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Start giftingThe Sword and the Shield
This audiobook uses AI narration.
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Learn moreBased on unprecedented access to a secret archive of intelligence, The Sword and the Shield presents by far the most complete picture we have ever had of the KGB and its operations in the United States and Europe, revealing for the first time the full extent of its worldwide network.
Vasili Mitrokhin worked for almost thirty years in the foreign intelligence archives of the KGB. Mitrokhin spent over a decade making notes and transcripts of these highly classified files which, at enormous personal risk, he smuggled daily out of the archives and kept beneath his dacha floor. Now he has offered Christopher Andrew exclusive access to his archive. The picture that emerges in this sobering book will force us to acknowledge that there was indeed an enemy—and that he was very much in our midst.
Christopher Andrew is professor of modern and contemporary history and chair of the History Department at Cambridge University, a former visiting professor of national security at Harvard, a frequent guest lecturer at other US universities and a regular host of BBC radio and TV programs. His books—which include Her Majesty’s Secret Service; KGB: The Inside Story (with Oleg Gordievsky); and For the President’s Eyes Only—have established him as one of the world’s leading authorities on intelligence history.
Vasili Nikitich (1922–2004) was a Major and senior archivist for the Soviet Union’s foreign intelligence service, the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, and coauthor of The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West, a massive account of Soviet intelligence operations based on copies of material from the archive. The second volume, The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB in the World, was published in 2005, soon after Mitrokhin’s death.
Simon Vance is a critically acclaimed narrator who has recorded over eight hundred audiobooks and has received over fifty Earphones Awards. A twelve-time Audie Award winner and frequent finalist, he has been named an AudioFile Golden Voice, an AudioFile Best Voice, and the first Booklist Voice of Choice. A former BBC Radio presenter and newsreader in London, he currently lives in California, where he also pursues stage and television acting.
Reviews
“A sweeping, densely documented history…Thanks to Comrade Mitrokhin, the KGB and most who spied for it have been stripped naked.”
“The Sword and the Shield will stand as an indispensable reference work on Soviet espionage for years to come.”
“Stranger than fiction…Aficionados of espionage will be rummaging through this enormously detailed book for years.”
“The information contained in these notes is amazing…Veteran reader Whitfield’s reading is a nice match of text and narrator…His even-tempered voice steadily moves from one revelation to the next.”
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