The Rest Is Classified - 50. The Man Who Tried To Kill The KGB: On the Run from Russia (Ep 2)

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

He risked everything to expose the KGB's darkest secrets, but Vasily Mitrokhin had two non-negotiable demands: his family's safety and his archive's publication. How did MI6 navigate these unprecedented requests? What secret deal was struck with the Americans to fund his resettlement? And why did Mitrokhin himself express anger at his handlers? This episode delves deeper into the nail-biting exfiltration of Vasily Mitrokhin and his family from a turbulent post-Soviet landscape. From a comically small minibus to a chaotic scene at the docks, the operation pushes the MI6 team to their limits. But the biggest challenge isn't the KGB – it's the personal fallout of Mitrokhin's secret life. Listen as Gordon and David uncover the raw, emotional moments of a spy's escape and the complex, costly process of bringing his invaluable archive to the West. ------------------- To sign up to The Declassified Club, go to www.therestisclassified.com or click this ⁠⁠⁠link⁠⁠⁠. To sign up to the free newsletter, go to: ⁠https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign-up⁠ ------------------- NordVPN: Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restisclassified It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee  Incogni: Exclusive INCOGNI Deal: To get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan, go to https://incogni.com/restisclassified ------------------- Pre-order a signed edition of Gordon's latest book, The Spy in the Archive, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Order a signed edition of David's latest book, The Seventh Floor, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Email: [e-mail] Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@triclassified⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The car pulled into the forecourt of the station. He was 19 minutes late. As he walked into the cavernous hall, he saw with despair that the sign for the train was being removed from the arrivals board. He strode as fast as he could around the waiting areas, scanning for any sign of the agent or his family. But there was none. Things were not going well. As he paced in the distance, he saw a train coming in on the tracks. The doors opened and bleary-eyed passengers began to disembark. Russians and Lithuanians intermingled, families, workers, but no Matrokins.

But then at the far end of the platform, he finally saw movement. It was a wheelchair being lowered to the ground from the very last coach. There at last was Matrocan, his wife, his son in the wheelchair, and his mother-in-law moving slowly with a stick. There was relief, but also the dawning realization that this was the motley crew he was now going to have to smuggle out of the country.

Welcome to The Rest Is Classified, I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Gordon Carrera. And that is a beautifully painted scene in early November of 1992 in Lithuania in prose that listeners to this podcast will of course by now just have imprinted Gordon inside their ears. That is another thrilling section of a book, Gordon,

that is coming out here in the next few weeks in the UK called The Spy in the Archive. And it is written by, of course, you, Gordon Carrera. It is all about Vasily Matrokin, really the espionage around the KGB's darkest secrets. And it is the subject of our finale today on the story of Vasily Mitrokin. That's right. So we've been looking at how this man who was the introverted, slightly odd archivist at the KGB had become

disillusioned with the spy service he'd been working for and spent 12 years copying down its deepest secrets, and then at first approached, I'm afraid, the Americans and been turned away. We love turning away a valuable Russian, Gordon. It's in the CIA's nature. He's either a bum or a dangle, so we sent him your way, kicked him on down the road and Vilnius.

But the Brits got him. The Brits have, they've taken up the American seconds, and he'd said he wanted two things. He wanted his archive to be published and his family to get out. He just wanted a publishing deal, Gordon, and he had to commit espionage to get there. Many an author has come to great lengths. Many an author would do far worse things for a publishing deal. So it's November of 1992, and this very dramatic exfiltration is underway to get Matrocan and his family out and to Britain.

And Gordon, I will say, really a lot of the story that we're gonna tell today is very much in the classified version of the rest is classified, right? Because much of this story, even though of course, many of Matrocan's secrets have been published before, the story about the man and the story about this exfiltration really hasn't. So we are declassifying it today, wouldn't you say? We are revealing it for the first time. That's right. I mean, before, if you looked in the various books about Matrocan, there is no real

detail about how this happened and the story of how he got out. A lid has been kept on it, which we are lifting today in this podcast and in the book as well. And I think there are reasons which will come to, which might explain what are the reasons why it's been quite sensitive. And a lot of this will revolve around his family and the importance of his family, because as you read there, the family are coming off the train. This is the train from Moscow. They're being met initially by James, a British MI6 officer, and Robert, who he's working with, who is his Russian-born agent partner. Robert's not his Christian name for listeners. I got confused on this in the last episode. Yes,

