Instructions From The Centre; Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations 1975-1985

London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1992. Second Impression [stated]. Hardcover. Good/Good. xv, [3], 238 pages. Ink marks noted on several pages. Contains Footnotes, List of Illustrations [8 plates between pages 110 and 111; 16 documents between pages 5 and 16; and 4 diagrams between pages xi and xviii]. List of Abbreviations, KGB Codenames of Centre Officers and Residents, Note on the Documents, and Introduction: The Centre and Foreign Intelligence. Chapters cover The KGB's Global Priorities; Agent Recruitment; Illegals; Operation RYAN; The 'Main Adversary': The United States; The Main Ally of the 'Main Adversary': The United Kingdom; The European Community; The Socialist International; China; New Thinking? Also contains Appendix A: The KGB Files and Archives; Appendix B: Residency Records and Communications with the Centre; and Notes. Instructions from the Centre offers a highly classified insight not merely into KGB foreign operations at the dawn of the Gorbachev era, but also into the thinking of its top leadership at the beginning of the 1990s--and, in particular, into the mind of General V.A. Kryuchkov, KGB chairman, and one of the leaders of the abortive coup of August 1991. Christopher Maurice Andrew is an historian at the University of Cambridge with a special interest in international relations and in particular the history of intelligence services. Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky, CMG (born October 1938) is a former colonel of the KGB who became KGB resident-designate (rezident) and bureau chief in London, and was a double agent, providing information to the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1974 to 1985. He was exfiltrated from the USSR in 1985. During the decade that preceded Mr. Gorbachev's era of glasnost and perestroika, the KGB headquarters in Moscow was putting out a constant stream of instructions to its Residencies abroad. Unknown to the KGB, however, many of these highly classified documents were being secretly copied by Oleg Gordievsky, at that time not only a high-ranking KGB officer based in London but also a long-serving undercover agent for the British. The selected documents in this volume, translated and analyzed by the editors with a commentary by Christopher Andrew to set them in context, offer a revealing insight into the attitudes, prejudices and fears of the KGB during what were to prove its declining years.