Spies and Memoirs

Russian Roulette

By Giles Milton (Bloomsbury, $28, May)

It is well known that the Bolsheviks prevailed in their 1917 coup and subsequent Civil War despite being seriously outnumbered, outgunned, and hopelessly surrounded by enemies. What is perhaps less known is that not all the Bolsheviks’ conspiracy theories about “Western imperialist plots” were fabrications.

In fact, thanks to the recent opening of some British national archives, which this book mines to great effect, we are now privy to a slew of counterintelligence operations in Bolshevik Russia by a colorful cast of British operatives. The characters range from the charismatic Sidney Reilly (who came very close to effecting a coup d’état in 1918, but for the loose lips of a French journalist), to the chameleonic Paul Dukes and George Hill, to the notorious Robert Lockhart, Arthur Ransome, W. Somerset Maugham and Frederick Bailey. Some of their stories have been told elsewhere, but this is the first time they have been brought together into a single, interwoven narrative, and it makes for very compelling reading.

The spies’ individual stories of derring-do are the stuff of nineteenth century adventure tales, and their ability to go undercover merely by growing a beard and changing their dress seems a bit fantastic in our age, when every move we make creates a digital fingerprint. At times their exploits seem to be an endless string of barely missed opportunities, when history could have taken a hugely different turn — be it Reilly’s aborted coup, or the instance of Stephen Alley, who claimed he was ordered to assassinate Stalin in 1918, but refused for reasons of propriety. The operatives’ ability to infiltrate and extract intelligence from the highest echelons of power was truly astounding; the only thing that seemed to mute the effect of their efforts was the difficulty of transmitting their information back to London.

In the latter half of the book, Milton argues that these daring first recruits of what became MI6 were instrumental in blunting Lenin’s export of international revolution. Yet it is clear that it was not these cunning operatives, but the economic catastrophe of War Communism and the need for international trade, that stunted what little impact the Comintern might have had.

Never mind, the spy stories in this volume, rich in tradecraft and memorable anecdotes, stand strongly on their own as a thrilling compendium of espionage during a critical juncture in history. One only wishes the Russian archives on the period were also opened, as the book suffers from its faint use of Russian sources.

In fact, the book ends by mentioning the story of one of the most amazing moles in history, Boris Bazhanov, who was Stalin’s secretary for four years before defecting to the West. A valued source of British intelligence in the 1920s, Bazhanov is someone worth a book in his own right.

A Very Principled Boy

By Mark Bradley (Basic Books, $29.99, April)

Speaking of moles, Duncan Lee was in a similar position to Bazhanov, working as a top aide to US intelligence chief “Wild Bill” Donovan throughout World War II. As such, he was the Soviet Union’s most senior mole inside US intelligence during the war.

Lee stopped working for the Soviets in 1945, but his spying was publicly revealed in 1948 when defected Soviet spy Elizabeth Bentley testified to the HUAC. Under oath, Lee denied all charges of espionage and treachery, a position he would maintain for four decades. Decrypted Soviet cables, available at the time thanks to the top-secret Venona program, confirmed Lee’s betrayal, but the FBI could not use them to prosecute Lee without revealing the source and extent of Venona to the world.

Lee’s story is by now a common one — of the idealistic youth who becomes radicalized then blindly serves a power that has little regard or relation to his ideals. Bradley’s tale (fluidly told and meticulously documented) is of how this Yale and Oxford educated son of missionaries first justified his personal treachery, then regretted it, and how it destroyed his life and those around him (or, as Bradley puts it, how “he never freed himself totally from the tar baby of his past”). But it is also a larger tale of the vast scope of Soviet espionage operations in the US, of Hoover and the FBI’s dogged counterespionage efforts, of what happens when conscience and country collide.

Rescuing Julia Twice

By Tina Traster (Chicago Review Press, $24.95, May)

The challenges faced by Americans adopting a child from Russia, where orphanages are often little more than stark, loveless dormitories, normally stay hidden from outside eyes. Only, it seems, in tragic cases of abandonment or death, do these challenges bubble up into public view.

That is unjust, for thousands of children have been successfully adopted into American families, at huge financial and emotional expense. And in all but those very few rare cases we hear about in the media, these children have gained vastly richer, more love-filled lives than would otherwise have been the case.

Still, for the most part, the journey these American families are on is little known or understood, except by other families on the same journey.

But now comes this searing, gripping, heart-filled memoir by journalist Tina Traster. It chronicles her and her husband’s adoption of Julia from a Siberian orphanage, and the years they struggled to overcome Julia’s reactive attachment disorder — a serious condition that results from children not forming normal attachments with caregivers early in life, which affects some children brought up in the deprived environment of Russian orphanages.

This is a book that deserves to be read by all who care about the many Russian children who are now Americans, not just by families that have adopted them. In a clipped, dense, engagingly honest style, Traster recounts all the pain and joy, the difficulties and triumphs of parenting Julia, of bridging their worlds. It is a fast and entertaining read, but one that takes a great deal longer to absorb.

Born in Siberia

By Tamara Astafieva (Quartet Books, $22)

This intimate memoir is the very personal tale of an ordinary Russian woman, lived out from the late Soviet era to the present day. Yet in another sense, Tamara Astafieva’s life story is also a rather representative one – through her memoir we can better grasp the realities of this era, from marriage and childbirth, to foreign friendships, work, and even mental illness.

The book was made possible because Tamara’s life was not by any means ordinary. Her talents and skills brought her into contact with foreign clients of Novosti, and it is through their good devices that her story is now told (her autobiographical reminiscences are interspersed or backfilled with commentary by friends).

Tamara’s is a story worth reading if you wish to better understand the role of women in Soviet and Russian society, of how the competing pressures of work and family played out in her single, rather representative life.