Robert is very much a pseudonym. Yeah, Robert is a pseudonym. And the plan is that they're going to get this family out by boat. Now there is a problem here, which is the family. Not all the family know what's going on. And this is very interesting, because Metrocan had been stealing all these secrets, but he had never told his family what he was doing. Which does make sense, I would say. There's a logic there. You're protecting your wife, who is a kind of member of Soviet

society. But he's told MI6 he won't leave without them, that if they won't go, he won't go. So eventually, he does tell his wife, Nina, and he comes in and out of Vilnius a few times, you should say, even comes to Britain at, he comes in and out of Vilnius a few times, we should say, even comes to Britain at one point in the autumn of 1992, briefly himself. And in this period he tells Nina, and he's not sure actually whether she's going to agree to leave. She's a successful member of Russian society, she's an eminent doctor, she's more outgoing, she's got lots of friends. If she'd said no at this point, the whole thing would have been off. But she does agree. And it's interesting, I think they have a kind of complicated

relationship, which is, how would I put it? I mean, people described it to me as being very close on the one hand, but many things were left unsaid, I think, between them, that kind of relationship. They had their secrets. They had their secrets. And I think that's certainly the case. I guess in his case, it's that he'd copied down the case of his entire archive over 12 years in their dacha. So I guess he was good at keeping secrets. But then there are two other people who've got to get out. One is her mother, so Mitrokin's mother-in-law, an elderly woman who's grown up in Soviet

society and is not necessarily in the best of health. And then there is Mitrokin's son, Vladimir, and he is at this stage in a wheelchair. He's been suffering from a muscle wasting disease. He's now in his thirties. He's smart. He's been to university in Moscow. He's well-educated. He's got friends in the city. Now here's the problem.

When they get off that train in that scene that you'd read at the start, those two, Matrokin's mother-in-law and son, don't know what's going on. So there is a good setup. Was he hoping the mother-in-law would be would be nabbed and sent back? Or did he want her? I think we can assume that his wife probably said, I'm only coming if my mother is coming, which I think would make sense. So they've got a cover story, which is being used for this operation. They're actually taking the son to a sanatorium, a health clinic overseas. And that's the reason why they're crossing the border. But interestingly enough, that is a cover story, not just for any border guards they meet, but for two members of the family themselves,

including the son and the mother-in-law, that they think they're going to a sanatorium, a health clinic. Is the thinking that both he and the mother-in-law, if told the real reason inside Moscow, might have told the authorities or not gone along with it? Because Matokin obviously felt like he needed to involve Nina in the decision making and get her to agree, but he doesn't presumably give his adult son the same agency. I think we assume that he fears what their reaction might be and knows that could blow the whole thing.

And he's got this plan, which he considers his life's work. And remember, he's on this kind of semi-spiritual mission to destroy the KGB, to destroy this kind of beast, this creature in his mind, the dragon, the Hydra, which is kind of feeding off his own country, Russia. So he's got that level of dedication, and he's, I think, fearful of the reaction. So at this point, they're met at the train station, the MI-16 is going to take them out in an almost comically small minibus. It's not the original vehicle. The original vehicle feels very British to me. It is very British. It's a very teensy car to take them out in. Teensy car because the original minibus has broken down. So they literally had to commandeer this one

off the streets. It's very cramped. The mother-in-law is sitting in the back next to Robert, this Russian speaking MI-6 agent, and she's asking, can you move that thing that's jutting into me as they're sitting next to each other? And he doesn't want to tell her it's actually a small F1 hand grenade that he's carrying in his pocket in case things take a turn for the worst. He's got a hand grenade? He's got a hand grenade in his pocket. And he's, I mean, they're armed.

