few people in Britain today know that their nation ever fought a war against the Soviet Union. The culmination of more than 15 years of painstaking and exhaustive research with access to many previously classified official documents, unpublished diaries, manuscripts and personal accounts, author Damien Wright has written the first comprehensive campaign history of British and Commonwealth military intervention in the Russian Civil War 1918-20. “Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War remains forgotten. Wright’s book addresses that oversight, interspersing the broader story with personal accounts of participants.” —Military History Magazine

A Companion to the Russian Revolution

A Companion to the Russian Revolution PDF Author: Daniel Orlovsky
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118620852
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
A compendium of original essays and contemporary viewpoints on the 1917 Revolution The Russian revolution of 1917 reverberated throughout an empire that covered one-sixth of the world. It altered the geo-political landscape of not only Eurasia, but of the entire globe. The impact of this immense event is still felt in the present day. The historiography of the last two decades has challenged conceptions of the 1917 revolution as a monolithic entity— the causes and meanings of revolution are many, as is reflected in contemporary scholarship on the subject. A Companion to the Russian Revolution offers more than thirty original essays, written by a team of respected scholars and historians of 20th century Russian history. Presenting a wide range of contemporary perspectives, the Companion discusses topics including the dynamics of violence in war and revolution, Russian political parties, the transformation of the Orthodox church, Bolshevism, Liberalism, and more. Although primarily focused on 1917 itself, and the singular Revolutionary experience in that year, this book also explores time-periods such as the First Russian Revolution, early Soviet government, the Civil War period, and even into the 1920’s. Presents a wide range of original essays that discuss Brings together in-depth coverage of political history, party history, cultural history, and new social approaches Explores the long-range causes, influence on early Soviet culture, and global after-life of the Russian Revolution Offers broadly-conceived, contemporary views of the revolution largely based on the author’s original research Links Russian revolutions to Russian Civil Wars as concepts A Companion to the Russian Revolution is an important addition to modern scholarship on the subject, and a valuable resource for those interested in Russian, Late Imperial, or Soviet history as well as anyone interested in Revolution as a global phenomenon.