The Spy in the Archive How one man tried to kill the KGB by Gordon Corera

 When a seemingly old Russian peasant turned up at the British Embassy in Lithuania with what he said were important secret files, the young woman there wasn’t sure about him. However, she decided to take a chance which leads to the amazing story of how brave Vasili Mikrokhin worked for the KGB for forty years and decided to steal the files of an entire archive! Angered by the evil Chekism, which corrupted the whole country, making it a nation of informers enslaved by an evil regime which punished or even killed dissidents, quiet, unobtrusive Mitrokhin decided to alert the world. 

It’s an exciting true story, especially if you love spy novels! However, it is also depressing as we follow the rise of a young Putin, and realise that the West never really learned from its mistakes regarding Russia. I also found the story of Solzhenitsyn and his ideology extremely interesting, especially as I studied One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich at school. I’d read about it before, of course, but it’s explained very clearly here.

The story is explained extremely well but the writing is a bit repetitive for my liking. However, I would like to read other books by this author. There are a lot of them!

I received this free ebook from NetGalley in return for an honest review.