So the team are armed, and they've also got some Lithuanian heavies who are escorting them who are also armed. Because the fear is, you know, it's really interesting, even though Lithuania at this point is independent, the Red Army is still in the country. So what was the Red Army? The Soviet Union's military has still got bases and thousands of troops in the country, including the port where they're heading. And the KGB is still, or what was the KGB and now changing its name, is still very active in the country and is still trying to put down routes and build agents and networks across, including the security services around the government, around the ports, around the country. It's still very active there, seeing it as part of the Soviet Union, even though

the Soviet Union has now just died. So they are very worried that they could be stopped, there could be violence, there could be trouble. So they're armed, they're tooled up. And I guess, you know, it's also maybe worth painting a picture at this point of, we're talking about the early 90s in Russia and the former Baltic states, former parts of the Soviet Union, that it's extremely lawless as well. I mean, I've known former Russia House guys who would talk about being in Moscow or St. Petersburg, which had its name changed from Leningrad back in that period.

And they would talk about street violence, bombs going off, shootings all the time. So I guess there's probably also a concern here of just organized crime, banditry. Like it's a security hazard in the same way that we might consider a war zone today in some respects. In fact, I think there was an election which was about to come up in the coming days. They were worried the Russians could maybe stage some kind of coup perhaps, that all of that could explode. So it's definitely a time of turmoil and of difficulty.

So eventually they get to Klaipeda, the docks, where they're due to meet a boat which has been secured by Swedish intelligence who are playing a role there in supplying the boat, which is going to get them wrong, the helpful Swedes. Have the Swedes appeared yet on our podcast as friends of the pod? I don't think we've talked about Swedish intelligence yet. Welcome to Swedish intelligence. Welcome to any listeners. Swedish military intelligence, you're listening.

Welcome to, was it Sapo? Welcome Sapo. That's on your bingo cards, listeners. Go ahead and cross that off now. So they've provided the boat, but this is the moment the docks, when things start to go wrong. And what's fascinating is its family rather than the KGB, which causes the problem. Because the son and the mother-in-law are getting suspicious. I mean, they're suspicious about some of the strange men Who are with them because the Lithuanian heavies Do not look like sanatorium workers who they've been told they are

And grenade with the winian heavies have started the mother-in-law is getting concerned getting concerned This is a bit strange. So they're asking questions and at the docks they finally get there They get out of this tiny yellow minibus. They get the wheelchair out for Vladimir and they place him into it. It's at this point though that he realises this trip is not what he thought it was and he suddenly works out what's going on. He's a smart guy, he's not stupid and he begins shouting at this point in Russian, because for the first time he really understands who his father is, and that his father is not who he thought he was, that he's not just this quiet librarian, if you like, or archivist, but actually someone different. You're a spy, he says. Now, I mean, that is an accusation. Not ideal to have that yelled out during the Exfil. Not during an Exfil, when you're worried about the KGB being present.

I mean, it could be fatal, couldn't it? People are trying to calm him down at that point, but it's not working. The realisation, I think, dawns on him that he's going away and leaving Moscow and he's never going back. It's interesting. One person remembers him saying, what will my friends think? That's what he says to one of the people present. I haven't been able to tell them anything.

It's the shock of learning who his father is and that he is leaving his life behind. And he's clearly not had an easy life at this point. And so people are trying to calm him down, but the shouting is getting louder. He's hurling Russian swear words. And there's one word that he shouts at his father and the word is traitor. Now, I mean, Vassily Metrokhin, I don't think saw of himself in any way as a traitor. I think we should say that he saw himself actually as a patriot who loved Russia, but hated the KGB and what this beast had been doing to Russia. So he very much

sees himself as a patriot who was trying to help his country, he's trying to save his country. So you can imagine that kind of, this is a moment which you would think would hurt deeply, and yet Vasily Mitrokin remains quite calm himself. But for Robert and James, the MI-16, this is starting to go wrong. Robert is trying to push the wheelchair up the gangplank onto the boat. But as he does so, it becomes clear there's a problem because the wheelchair is too wide to get up on the gangplank that leads to the boat, which they've got to get on. And now Vladimir, the son, is clutching the arms of the wheelchair and not letting go

as he shouts and swears about what's happening. So they're stuck. James is beginning to panic. A tension is being drawn by all this shouting. And it certainly looks to any bystanders as something very strange and very odd is happening. Robert seems almost flummoxed by this, unusually so. So James looks at Robert and shouts at him in English. I don't care what you have to effing do rather than use the... Oh, you missed the opportunity for Callum to use his bleep gun. Okay, I don't like swearing, you know, David, but let's bring Callum's bleep gum into action.

