Spying on the West: The Illegals by Shaun Walker–Review
A Soviet-era crest showing Vladimir Lenin, Volgograd, Russia, March 2019 © James Rodgers
This latest post is an extract from my review of Shaun Walker’s The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West. The review appears in the current issue of History Today.
Shaun Walker has uncovered some characters who led lives that would be dismissed in fiction as too far-fetched. Perhaps the most astonishing career is that of Dmitry Bystrolyotov (a surname that, as Walker points out, means ‘fast flier’). In the early years of Soviet power, Bystrolyotov travelled Europe masquerading as a cloth trader, a Hungarian aristocrat fallen on hard times, and a banker. This was after his pre-secret agent stints as a seafarer, gravedigger, and law student. He cultivated a disaffected alcoholic in Britain’s foreign office. Such a source was especially valuable in the 1920s, when the Soviet Union had diplomatic relations with few countries, and, in consequence, few embassies available as bases for ‘legal’ espionage.
One of the greatest risks was run by Nikolai Khokhlov and Karl Kleinjung, the latter a German communist who had left his homeland after the Nazis came to power. Their mission was to sneak into German-occupied Belarus and assassinate the governor, Wilhelm Kube. Part of their preparation for this breathtakingly hazardous mission involved being sent to a Soviet prisoner of war camp that held some of the invaders. Khokhlov was to pass himself off as an officer captured at Stalingrad. Success in the role would mean he was ready to play the part of an officer in the occupying army. The pair enter Belarus. They pass a bomb to Kube’s housekeeper, who attaches it to his bed. The mission is ‘an unequivocal success’.
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Declaration: as well as being an occasional contributor to History Today, I am on the magazine’s editorial advisory board.
