Author: Peter Day
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1785903209
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
Una Kroll was eleven when she first met her father. They stopped for lunch on the way from Brighton to London and he took her outside to play with the innkeeper's Angora rabbit. In that pub garden this stranger uttered words that sent a chill through her heart, he would not be coming home. There was another woman. Scarcely comprehending, she buried her face in the white rabbit's fur and refused to cry. The lonely little girl already knew how to hide her tears and she had invented a childish fantasy about her absent father to fend off unsympathetic classmates. He was an aviator and explorer who had gone missing in the desert, she told them. This was less extraordinary than the truth. Only years later did she discover that George Hill, her father, was a British spy who had befriended Trotsky at the time of the Russian Revolution. He had smuggled the Romanian crown jewels out of the Soviet Union and was involved in a doomed attempt to rescue the Tsar. During the Second World War he acted as the link between Churchill's Special Operations Executive and Stalin's secret service, the NKVD. Una's mother, Hilda Pediani, had been one of his agents and one of many lovers. He married her so that Una would be legitimate, but took no part in the child's upbringing. It was a rare sympathetic act by a man who was capable of great bravery but little compassion.
Trotsky's Favourite Spy
Author: Peter Day
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1785903209
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
Una Kroll was eleven when she first met her father. They stopped for lunch on the way from Brighton to London and he took her outside to play with the innkeeper's Angora rabbit. In that pub garden this stranger uttered words that sent a chill through her heart, he would not be coming home. There was another woman. Scarcely comprehending, she buried her face in the white rabbit's fur and refused to cry. The lonely little girl already knew how to hide her tears and she had invented a childish fantasy about her absent father to fend off unsympathetic classmates. He was an aviator and explorer who had gone missing in the desert, she told them. This was less extraordinary than the truth. Only years later did she discover that George Hill, her father, was a British spy who had befriended Trotsky at the time of the Russian Revolution. He had smuggled the Romanian crown jewels out of the Soviet Union and was involved in a doomed attempt to rescue the Tsar. During the Second World War he acted as the link between Churchill's Special Operations Executive and Stalin's secret service, the NKVD. Una's mother, Hilda Pediani, had been one of his agents and one of many lovers. He married her so that Una would be legitimate, but took no part in the child's upbringing. It was a rare sympathetic act by a man who was capable of great bravery but little compassion.
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1785903209
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
Una Kroll was eleven when she first met her father. They stopped for lunch on the way from Brighton to London and he took her outside to play with the innkeeper's Angora rabbit. In that pub garden this stranger uttered words that sent a chill through her heart, he would not be coming home. There was another woman. Scarcely comprehending, she buried her face in the white rabbit's fur and refused to cry. The lonely little girl already knew how to hide her tears and she had invented a childish fantasy about her absent father to fend off unsympathetic classmates. He was an aviator and explorer who had gone missing in the desert, she told them. This was less extraordinary than the truth. Only years later did she discover that George Hill, her father, was a British spy who had befriended Trotsky at the time of the Russian Revolution. He had smuggled the Romanian crown jewels out of the Soviet Union and was involved in a doomed attempt to rescue the Tsar. During the Second World War he acted as the link between Churchill's Special Operations Executive and Stalin's secret service, the NKVD. Una's mother, Hilda Pediani, had been one of his agents and one of many lovers. He married her so that Una would be legitimate, but took no part in the child's upbringing. It was a rare sympathetic act by a man who was capable of great bravery but little compassion.
Crown, Cloak, and Dagger
Author: Richard J. Aldrich
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1647123720
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 563
Book Description
Surprising revelations about the active role of the monarch in British intelligence The British Royal Family and the intelligence community are two of the most mysterious and mythologized actors of the British State. Crown, Cloak, and Dagger offers a new history of how the two have been inextricably linked from the reign of Queen Victoria to the present. Richard J. Aldrich and Rory Cormac unveil a wealth of archival detail that changes our understanding of the role of the monarch in politics, intelligence, and international relations. Successive queens and kings have all played an active role in steering British intelligence, sometimes against the wishes of prime ministers. Even today, the monarch receives “copy No. 1” of every intelligence report. Attempted assassinations and kidnappings, the abdication crisis, world wars and the Cold War, and the death of Princess Diana are just some of the topics covered in the book. Fascinating and fast-paced, Crown, Cloak, and Dagger demonstrates that the British monarch continues to be far more than a figurehead. This book will inform as well as entertain anyone with an interest in history, espionage, and the royals.