Do you want me to do it? Yeah, go on, you do it. I'm not going to read this piece of dialogue. James looks at Robert and shouts at him in English. All right, Callum, get the bleep gun ready. I don't care what you have to do. Get him on board. Very good. You've got the novelist sense of how to do the drama. That's right. What this feels like if I'm a Lithuanian dock worker is that he's being kidnapped. I mean, that's what that's what happens next? I mean, what does Robert do?

The only thing, he's got to get him off the wheelchair. So he raises his fist, and then he brings his fist down hard on Vladimir's hands, which were gripping the armrest of the wheelchair. That releases Vladimir's hands. And with that, Robert picks up this figure, hauls him over his shoulder and walks him onto the boat. Kidnapping vibes.

It's got kidnapping vibes. I mean, it does look like an abduction. I mean, strangely enough, for cinematrucking people who were there remember him being very still and calm. But but you're right, it does appear on the surface to look like that. And I think that's one of the reasons why this story has never, you know, there's been some disquiet perhaps about this story. I guess in one light, it's the British secret intelligence service kidnapping an unwilling Russian. Yeah, I'm going to say what's interesting about it, because you're right, that's what it could look like on the surface. But what's interesting, what maybe is quite surprising is that actually Vladimir quite quickly does come to terms with it and gets over it. And in the book there's actually a picture

from the boat itself that they're then on on this journey which is going to take them to Sweden. And there's a picture of father and son just after this has all happened. And Vladimir at this point, the son son looks almost relieved and definitely calm. And I think much of what happened was the shock of at that moment learning who his father was. And on the boat, he is reassured by the team that he's going to get a new life, he's going to get a new set of documents, and he's going to get the medical care that I think his father always wanted for him. And that this has always been one of the kind of motivating I think his father always wanted for him and that this has always been one of the kind of motivating desires from the father is to get the medical care.

So I think that once that's explained to him, he comes to terms with it very quickly and then certainly is not in any way resisting of it. So I think it is that moment of shock. There is some lingering resentment, I understand, that was there for a while, but actually it's interesting. he does come in the long term to a new relationship with his father. And actually, they end up arguably closer than they ever were before. And I think he'll come to respect his father. And actually, in the long run, he is the one who seeks to preserve his father's legacy. So I think that moment at the docks is, it's fleeting, even if it is dangerous at that moment. But it is a reminder, I think, that the one thing that can complicate events, even in well-planned spy operations, is family. The three-headed hydra didn't disrupt the exfil. It was his kid and maybe mother-in-law. So maybe they're Gordon.

Let's take a break and we come back. We'll look at why he matters so much even today and why Vasily Mitropkin is ultimately a tragic figure. See you after the break. This episode is sponsored by Incogni. Now David, in the world of espionage, you're trained, aren't you, to assume one thing? Someone's always watching. And in everyday life, Gordon? Well, they usually are. But not spies. Data brokers. Quietly collecting your personal information, building detailed profiles, and then selling

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incognito.com slash rest is classified. Well, welcome back. It is 1992. Vasily Matalkin has gone to Britain with a library of the KGB's darkest secrets. And Gordon, I mean, one thing, we just talked about how his son and his wife and his mother-in-law were all brought out, but we didn't talk about the documents in that. I mean, we talked earlier about how this was actually a pretty massive trove of information. And so physically, I mean, it's boxes and boxes of material. But did that also get dumped onto the boat with him on the way to Sweden, or had he kind of done that earlier?

It's interesting because again, there's a bit of misdirection if you read some of the accounts that have come out before, which claim that they were left in Moscow and someone went to dig them up and bring them out after the family got out. That's not the case. That seems harder. Yeah, that's a lot harder. So he'd actually made a series of visits to Vilnius. So he makes that one in April, he makes another one in June, he also comes out in September and actually goes to Britain at that point. And at those points, he's brought out the bulk of his documents in those kind of grubby bags. He's worked out he's going to get them of his documents in those kind of grubby

bags. He's worked out he's going to get them out that way. So it's not as if at this final moment he's got to bring out the whole archive because it's pretty big, you know, fits on a table. It's big boxes, envelopes basically full of notes, full of files, some of which he's typed up. And it is a treasure trove for Western intelligence. It's enormously important. Interestingly enough, one of the first things the Brits do when they first make contact with him, so back in after April, that first meeting, they go tell the Americans, they go, that's good. I approve of this idea. And they know because he's already approached

the Americans, they say, we're now in play with the guy who calls himself Yurasov. And they partly tell the Americans because they don't want them to go back to him having realized their mistake and then kind of complicate the operation. But also because they're kind of saying, we've got a lot of material that you might be interested in. Another reason which I discovered is because money, the Brits need the money. The Treasury wasn't willing to stump up the cash. And so the Brits basically have to go to the Americans and say, could you give us a million dollars please? The cash for the resettlement? For the resettlement, yeah.

