Oleg Gordievsky, who was the highest Ok.G.B. agent in London till he defected to the West in 1985 and revealed himself as a longtime double agent for British intelligence — making him probably the most extremely positioned Western spies in the course of the Chilly Warfare — was discovered lifeless at his residence in Godalming, southwest of London, on March 4. He was 86.
The native police, who found his physique, mentioned that they didn’t consider foul play was concerned however that an investigation was ongoing.
The British overseas intelligence company, MI6, first recruited Mr. Gordievsky in 1974, when he was primarily based in Copenhagen. In 1982 he moved to London, the place the Ok.G.B. tasked him with seeding disinformation about Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher earlier than the following yr’s normal election.
In observe he helped the British root out secret operatives and informants working for the Soviet Union. He stored up sufficient of a entrance to please his Ok.G.B. bosses in Moscow, who quickly promoted him to rezident, or head agent, in Britain.
He additionally performed an important function in stopping what might have grow to be World Warfare III.
By the early Nineteen Eighties, the Soviets have been satisfied that america was planning a first-strike nuclear assault beneath the guise of a serious NATO train, a suspicion underlined by President Ronald Reagan’s bellicose rhetoric.
As NATO carried out the train, often known as In a position Archer 83, the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact allies moved onto a battle footing. Historians take into account this to have been the closest second to world battle because the Cuban Missile Disaster in 1962.
Mr. Gordievsky was in a novel place to work each side. He was in a position to persuade Moscow that an assault was not in reality imminent whereas additionally speaking Soviet fears to the British and the People. Consequently, Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Reagan pared again their language, and future navy workouts have been extra restricted.
All of this remained secret for years afterward, and within the meantime Mr. Gordievsky needed to watch his personal again. In 1985 he was recalled to Moscow, given medication and interrogated. Somebody, it appeared, had tipped off the Ok.G.B. to the presence of a high-ranking mole in London.
Missing strong proof, the Soviets positioned him on depart. A couple of days later he appeared at 7 p.m. on a Moscow avenue nook, holding a procuring bag. A person quickly handed, consuming a sweet bar. They locked eyes.
That was the sign to activate Operation Pimlico, an emergency extraction. Mr. Gordievsky shook his Ok.G.B. tail after which hurried to the Finnish border. Two British brokers, a person and a girl, together with their child, awaited him there of their Ford Sierra.
They positioned him within the trunk, wrapped in a foil sheet to confuse warmth detectors. When canines on the border grew suspicious, the brokers started to alter the kid’s diaper, filling the automobile with odors that threw the canines off Mr. Gordievsky’s scent.
After they have been lastly throughout, they performed Jean Sibelius’s “Finlandia” symphony on the automobile’s sound system, a sign to Mr. Gordievsky that he was secure.
Again in Moscow, he was sentenced to loss of life in absentia. That sentence has by no means been rescinded.
Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky was born on Oct. 10, 1938, in Moscow. His father, Anton, was an agent with the N.Ok.V.D., the forerunner of the Ok.G.B., and his mom, Olga, was a statistician. His father was a dedicated Communist, however his mom quietly reviled the celebration, an perspective that enormously influenced her son.
Nonetheless, there was no query the place his future lay. He graduated from the elite Moscow State Institute of Worldwide Relations in 1961, and he joined the Ok.G.B. two years later.
After an preliminary posting in East Berlin, he did two excursions on the Soviet Embassy in Copenhagen, with time in between to enhance his spycraft.
However as he rose within the Ok.G.B. ranks, he additionally grew disillusioned with Communism. In Germany he had seen the newly erected Berlin Wall break up households, and from afar he had watched the Soviet Union crush the Prague Spring motion of 1968.
Engaged on a suggestion from a double agent who was a former colleague of Mr. Gordievsky’s, British intelligence brokers started to really feel him out in Copenhagen. As soon as he turned, he was thought-about among the many West’s prize property — so prized that the People and even Mrs. Thatcher didn’t know his id.
Whereas persevering with to supply intelligence to Moscow — bits of low-value data fed to him by his MI6 handlers — he helped Western governments uncover spies inside their ranks. Amongst them have been Arne Treholt, a Norwegian diplomat, and Michael Bettaney, a British counterintelligence officer who in 1983 tried to move categorised paperwork to Arkady Guk, the rezident on the time.
The following scandal led the Soviets to recall Mr. Guk, opening the door for Mr. Gordievsky to interchange him.
Each side within the Chilly Warfare used moles like Mr. Gordievsky to hunt for spies. It was later revealed that his cowl was blown by Aldrich Ames, a C.I.A. officer who started working for the Soviets in 1985. Mr. Gordievsky was one of many first double brokers Mr. Ames uncovered and one of many few who escaped; almost a dozen others have been executed.
After defecting, Mr. Gordievsky lived beneath an assumed identify in Godalming however continued to advise British intelligence. Because the Chilly Warfare wound down, he started writing beneath his personal identify, together with articles for The Day by day Telegraph and the books “KGB: The Inside Story” (1990), a collaboration with the historian Christopher Andrew, and “Subsequent Cease Execution: The Autobiography of Oleg Gordievsky” (1995).
His story was additionally the topic of “The Spy and the Traitor: The Best Espionage Story of the Chilly Warfare” (2018), by Ben Macintyre.
Mr. Gordievsky’s first marriage, to Yelena Akopian, a fellow Ok.G.B. agent, led to divorce. He married Leila Aliyeva in 1979.
After defecting, Mr. Gordievsky spent years making an attempt to get the Soviet Union to permit his spouse and their two daughters, Mariya and Anna, to affix him. They arrived in Britain in 1991, however the couple quickly divorced.
Mr. Gordievsky’s survivors embody his daughters.
Starting within the mid-2000s, Mr. Gordievsky raised alarms in regards to the rising authoritarian rule of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, together with his deployment of a strong community of spies and subversives.
When his pal and fellow defector Alexander Litvinenko was fatally poisoned by Russian brokers in London in 2006, Mr. Gordievsky started to concern for his life. When he fell ailing and went into a brief coma in 2008, he maintained that he, too, had been poisoned by Russian brokers.
Mr. Gordievsky continued to warn about renewed Russian espionage, saying that Britain had naïvely lowered its defenses.
“It’s simpler than ever to work and recruit right here,” he wrote in The Day by day Telegraph in 2010. “If something, the general Russian espionage presence in Britain is now larger and extra lively than in my time.”