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1647123720
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 563
Book Description
Surprising revelations about the active role of the monarch in British intelligence The British Royal Family and the intelligence community are two of the most mysterious and mythologized actors of the British State. Crown, Cloak, and Dagger offers a new history of how the two have been inextricably linked from the reign of Queen Victoria to the present. Richard J. Aldrich and Rory Cormac unveil a wealth of archival detail that changes our understanding of the role of the monarch in politics, intelligence, and international relations. Successive queens and kings have all played an active role in steering British intelligence, sometimes against the wishes of prime ministers. Even today, the monarch receives “copy No. 1” of every intelligence report. Attempted assassinations and kidnappings, the abdication crisis, world wars and the Cold War, and the death of Princess Diana are just some of the topics covered in the book. Fascinating and fast-paced, Crown, Cloak, and Dagger demonstrates that the British monarch continues to be far more than a figurehead. This book will inform as well as entertain anyone with an interest in history, espionage, and the royals.
The Red Hotel
Author: Alan Philps
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1639364285
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
The untold history of Moscow's Metropol hotel—a fervent spot of intrigue, secrets, and the center of Stalin's nefarious propaganda during WWII. In 1941, when German armies were marching towards Moscow, Lenin’s body was moved from his tomb on Red Square and taken to Siberia. By1945, a victorious Stalin had turned a poor country into a victorious superpower. Over the course of those four years, Stalin, at Churchill's insistence, accepted an Anglo-American press corps in Moscow to cover the Eastern Front. To turn these reporters into Kremlin mouthpieces, Stalin imposed the most draconian controls – unbending censorship, no visits to the battlefront, and a ban on contact with ordinary citizens. The Red Hotel explores this gilded cage of the Metropol Hotel. They enjoyed lavish supplies of caviar and had their choice of young women to employ as translators and share their beds. On the surface, this regime served Stalin well: his plans to control Eastern Europe as a Sovietised ‘outer empire’ were never reported and the most outrageous Soviet lies went unchallenged. But beneath the surface, the Metropol was roiling with intrigue. While some of the translators turned journalists into robotic conveyors of Kremlin propaganda, others were secret dissidents who whispered to reporters the reality of Soviet life and were punished with sentences in the Gulag. Using British archives and Soviet sources, the unique role of the women of the Metropol, both as consummate propagandists and secret dissenters, is told for the first time. At the end of the war when Lenin returned to Red Square, the reporters went home, but the memory of Stalin’s ruthless control of the wartime narrative lived on in the Kremlin. From the weaponization of disinformation to the falsification of history, from the moving of borders to the neutralization of independent states, the story of the Metropol mirrors the struggles of our own modern era.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1639364285
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
The untold history of Moscow's Metropol hotel—a fervent spot of intrigue, secrets, and the center of Stalin's nefarious propaganda during WWII. In 1941, when German armies were marching towards Moscow, Lenin’s body was moved from his tomb on Red Square and taken to Siberia. By1945, a victorious Stalin had turned a poor country into a victorious superpower. Over the course of those four years, Stalin, at Churchill's insistence, accepted an Anglo-American press corps in Moscow to cover the Eastern Front. To turn these reporters into Kremlin mouthpieces, Stalin imposed the most draconian controls – unbending censorship, no visits to the battlefront, and a ban on contact with ordinary citizens. The Red Hotel explores this gilded cage of the Metropol Hotel. They enjoyed lavish supplies of caviar and had their choice of young women to employ as translators and share their beds. On the surface, this regime served Stalin well: his plans to control Eastern Europe as a Sovietised ‘outer empire’ were never reported and the most outrageous Soviet lies went unchallenged. But beneath the surface, the Metropol was roiling with intrigue. While some of the translators turned journalists into robotic conveyors of Kremlin propaganda, others were secret dissidents who whispered to reporters the reality of Soviet life and were punished with sentences in the Gulag. Using British archives and Soviet sources, the unique role of the women of the Metropol, both as consummate propagandists and secret dissenters, is told for the first time. At the end of the war when Lenin returned to Red Square, the reporters went home, but the memory of Stalin’s ruthless control of the wartime narrative lived on in the Kremlin. From the weaponization of disinformation to the falsification of history, from the moving of borders to the neutralization of independent states, the story of the Metropol mirrors the struggles of our own modern era.