That's poor, isn't it? You guys couldn't pay for the resettlement into Britain? Yeah. So we should be clear, he's not being paid like money. He's not after this for the money, but it costs to resettle a defector. It costs like a million dollars at least. And especially if you've got a family, you need a house, you need all these things. So those costs the Brits were struggling to pay for. And so they end up going to the Americans saying, look, we'll give you full

access to this treasure trove of counterintelligence material. And in return, could you please give us some money, which the FBI and CIA, by the way, go half some. Did no one have a million? Like you didn't have a million. MI6 didn't have a million dollars. This is Britain in the early 90s. I mean, this was heaven forbid the idea of Britain being a struggling economy, which is unable to pay the bills. But back in the 90s, it might have felt like that.

And I think particularly… No one could scrape together a million bucks. But also particularly, to be fair, I think the idea was the Cold War was over. The Treasury are kind of like, you spies, we're about to cut your budget. We're not quite sure why we need you anymore. Why are we giving a million pounds or a million dollars to some defector who's got some secrets from the past? So these papers that smell like sausages.

Exactly. They've been in the bottom of his bag. I guess it's also, this is, I think think a great little case study with some of the dynamics of the cooperation between the CIA and SIS because number one, you mentioned this great point of the Brits coming to the Americans to make sure that the Americans don't go back and talk to Matrokin, which could have some selfish motivations, but it's also just making sure we're not running into each other. Yeah, deconflicting. Yeah, deconfliction, which oftentimes can be the spark for joint work together,

intel sharing on human cases, just let's make sure we're not stepping on each other's toes. The money thing we're kind of laughing at, but I mean, I think is a feature of we're a much bigger intelligence sort of apparatus, right? In the states, there's a lot more capital at that point. And now, frankly, and so the idea here from MI6's perspective that you've got great information, you've got this guy, for us to get access to it, presumably, we would do something to kind of come to the table, right? And so we pony up some money, you're running the guy, you've done the work to get them out.

We're going to pay a little bit for the product and then we'll all share it. I mean, this is a classic case study and how these services, because there's no written agreement that you have to do any of this stuff, but it's just kind of, you know, there's reasons to get us involved. There's reasons to de-conflict. And so sort of joint work can snowball from from those factors. And I think frequently does. Yeah, it's a good insight. What funny little anecdote is that

there's one point where some Americans come to meet Mitrokin in London. And there's a group of them. And he says to them, which one of you is from the CIA? And one guy holds up his hand, and I think he's actually a secondi from the FBI CIA. And Mitrokin then lays into it and basically goes, I approached you guys first and you turned me down. And it's your fault. I'm with the Brits now, which, which sounds quite like insulting to the Brits. Is he actually mad though?

He is mad. And he's really angry. And I mean, it gives you some idea. This is a guy who was quite difficult, who had a bit of a temper. One of the reasons, interesting enough, which seems to be why he had approached the Brits first, was he thought he'd get the best medical care for his son, through the Americans, because kind of, I guess, the impression of American health care. So yeah, so but socialized medicine garden. Yeah, he did.

Cover me with that. He lived under that in Moscow for a long time. Yeah. So it's interesting. There's anger there. And actually, the Brits say to the Americans, this meeting goes quite badly. And the Brits say afterwards, say to him, don't worry. It'll be fine.

But you get a sense there about this being a difficult man. But the treasure trove he's brought out is staggering. I mean, there's 3,500 counterintelligence reports issued to 36 countries, which identify about a thousand KGB agents. So it's a motherlode really, of people who'd spied for the KGB going back decades. Many are still in place, some of it is history. And you know, for some countries like France, Italy, India, to take just a few examples, it's actually quite embarrassing the scale of penetration by the KGB that's revealed by those documents. I mean, and that's one of the problems is it's you'd think it would be good news going to these countries and go, hey, we've got some KGB files, which reveal what they were up to in your country. But actually, it causes headaches for these countries, because they're suddenly like, Whoa, these are people who are still alive, or in some cases, they're politicians, or diplomats, or people who are still in office.

