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Vasili Mitrokhin

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In this name that followsEastern Slavic naming customs,thepatronymicisNikitichand thefamily nameisMitrokhin.

Vasili Mitrokhin
Василий Митрохин
Born
Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin

(1922-03-03)3 March 1922
Yurasovo,Ryazan Oblast,Russian SFSR
Died23 January 2004(2004-01-23)(aged 81)
London,England
NationalityRussian, British
EducationHistory and Law
OccupationMilitary
EmployerKGB

Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin(Russian:Васи́лий Ники́тич Митро́хин,romanized:Vasily Nikitich Mitrokhin;March 3, 1922 – January 23, 2004) was an archivist for theSoviet Union's foreign intelligence service, theFirst Chief Directorateof theKGB,who defected to the United Kingdom in 1992. Mitrokhin first offered his matrial to the US'Central Intelligence Agency(CIA) in Latvia but they rejected it as possible fakes.[1]After that, he resorted to the UK's MI6 which arranged his defection from Russia.[2]These notes became known as theMitrokhin Archives.[3][4]

He was co-author withChristopher AndrewofThe 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.

Education[edit]

Mitrokhin was born inYurasovo,inCentral Russia,Ryazan Oblast,Russian SFSR.After leaving school, he entered artillery school, then attended university inKazakh SSR,graduating with degrees in history and law.

Career[edit]

Military[edit]

Towards the end of thesecond World War,Mitrokhin took a job inprosecutor's office inKharkivin theUkrainian SSR.He entered theMGBas a foreign intelligence officer in 1948. His first foreign posting was in 1952.

During the 1950s, he served on various undercover assignments overseas. In 1956, for example, he accompanied the Soviet team to theOlympic Gamesin Australia. Later that year, however, after he had apparently mishandled an operational assignment, he was moved from operational duties to the archives of the KGB's First Chief Directorate and told he would never work in the field again.

Disillusionment[edit]

Mitrokhin sometimes dated the beginnings of his disillusionment toNikita Khrushchev's famous speechto theCommunist Party of the Soviet Unioncongress denouncingJoseph Stalin,though it seems he may have been harbouring doubts for some time before that. For years, he had listened to broadcasts on theBBCandVoice of America,noting the gulf between their reports and party propaganda.

However, when he began looking into the archives, he claimed to have been shocked by what he discovered about the KGB'ssystematic repressionof the Soviet people. "I could not believe such evil", he recalled. "It was all planned, prepared, thought out in advance. It was a terrible shock when I read things."[5]

Between 1972 and 1984, he supervised the move of the archive of the First Chief Directorate from theLubyankato the new KGB headquarters atYasenevo.While doing so, he made handwritten copies and immensely detailed notes of documents from the archive. He retired in 1985.

Defection[edit]

During the Soviet era, Mitrokhin made no attempts to contact any Western intelligence services. After thedissolution of the Soviet Unionin 1991, he traveled toLatviawith copies of material from the archive and walked into the American embassy inRiga.Central Intelligence Agencyofficers there did not consider him to be credible, concluding that the copied documents could have been faked.[1]

He then went to the British embassy and a young diplomat there saw his potential. Following a further meeting one month later with representatives of theSecret Intelligence Service(MI6), operations retrieved the 25,000 pages of files hidden in his house, covering operations from as far back as the 1930s. He and his family were thenexfiltratedto theUnited Kingdom,even though authorities of Yeltsin's Russia were not impeding the free travel abroad of active or retired members of secret services or members of their families.Richard Tomlinson,the MI6 officer imprisoned in 1997 for attempting to publish a book about his career, was one of those involved in retrieving the documents from containers hidden under the floor of thedacha.[6]The notes given by Mitrokhin to theMI6revealed exposures about some unknown number of Soviet agents, includingMelita Norwood.[4]However, Norwood was not charged with an offence.[7]

Mitrokhin Archive[edit]

Main article:Mitrokhin Archive

These handwritten notes of Mitrokhin are collectively referred to as theMitrokhin Archives.

  • Vasili Mitrokhin and Christopher Andrew,The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB,Basic Books (1999), hardcover,ISBN0-465-00310-9;trade paperback (September 2000),ISBN0-465-00312-5
  • Vasili Mitrokhin and Christopher Andrew,The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World,Basic Books (2005) hardcover, 677 pagesISBN0-465-00311-7
  • Andrew, Christopher;— (27 July 2000).The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West.Allen Lane History. Vol. 1.Penguin Books.ISBN0-14-028487-7.OCLC42606302.OL7352280M– viaInternet Archive.
  • Vasiliy Mitrokhin,KGB Lexicon: The Soviet Intelligence Officer's Handbook,Frank Cass & Co. Ltd (2002), 451 pages,ISBN0-7146-5257-1
  • "Chekisms", Tales of the Cheka, A KGB Anthology, Compiled and introduced by Vasiliy Mitrokhin."Чекизмы"The Yurasov Press (2008), 435 pages,ISBN978-0-10-850709-0.(The book could be obtained from any copyright library).

Other publications[edit]

  • Mitrokhin, Vasiliy Nikitich,The KGB in Afghanistan,English Edition, introduced and edited by Christian F. Ostermann and Odd Arne Westad, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Cold War International History Project, Working Paper No. 40, Washington, D.C., February 2002.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^abBrennan, S. (2022).The KGB and the Vatican: Secrets of the Mitrokhin Files.Catholic University of America Press. p. 6.ISBN978-1-949822-22-9.RetrievedJuly 17,2024.
  2. ^Smith, J.; Davis, S. (2017).Historical Dictionary of the Cold War.Historical Dictionaries of War, Revolution, and Civil Unrest. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 198.ISBN978-1-4422-8186-8.
  3. ^Getty, J. Arch (2001). "Review of The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB".The American Historical Review.106(2). Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association: 684–685.doi:10.2307/2651786.ISSN0002-8762.JSTOR2651786.
  4. ^ab"Shaken and stirred".The Economist.November 12, 2016.Archivedfrom the original on April 22, 2018.RetrievedApril 7,2017.
  5. ^"Vasili Mitrokhin".The Telegraph.February 2, 2004.Archivedfrom the original on April 23, 2019.RetrievedApril 30,2017.
  6. ^"Behind a bittersweet industry".Washington Post.January 30, 2004.Archivedfrom the original on August 18, 2020.RetrievedDecember 30,2020.
  7. ^Knightley, Phillip (September 16, 1999)."Everyone's got it wrong: Mrs Norwood is not a traitor, but a national".The Independent.RetrievedJuly 17,2024.

Sources

External links[edit]

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