Soviet tricks of trade
The very existence of The Mitrokhin Archive — material copied covertly from the KGB’s foreign intelligence files and brought to Britain in 1992 by a senior Soviet intelligence officer, Vasili Mitrokhin — represents a stunning intelligence success, something worth celebrating at a time when intelligence failures are a far more popular subject for discussion. Mitrokhin’s tenacity and courage in copying the material — over a period of nearly 20 years — and his exfiltration from Russia by the British Secret Intelligence Service are themselves the stuff of legend. The massive if unwieldy archive he brought with him provides a unique insight into KGB activities on a global scale between the 1920s and 1990s.