And are they still working for the Russian, for the FSB or the KGB at this point? In some cases. I mean, in many cases, they're historic. But it's a real problem. Another thing that's amazing is that Moscow doesn't realize he's missing. And this is, I think, one of the craziest details of the operation is, because he's retired, retired in 84, they've actually come up with a way of pretending that he's still in the country. There's two family dachas in the countryside,

and as well as an apartment in Moscow, people are constantly going to think, oh, well, he must be at the other place. And they're gonna create that impression that he's not disappeared. They being the British service? That the Americans, they're the KGB. Yeah, the Brits are gonna help create that impression. And so the KGB do not actually realize that their secrets have been stolen.

And of course, because he's copied the files rather than stolen actual original files, there's nothing that's actually missing from this archives. But his wife was a doctor. What happened? Did she close her practice? I guess retired and moved to the countryside.

And because you've got three different locations where the family could be, I mean, it does seem extraordinary, but it also gives you an idea that I think part of the reason was because he was so introverted himself. No one notices he's gone. He had already gone missing years earlier. So, you know, it's crazy. Were the Brits turning like going into the dachas and like turning the lights on? Well, I think there were certain ways of sending letters and documents to try and maintain this cover story.

Okay. That he's not gone, which gives people a chance to exploit this information and all these amazing details. And there's going to be people who had spied for the KGB inside the United States, including in places like the National Security Agency, who had not been known about or discovered until Matrokin comes out with details, who are then going to be prosecuted as a result. So there are lots of examples of that. So that's one side of it. He had two conditions, of course, for coming out. One was to get the family out. The other one was to get a book published, in other words, to get his archive

published. That's going to take quite a few years. I'd imagine MI6 wasn't so keen to get that one on the shelves in the first few months, right? Because I guess the dynamic as soon as he comes out has got to be that that information, I mean, I'd imagine it's just this immensely laborious process for the debriefing teams to understand what they have. And then as you mentioned, as soon as you find something, let's say it's about the KGB's penetration

of the French military or something like that. It's then really complicated to figure out exactly how you share that information and kind of parcel it out, who you share it with. So this is a kind of painstaking work to go through all of this information because there's so much. Yeah. And it's almost overwhelming, I think. But finally, by 1999, they've got a book nearly ready. It's co-written with Christopher Andrew, who's a kind of eminent British historian of the intelligence services. But one thing I discovered when researching my book was just how difficult and painful this experience was. And basically,

Matrokin's relationship with MI6 breaks down at this point very badly. I mean, he feels like he's losing control of his own archive. He's quite angry at the process. He, at one point, talks about getting lawyers in to try and stop the publication. He's pretty unhappy about it. There is a question about the copyright of the files. And one person, as they put it to me, was that the people who had the best

claim to the copyright of the files are probably the KGB rather than either MI6 and the truck and himself. But I think they're unlikely to sue over their secrets. They'll do far worse things than that. Yeah. I mean, they eventually get through that. And another added problem is that at this point, his wife Nina has herself been diagnosed with a motor neurone disease, and she is dying and in terrible pain. And she's going to die just around that time that the book comes out in 1999. It should be a moment of triumph for him, but

actually it's a very difficult moment. But that book does eventually emerge. It's a bit of a doorstop too, if I might say so myself. It's a quite thick book, and I mean, not nearly as sort of insightful and creatively written and thrilling as The Spy in the Archive, the Gordon Carrera book coming out here. Yeah, but that's because it's a different kind of book, because I mean, it's a book about the secrets. I mean, his book is a history of the KGB, first in the West and then in Africa, and they are really important books. But to some extent, the publication is overshadowed by specific stories. In Britain, there's one story which is