The Birth of the Soviet Secret Police
Author: Boris Volodarsky
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 1526792281
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466
Book Description
This book is new in every aspect and not only because neither the official history nor an unofficial history of the KGB, and its many predecessors and successors, exists in any language. In this volume, the author deals with the origins of the KGB from the Tsarist Okhrana (the first Russians secret political police) to the OGPU, Joint State Political Directorate, one of the KGB predecessors between 1923 and 1934. Based on documents from the Russian archives, the author clearly demonstrates that the Cheka and GPU/OPGU were initially created to defend the revolution and not for espionage. The Okhrana operated in both the Russian Empire and abroad against the revolutionaries and most of its operations, presented in this book, are little known. The same is the case with regards to the period after the Cheka was established in December 1917 until ten years later when Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party and exiled, and Stalin rose to power. For the long period after the Revolution and up to the Second World War (and, indeed, beyond until the death of Stalin) the Chekaâs main weapon was terror to create a general climate of fear in a population. In the book, the work of the Cheka and its successors against the enemies of the revolution is paralleled with British and American operations against the Soviets inside and outside of Russia. For the first time the creation of the Communist International (Comintern) is shown as an alternative Soviet espionage organization for wide-scale foreign propaganda and subversion operations based on the new revelations from the Soviet archives Here, the early Soviet intelligence operations in several countries are presented and analyzed for the first time, as are raids on the Soviet missions abroad. The Bolshevik smuggling of the Russian imperial treasures is shown based on the latest available archival sources with misinterpretations and sometimes false interpretations in existing literature revised. After the Bolshevik revolution, Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the first chief of SIS, undertook to set up âan entirely new Secret Service organization in Russiaâ. During those first ten years, events would develop as a non-stop struggle between British intelligence, within Russia and abroad, and the Cheka, later GPU/OGPU. Before several show âspy trialsâ in 1927, British intelligence networks successfully operated in Russia later moving to the Baltic capitals, Finland and Sweden while young Soviet intelligence officers moved to London, Paris, Berlin and Constantinople. Many of those operations, from both sides, are presented in the book for the first time in this ground-breaking study of the dark world of the KGB
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 1526792281
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466
Book Description
This book is new in every aspect and not only because neither the official history nor an unofficial history of the KGB, and its many predecessors and successors, exists in any language. In this volume, the author deals with the origins of the KGB from the Tsarist Okhrana (the first Russians secret political police) to the OGPU, Joint State Political Directorate, one of the KGB predecessors between 1923 and 1934. Based on documents from the Russian archives, the author clearly demonstrates that the Cheka and GPU/OPGU were initially created to defend the revolution and not for espionage. The Okhrana operated in both the Russian Empire and abroad against the revolutionaries and most of its operations, presented in this book, are little known. The same is the case with regards to the period after the Cheka was established in December 1917 until ten years later when Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party and exiled, and Stalin rose to power. For the long period after the Revolution and up to the Second World War (and, indeed, beyond until the death of Stalin) the Chekaâs main weapon was terror to create a general climate of fear in a population. In the book, the work of the Cheka and its successors against the enemies of the revolution is paralleled with British and American operations against the Soviets inside and outside of Russia. For the first time the creation of the Communist International (Comintern) is shown as an alternative Soviet espionage organization for wide-scale foreign propaganda and subversion operations based on the new revelations from the Soviet archives Here, the early Soviet intelligence operations in several countries are presented and analyzed for the first time, as are raids on the Soviet missions abroad. The Bolshevik smuggling of the Russian imperial treasures is shown based on the latest available archival sources with misinterpretations and sometimes false interpretations in existing literature revised. After the Bolshevik revolution, Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the first chief of SIS, undertook to set up âan entirely new Secret Service organization in Russiaâ. During those first ten years, events would develop as a non-stop struggle between British intelligence, within Russia and abroad, and the Cheka, later GPU/OGPU. Before several show âspy trialsâ in 1927, British intelligence networks successfully operated in Russia later moving to the Baltic capitals, Finland and Sweden while young Soviet intelligence officers moved to London, Paris, Berlin and Constantinople. Many of those operations, from both sides, are presented in the book for the first time in this ground-breaking study of the dark world of the KGB
Studies in Intelligence
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Intelligence service
Languages : en
Pages : 396
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Intelligence service
Languages : en
Pages : 396
Book Description
Russian Roulette
Author: Giles Milton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1620405709
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401
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.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1620405709
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401
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.
