In from the Cold War

COMMUNISM had just gone belly up when early in 1992 Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin caught a train from Moscow to an unnamed Baltic capital—Riga in Latvia, by the sound of it. There he contacted the CIA. A trusted member of the KGB since 1948, he had been one of its senior archivists for more than a decade, with unrestricted access to its files. You might think that our Vasili would have been recognized, and welcomed, as a defector. He, if anyone, knew the KGB’s inside story, and he had the documents to tell it. But the CIA geniuses had no time for Mitrokhin. Over the years, the United States had been penetrated by Soviet espionage and subversion at every level, but the CIA no longer felt the need to know. Only a short while before, the Agency had been predicting that by the year 2000 the Soviet Union would have a larger economy than the United States.

So Mitrokhin walked down the road to the British. For decades, Soviet agents had displayed a professionalism against which the British appeared defenseless. Now, at least, the British delivered Mitrokhin and many trunks of documents back to Britain. Exposure and prosecution of Soviet agents might have been expected. The British, though, were in a quandary. Mitrokhin’s files were copies, and so might not satisfy the rules of evidence in court. This allowed the grateful secret services to exercise their one real skill of sweeping as much as possible under the carpet, but they nevertheless came to an unusual deal. Mitrokhin was to collaborate with Christopher Andrew, professor of modern history at Cambridge and a well- known expert on the KGB, to publish what the authorities would permit.

About the Author

David Pryce-Jones

David Pryce-Jones (1936–2025) was a British author and commentator and served as a senior editor of National Review.

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COMMUNISM had just gone belly up when early in 1992 Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin caught a train from Moscow to an unnamed Baltic capital—Riga in Latvia, by the sound of it. There he contacted the CIA. A trusted member of the KGB since 1948, he had been one of its senior archivists for more than a decade, with unrestricted access to its files. You might think that our Vasili would have been recognized, and welcomed, as a defector. He, if anyone, knew the KGB’s inside story, and he had the documents to tell it. But the CIA geniuses had no time for Mitrokhin. Over the years, the United States had been penetrated by Soviet espionage and subversion at every level, but the CIA no longer felt the need to know. Only a short while before, the Agency had been predicting that by the year 2000 the Soviet Union would have a larger economy than the United States.

So Mitrokhin walked down the road to the British. For decades, Soviet agents had displayed a professionalism against which the British appeared defenseless. Now, at least, the British delivered Mitrokhin and many trunks of documents back to Britain. Exposure and prosecution of Soviet agents might have been expected. The British, though, were in a quandary. Mitrokhin’s files were copies, and so might not satisfy the rules of evidence in court. This allowed the grateful secret services to exercise their one real skill of sweeping as much as possible under the carpet, but they nevertheless came to an unusual deal. Mitrokhin was to collaborate with Christopher Andrew, professor of modern history at Cambridge and a well- known expert on the KGB, to publish what the authorities would permit.