about why MI5 and the police had failed to prosecute an old woman called Melita Norwood, who'd actually been involved in giving atomic secrets to the Soviet Union around the time of Second World War, just afterwards, 50 years earlier, and she's still alive in South London. And so the story becomes this granny who's still alive had once sold Britain's atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Why hasn't anything been done about her? Whereas in America, it's all about secret arms caches. Did the KGB hide secret arms caches around the country, which they had done in Europe? And had the FBI done enough about it. So one of the tragedies for Matrokin is that he wanted to issue a warning about the KGB, but that warning didn't, first of all, get to the Russian people who he wanted it to reach because the book wouldn't be published in Russian. Makes sense. Which makes sense. And in the West, they were much more

interested in things like Melita Norwood, this woman, or the Cambridge spies, or talk of arms dumps. They weren't really interested in the story he wanted to tell, which was how this powerful force of the KGB had oppressed Russia and the Russian people. This was one of my big questions about his motivation, or just maybe said differently, what Matrocan thought was going to happen because he's coming out with an archive of the first chief directorate's files, right? The foreign intelligence arm of the KGB. He's not presumably coming out with a lot of documents related to the second chief directorate,

which is the internal security element of the organization. And I would think if the stories of the book, if he wants it to be Russia focused, it's almost by definition not going to be because it's all about Russia spying overseas, recruiting people overseas. So it does feel to me somewhat predictable that the stories would not focus on the more repressive elements of the KGB internally that he wanted the sort of to shine a

light on. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, he had collected some material about the repression of dissidents. And also, interestingly enough, the first chief director at the foreign arm of the KGB was doing was hunting down dissidents abroad or spying on defectors or even ballet dancers. They were talking about breaking the legs of Rudolf Nureyev, the ballet dancer, or spying on chess players because of the Soviet Union's kind of insecurity and also sending some of its deep cover illegals to do things like pose as Westerners in Czechoslovakia in 1968 during the Prague Spring to try and understand and manipulate reformist movements in the Eastern Bloc. So he's

trying to focus on that, but that's not what this book is going to be about or what people are interested in this book for. And I think it's one of the problems. And it's also coming out 1999. Of course, this is a moment when everyone thinks that the Cold War is over. It's long gone. And it's just something from history. And it's a kind of historical interest to people. But Matrokin almost uniquely, I think, understands that that's a mistake. That actually, it's not just about history, but it's about something deeper and more persistent. And I think it's really interesting. And this is what I found as I looked at his life in Britain after 92, late 90s, early

2000s. He actually could see in a way that I think others couldn't, that something was happening in Russia that suggested that that enemy which he'd been fighting was still there. And I think we talked about him viewing this as a kind of beast, as a creature, as a three-headed hydro or dragon, and one of those being the KGB. Now, of course, the KGB is technically gone at this time. It's turned into the Domestic Security Service in Russia, the FSB, and the Foreign Service, the SBR. But in a sense, what Mitrokin sees is that the motivating ideology behind it has actually outlasted the end of the Soviet Union. And that motivating ideology in his

mind is something called Czechism, which is, we should explain a bit about that. The Cheka was the name of the forerunner of the KGB, or one of the forerunners of the KGB. It was the original security service created by Felix Jezhinsky after the 1917 revolution. And he sees Chekism as a force. And I think it's right, isn't it, that this idea of Chekism still persists in Russia today. Well, there's Chekis Day, Gordon, in Russia. December 20th is the sort of celebration of the founding of the Cheka in, I believe, 1917. And what is fascinating about the idea of a Czechus Day is a couple things. Number one, there are big speeches made at the intelligence services of the Russian Federation celebrating Felix Drzezinski's founding of the Cheka. Vladimir Putin participates in this.

It's a big celebration. It is directly connecting the Russian security services of today to the post-Zarist period. The contrast, I guess, couldn't be more different with the Stasi in East Germany, which were disbanded. The archive was opened to the public for the most part, the parts that weren't shredded. And Germany sort of had to come to terms with this highly repressive, invasive security apparatus that had repressed the people during the Cold War. In the Soviet Union and then in now modern Russia, we actually have the continued celebration of that security service and an honoring of that lineage that goes back over a hundred years.

