Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America

This stunning book, based on KGB archives that have never come to light before, provides the most complete account of Soviet espionage in America ever written. In 1993, former KGB officer Alexander Vassiliev was permitted unique access to Stalin-era records of Soviet intelligence operations against the United States. Years later, living in Britain, Vassiliev retrieved his extensive notebooks of transcribed documents from Moscow. With these notebooks John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr have meticulously constructed a new, sometimes shocking, historical account.

Along with general insights into espionage tactics and the motives of Americans who spied for Stalin, Spies resolves specific, long-seething controversies. The book confirms, among many other things, that Alger Hiss cooperated with Soviet intelligence over a long period of years, that journalist I. F. Stone worked on behalf of the KGB in the 1930s, and that Robert Oppenheimer was never recruited by Soviet intelligence. Spies also uncovers numerous American spies who were never even under suspicion and satisfyingly identifies the last unaccounted for American nuclear spies. Vassiliev tells the story of the notebooks and his own extraordinary life in a gripping introduction to the volume.

Customer Reviews:

The "Golden-Age" of Soviet espionage in America

By Mila Filatova - May 4, 2009

Like Hugo's fictional Inspector Javert, historians Haynes and Klehr are dogged in the pursuit of their quarry--American communists who betrayed their country through covert relationships with the KGB in the 1930s and 40s. Nevermind the fact that the Statute of Limitations has long since expired on these crimes, or that the characters themselves were long ago swept into the dust bin of history, the historians have devoted their careers to exposing the perfidy of secret communists, and to hauling their corpses, time and again, before the court of public opinion. It is the historians' investigative spadework and their constrained sense of justice at long last being served which provides the narrative drive to "Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America."

Much of the evidence presented in the book is drawn from the notebooks of the Russian journalist Alexander Vassiliev. In 1993 Vassiliev was granted limited access to the KGB's operational files for the 1930s and 1940s. His... read more

AN ALMOST PERFECT SUCCESS

By Paul Gelman "PAUL Y. GELMAN" - May 8, 2009

After the fall of the Iron Curtain,serious historians have started to incorporate in their research about the Cold War era the various aspects about intelligence and espionage activities perpetrated by the sides involved in this ideological conflict.It is already a well- established and known fact that the Cold War was also a war of shadows which has had a significant impact on the relations between the East and the West.
The current book gives us a fascinating tale about the different activities,plots and machinations woven by the Russian spymasters during the thirties and forties of the previous century. Based on the documents transcribed by Alexander Vassiliev, who was a former KGB employee,the authors describe to what extent the USA was penetrated by and riddled with spies who came in all varieties and from all corners of the United States.Those spies were "men and women, Jews and gentiles,old-stock Americans, etc.While some spies grew up in poverty ,others basked in luxury... read more

Another Chapter in Soviet Espionage

By M. Hanson - May 7, 2009

Much like Haynes and Klehr's earlier work, this is a fascinating and meticulously well documented look at Soviet espionage from the 30's and 40's. This book is also short on polemic tirades (refreshingly so) and the authors stick to a "facts only" approach, not making statements that cannot be well supported and documented.

There are lengthy sections on the big fish like IF Stone whose covert work for the KGV/NKVD is now documented beyond any doubt and "philosopher" Corliss Lamont (who damn near became a US senator) whose work for the KGB/NKVD while mainly circumstantial is damning. Tepidly unreliable agents like Ernest Hemingway who the KGB eventually gave up on and Robert Oppenheimer the one that despite the Soviet's best efforts, got away are also extensively covered in the book.

Unlike their earlier work though, this book contains many pages on some of the lesser well know, but numerous everydayers that the Soviets had in their employment.

Overall,... read more