The Kremlin's Geordie Spy
Author: Vin Arthey
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1849548501
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 211
Book Description
Discover an extraordinary, true-life adventure that could have appeared straight from the pages of a John le Carré Cold War novel. In February 1962 Gary Powers, the American pilot whose U-2 spy plane was shot down over Soviet Union airspace, was released by his Russian captors in exchange for one of their own, Soviet KGB Colonel Vilyam Fisher. Colonel Fisher was remarkable, not least because he was born plain Willie Fisher at number 142 Clara Street, Benwell, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Willie's revolutionary parents fled Russia in 1901, settling in the north-east, where Willie was brought up to share the family ideology. Leaving England for the newly formed Soviet Union in 1921, Willie began a career as a spy. Narrowly escaping Stalin's purges, Willie was sent to spy in New York, where he ran the network that included notorious atom spies Julius Rosenberg and Ted Hall. In 1957 he was arrested and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Six years later, the USSR's regard for Willie's talents was proven when they insisted on swapping him for the stricken Powers. Tracing Willie's story from the most unlikely of beginnings in Newcastle, to Moscow, New York and back again, The Kremlin's Geordie Spy is a singular and absorbing true story of Cold War espionage to rival anything in fiction.
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1849548501
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 211
Book Description
Discover an extraordinary, true-life adventure that could have appeared straight from the pages of a John le Carré Cold War novel. In February 1962 Gary Powers, the American pilot whose U-2 spy plane was shot down over Soviet Union airspace, was released by his Russian captors in exchange for one of their own, Soviet KGB Colonel Vilyam Fisher. Colonel Fisher was remarkable, not least because he was born plain Willie Fisher at number 142 Clara Street, Benwell, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Willie's revolutionary parents fled Russia in 1901, settling in the north-east, where Willie was brought up to share the family ideology. Leaving England for the newly formed Soviet Union in 1921, Willie began a career as a spy. Narrowly escaping Stalin's purges, Willie was sent to spy in New York, where he ran the network that included notorious atom spies Julius Rosenberg and Ted Hall. In 1957 he was arrested and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Six years later, the USSR's regard for Willie's talents was proven when they insisted on swapping him for the stricken Powers. Tracing Willie's story from the most unlikely of beginnings in Newcastle, to Moscow, New York and back again, The Kremlin's Geordie Spy is a singular and absorbing true story of Cold War espionage to rival anything in fiction.
History of the Russian Revolution
Author: Leon Trotsky
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1931859450
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 994
Book Description
"During the first two months of 1917 Russia was still a Romanov monarchy. Eight months later the Bolsheviks stood at the helm. They were little known to anybody when the year began, and their leaders were still under indictment for state treason when they came to power. You will not find another such sharp turn in history especially if you remember that it involves a nation of 150 million people. It is clear that the events of 1917, whatever you think of them, deserve study." --Leon Trotsky, from History of the Russian Revolution Regarded by many as among the most powerful works of history ever written, this book offers an unparalleled account of one of the most pivotal and hotly debated events in world history. This book reveals, from the perspective of one of its central actors, the Russian Revolution's profoundly democratic, emancipatory character. Originally published in three parts, Trotsky's masterpiece is collected here in a single volume. It serves as the most vital and inspiring record of the Russian Revolution to date. "[T]he greatest history of an event that I know." --C. L. R. James "Justly celebrated as a towering, vivid, historically vital work." --China Miéville, October "In Trotsky all passions were aroused, but his thought remained calm and his vision clear.... His involvement in the struggle, far from blurring his sight, sharpens it.... The History is his crowning work, both in scale and power and as the fullest expression of his ideas on revolution. As an account of a revolution, given by one of its chief actors, it stands unique in world literature." --Isaac Deutscher
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1931859450
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 994
Book Description