I mean, I think it's also really interesting. Like if you look at the Soviet Union, you look at the way it sort of developed in the 70s and 80s, eventually the KGB became the most effective institution Soviet Union, you look at the way it sort of developed in the 70s and 80s, eventually the KGB became the most effective institution, the most coherent institution in the country. And it became kind of an intelligence state. The Soviet Union by its deathbed was an intelligence state effectively run by the KGB. And I think that's what it seems to me like that's what Matrokin is trying to kill. He wants to kill that Czechist thing and prevent it from continuing through the 90s. But of course, that doesn't happen. No, and crucially, he can see that in 1999,

what's also happening as that book comes out, is that a Czechist is becoming the head of the Russian state, is first going to become prime minister and then president, and that's Vladimir Putin. I mean, that is a man who came through the KGB, who is, if you like, a product of the KGB and of the Czechist ideology, and who very much ascribes to it, you know, there's no such thing as a former Czechist, he'll joke himself. And so, and Metroc in I think it's fascinating at this time can see that and he writes about it and he writes about how the nomenclatura, which was the name of the Soviet elite may have disappeared, but he talks about a new nomenclatura appearing, which is the kind of oligarchs and businessmen, but also he is still seeing this Czechist ideology persist at a time when it's worth saying, Western leaders, Tony Blair,

George Bush, are seeing Putin thinking that he's a man they can do business with. And Metrocyn is there going, I see a Czechist. I can see someone who represents that enemy, the suppression of truth, the suppression of people, the suppression of dissidents and free speech that I have been fighting against all my life, and which I've been trying in my archive to warn the world about. The line from Bieleck-Zyrzynski that I think very much captures the spirit of Czechism and that's always stuck with me is in describing what the Czechos were doing, he wrote back in 1917, we stand for organized terror.

The idea that it is a repressive apparatus designed to control and designed to sow chaos abroad to weaken Russia's enemies. I mean, it's persisted up to today. Another angle here to the story, Gordon, that I just find fascinating and couldn't help but draw some parallels to this modern example of someone a bit like Matrokin was the Syrian military defector Caesar, who came out with 50- some thousand pictures of the sort of industrial scale repression in Assad's dungeons. There's definitely an immense amount of tragedy to Matrocan's story, but at the same time,

he's very emblematic of these sorts of, I guess, defectors who end up bringing out real hard facts and data from inside an intelligence service. Because normally you think of intelligence services either boxing the stuff up forever or in the midst of a collapse, destroying most of the relevant material. And because he had copied it all in the 70s and 80s, like Caesar taking all these pictures of really victims of Assad's repression and torture, there's no way that the Russians could look at what Matrokin brought out and say it's false or fabricated, right? Because he's actually just bringing out hard facts. So in some sense, there's got to be victory for him in that, right?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, he's brought out these hard facts and actually, in some cases, the KGB tried to destroy some of his files. And so the only copy that exists is the one that Mitrokin made and took out, which now lies in the West. And actually, you can see almost all of the archives is now available to see at Churchill College, Cambridge, and you can go and see it's in Russian. You can see the notes that he wrote from all those files. So they are there as a testament to him. And actually, they were deposited by Vladimir, his son. So Mitrokin himself will die in 2004, but his son will outlast him for another 10 years. And his son is the one who will deposit those files with Churchill College and will do what he

can to preserve his father's legacy and to make sure people understand what he did, and the truth that he wanted to use as a weapon. But I do think there is this tragedy that he dealt a blow with his weapon to the KGB and to the Czechist ideology, but not a mortal one. It's persisted. It's still there. It's taken, I think, people years to recognise its persistence and to understand it and to fully appreciate it. Just a few years ago they put up a new statue to Felix Jirginski at Yesenavo, the place where Mitrokin used to work, representing that continuity, I think, of the Czechist ideology, of the ideology that Mitrokin fought. So I think it is a tragedy ultimately, that he, he wanted to warn the world about what he could see, because he

knew his enemy better, I think, than anyone, because he'd worked in the belly of the beast, as it were, in the Libyanka and in the archives. And yet, I think people weren't really able or willing to listen to what he was telling them. So anyway, Gordon, the triumph and the tragedy of Vasily Matrokin will conclude our dive into the archive. And I'll of course mention here for my Intrepid co-host that listeners who have enjoyed this should absolutely 100% here in a few days go out and get Gordon's wonderful new book that we've been talking about and drawing from. We'll have a link for folks

to buy that book in the show notes. And I guess Gordon, we'd also be remiss if we didn't mention that members of our Declassified Club can of course get early access to all of these series that we're doing. So please do join the club. You can go to therestisclassified.com and become a member right now. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. See you next time.