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Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America |  | Authors: Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, Alexander Vassiliev
Publisher: Yale University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
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Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 232194
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 704
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.5
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 2
ISBN: 0300123906
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.124707309045
EAN: 9780300123906
ASIN: 0300123906
Publication Date: May 26, 2009
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 17
 Jew reds August 20, 2010
J. Owens (Liverpool, merseyside United Kingdom)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The amount of Soviet Spies who were Jews is AMAZING. Communism is a racial movement started by Jews.
None so blind as those that will not see (or something like that). July 17, 2010
The Pie Faced Prince (Los Angeles, CA USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a book about liars and deceivers. A history (circa World War II)of people who lied and deceived others - and themselves - in the service of a foreign nation whose objective was to radically change the political landscape of America by force if necessary. This is not a romantic (in the classical sense) book about James Bond thrills. This is about dirty, little, lying weasels who stabbed their fellow Americans in the back. How they could reconcile their mawkish philosophical motivations with progressive idealism after the Nazis and the Soviets made a bloody agreement to attack Poland is beyond me. Next to them, Joe McCarthy is a saint.
One unresolved issue that the authors did not tackle was the question why so many educated jewish people spied for the USSR on a country that provided them with refuge from ancient European prejudices, and a good life? Admittedly, this is a topic in itself for a book. Vassiliev, a coauthor whose translations of KGB documents made the book possible, thinks the spies were heroes of the USSR. Maybe, but they are not my heroes.
Finally, the book is not an easy read. It has a very large cast of characters and is extensively footnoted. If you follow every footnote as you read along then you will surely go mad. Take my advice and flip through the footnotes after you plow through nearly 600 pages of text,with no illustrations or photos to break the monotony.
But make no mistake, this is an important historical document. I highly recommend it.
Necessary realignment of history June 25, 2010
San Fernando Curt (Los Angeles)
One of the great tragedies of the blacklist/McCarthy era is the false impression that injustices committed by officials like HUAC committeemen and the Wisconsin senator were based on lies - that suggestions Washington and the federal government at large were riddled with Soviet agents was ugly fraud and defamation which we've been encouraged, through relentless academic and media apologias, to consider tragicomic nonsense. The Venona transcripts, the KGB archives (for the brief period they were opened in the post-Soviet '90s) and material such as "Spies..." have proven beyond a shadow of doubt that impression itself is the real fabrication, and that Soviet infiltration of American government (and media) was frighteningly extensive.
Books such as "Spies..." provide a necessary antidote to this decades-long anti-history. Alger Hiss, Julius Rosenberg and many others, long portrayed as innocent victims of a fanatical witch hunt, turn out to be exactly what charges against them spelled out.
Reaction to this book is notable commentary on how resilient is the myth that anti-Communist crusades were silly atrocities. Many critics have denounced its evidence (providing no contradictory proof, of course), but mostly it's been energetically ignored. The jarring historical realignment provided by "Spies..." is to be dropped down the memory hole, apparently. It's doubtful we'll see many guilt-trip miniseries, documentaries and commentaries about its findings.
HUAC was too shrill and cavalier with people's lives, and McCarthy was a drunk only interested in the issue's political advantages. But the spies WERE here... And they were feeding secrets to the KGB when Stalin, who murdered millions, was in charge of the USSR. Who's sillier - those who were frightened of Soviet Communism, or those who would have turned the country over to it?
Who's scarier?
 Case (almost) closed June 20, 2010
Raymond De Mourot Gil (France)
"Spies - The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America", by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev represents an almost definitive account of Soviet espionage in the 1930s and 1940s. Its new information is mostly based on the notebooks of Alexander Vassiliev, a former KGB officer, who in the Yeltsin years was allowed to peruse the NKVD/MGB/KGB files on this eventful period, which ranges from the thirties to WW II and the sternest years of the Cold War, for a joint project with Crown Publishers. The project was abandoned because of the publisher's demise and Vassiliev flew to the UK, with his notebooks. To anyone who still had doubts on Alger Hiss's culpability, as well as on Laurence Duggan's and Harry Dexter White's, this book should constitute an eye-opener. Among the revelations, notable is that of Congressman Samuel Dickstein's venal but ineffective spying for Soviet intelligence. One can only regret that GRU (military intelligence) files have remained out of bounds, since these would shed a fuller light on Alger Hiss's espionage activities: Hiss had indeed been for several years a GRU source, before being turned over to Soviet civilian intelligence.
Excellent info on early Soviet spying, could use an editor April 16, 2010
Stephen J. Snyder (Lancaster, Texas United States)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Early Soviet spying in the United States was more than Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers. More than the Rosenbergs and David Greenglass. More than Klaus Fuchs.
The duo of American authors, relying largely on Vassilev's near-exhaustive research, show just how extensive this spying was in the 1930s and 40s, some of the areas it penetrated besides the Manhattan Project and more.
If you ever doubted the snooping of Hiss, or Harry Dexter White, this book goes even deeper than Venona. If you want to learn a bit about the amount of military espionage Julius Rosenberg and some fellow engineering recruits did, it's here.
At the same time, the book has a few issues.
One is the subhead. No, the KGB did not "fall," at least not permanently. And, some of its successes in the 1960s and later were almost as big as in the 1940s.
Second, the material in this book gets a bit numbing at tmies with real names and KGB handles intertwined and other things without more organization. In short, it reads like one of its authors is a librarian with the Library of Congress.
I would have written this much differently. Throw out a full chapter devoted to Hiss. He's guilty, and you're not going to convince any fellow travelers otherwise. Rather, make an opening chapter a chronological one, starting with the work of Amtorg before the US diplomatically recognized the USSR. Then a chapter on Manhattan Project spying. Then, a chapter on non-Manhattan military espionage. Then, one on non-military industrial espionage, as in the XY line. Then one on government spies, dropping Hiss in here. Combine the "couriers/support" chapter with more on how the CPUSA was involved. And, in the conclusion, without going into too many details, note how the KGB would go on to "rise" again, and why.
In other words, this is a good book. But, primarily due to poor writing and editing, it falls a fair degree short of being a great one.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 17
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