"During the first two months of 1917 Russia was still a Romanov monarchy. Eight months later the Bolsheviks stood at the helm. They were little known to anybody when the year began, and their leaders were still under indictment for state treason when they came to power. You will not find another such sharp turn in history especially if you remember that it involves a nation of 150 million people. It is clear that the events of 1917, whatever you think of them, deserve study." --Leon Trotsky, from History of the Russian Revolution Regarded by many as among the most powerful works of history ever written, this book offers an unparalleled account of one of the most pivotal and hotly debated events in world history. This book reveals, from the perspective of one of its central actors, the Russian Revolution's profoundly democratic, emancipatory character. Originally published in three parts, Trotsky's masterpiece is collected here in a single volume. It serves as the most vital and inspiring record of the Russian Revolution to date. "[T]he greatest history of an event that I know." --C. L. R. James "Justly celebrated as a towering, vivid, historically vital work." --China Miéville, October "In Trotsky all passions were aroused, but his thought remained calm and his vision clear.... His involvement in the struggle, far from blurring his sight, sharpens it.... The History is his crowning work, both in scale and power and as the fullest expression of his ideas on revolution. As an account of a revolution, given by one of its chief actors, it stands unique in world literature." --Isaac Deutscher
A Spy Called Cynthia
Author: Anonymous
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1785907131
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 137
Book Description
Elizabeth Thorpe, codenamed Cynthia, was a glamorous American socialite recruited by MI6 to obtain intelligence from the Polish Foreign Ministry and from the Italian and Vichy French embassies in Washington. Her method was to seduce whatever targets could provide her with vital intelligence, a practice in which she hardly ever failed, enabling her to secure first the French and then the Italian naval codes. In the landings in North Africa, she was credited with having saved the lives of hundreds of Allied soldiers. This unique account by a British spymaster of his relationship with Cynthia, detailing his subsequent involvement with Kim Philby and the Cambridge spies and his dealings with his counterparts in the CIA and French intelligence, was entrusted by him to a junior colleague on the basis that it was not to be published until everyone in it was dead. Necessarily anonymous and impossible to fully verify, though most of it undoubtedly did happen and is part of the historical record, A Spy Called Cynthia provides a special insight into the world of intelligence and one of its most effective practitioners.
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1785907131
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 137
Book Description
Elizabeth Thorpe, codenamed Cynthia, was a glamorous American socialite recruited by MI6 to obtain intelligence from the Polish Foreign Ministry and from the Italian and Vichy French embassies in Washington. Her method was to seduce whatever targets could provide her with vital intelligence, a practice in which she hardly ever failed, enabling her to secure first the French and then the Italian naval codes. In the landings in North Africa, she was credited with having saved the lives of hundreds of Allied soldiers. This unique account by a British spymaster of his relationship with Cynthia, detailing his subsequent involvement with Kim Philby and the Cambridge spies and his dealings with his counterparts in the CIA and French intelligence, was entrusted by him to a junior colleague on the basis that it was not to be published until everyone in it was dead. Necessarily anonymous and impossible to fully verify, though most of it undoubtedly did happen and is part of the historical record, A Spy Called Cynthia provides a special insight into the world of intelligence and one of its most effective practitioners.
The Spy Who Changed History
Author: Svetlana Lokhova
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1643132822
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 483
Book Description
On a sunny September day in 1931, Soviet spy Stanislav Shumovsky walked down the gangplank of the SS Europa and into New York, concealed in a group of 65 Soviet students. Joseph Stalin had sent him to acquire American secrets to help close the USSR’s yawning technology gap, and the road to victory began in the classrooms and laboratories of MIT.Using information gleaned from this mission, the USSR first transformed itself into a military powerhouse able to defeat Nazi Germany. Then in 1947, American innovation exfiltrated by Shumovsky made it possible to build and unveil the most advanced strategic bomber in the world. Later , other MIT-trained Soviet spies would go on to acquire the secrets of the Manhattan Project.In this thrilling history, Svetlana Lokhova takes the reader on a journey through Stalin’s most audacious intelligence operation, piecing together every aspect of Shumovsky’s life and character using information derived from American and Russian archives.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1643132822
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 483
Book Description
On a sunny September day in 1931, Soviet spy Stanislav Shumovsky walked down the gangplank of the SS Europa and into New York, concealed in a group of 65 Soviet students. Joseph Stalin had sent him to acquire American secrets to help close the USSR’s yawning technology gap, and the road to victory began in the classrooms and laboratories of MIT.Using information gleaned from this mission, the USSR first transformed itself into a military powerhouse able to defeat Nazi Germany. Then in 1947, American innovation exfiltrated by Shumovsky made it possible to build and unveil the most advanced strategic bomber in the world. Later , other MIT-trained Soviet spies would go on to acquire the secrets of the Manhattan Project.In this thrilling history, Svetlana Lokhova takes the reader on a journey through Stalin’s most audacious intelligence operation, piecing together every aspect of Shumovsky’s life and character using information derived from American and Russian archives.