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Great Illegals
The Great Illegals were a group of Soviet Comintern espionage agents whom MI5 counterintelligence agent Peter Wright grouped together due to their masterful espionage activities against the west. Often, they were generally foreigners but held Russian citizenship and were ideologically driven. They were trotskyist communists who believed in international communism and the comintern. Wright considered them the best recruiters and controllers (espionage directors) that Soviet intelligence ever produced. They knew each other, and together they recruited and built a number of high-grade espionage networks in hostile foreign countries, across the world. Examples of these were, Arnold Deutsch who recruited Kim Philby of the Cambridge Five in Britain the Red Three (Rote Drei) in Switzerland run by Alexander Radó or Leopold Trepper's network the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle) in German-occupied Europe, and Richard Sorge Richard Gustavovich Sorge (; 4 October 1895 – 7 November 1944) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Communist International
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second International during World War I, the Comintern was founded in March 1919 at a congress in Moscow convened by Vladimir Lenin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (RCP), which aimed to create a new international body committed to revolutionary socialism and the overthrow of capitalism worldwide. Initially, the Comintern operated with the expectation of imminent proletarian revolutions in Europe, particularly Germany, which were seen as crucial for the survival and success of the Russian Revolution. Its early years were characterized by attempts to foment and coordinate revolutionary uprisings and the establishment of disciplined communist parties across the globe, often demanding strict adherence to the "Twe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Counterintelligence
Counterintelligence (counter-intelligence) or counterespionage (counter-espionage) is any activity aimed at protecting an agency's Intelligence agency, intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or other Intelligence field, intelligence activities conducted by, for, or on behalf of foreign powers, organizations or persons. Many countries will have multiple organizations focusing on a different aspect of counterintelligence, such as domestic, international, and counter-terrorism. Some states will formalize it as part of the police structure, such as the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Others will establish independent bodies, such as the United Kingdom's MI5, others have both intelligence and counterintelligence grouped under the same agency, like the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). History Modern tactics of espiona ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Wright (MI5 Officer)
Peter Maurice Wright CBE (9 August 191626 April 1995) was a principal scientific officer for MI5, the British counter-intelligence agency. His book '' Spycatcher'', written with Paul Greengrass, became an international bestseller with sales of over two million copies. ''Spycatcher'' was part memoir, part exposé detailing what Wright claimed were serious institutional failures he investigated within MI5. Wright is said to have been influenced in his counterespionage activity by James Jesus Angleton, counter-intelligence chief of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1954 to 1975. Early life Peter Wright was born at 26 Cromwell Road, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, the son of (George) Maurice Wright CBE, director of research for the Marconi Company, who was one of the founders of signals intelligence during the First World War.Peter MartlandWright, Peter Maurice (1916–1995) ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (OUP, 2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/57934 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trotskyism
Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an orthodox Marxist, a Revolutionary socialism, revolutionary Marxist, and a Bolshevik–Leninist as well as a follower of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Karl Liebknecht, and Rosa Luxemburg. His relations with Lenin have been a source of intense historical debate. However, on balance, scholarly opinion among a range of prominent historians and political scientists such as E.H. Carr, Isaac Deutscher, Moshe Lewin, Ronald Suny, Richard B. Day and W. Bruce Lincoln was that Lenin’s desired “heir” would have been a collective leadership, collective responsibility in which Trotsky was placed in "an important role and within which Joseph Stalin, Stalin would be dramatically demoted (if not removed)". Trotsky advocated for a decen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World Communism
World communism, also known as global communism or international communism, is a form of communism placing emphasis on an international scope rather than being individual communist states. The long-term goal of world communism is an unlimited worldwide communist society that is classless, moneyless, stateless, and nonviolent, which may be achieved through an intermediate-term goal of either a voluntary association of sovereign states as a global alliance, or a world government as a single worldwide state. A series of internationals have proposed world communism as a primary goal, including the First International, the Second International, the Third International (the Communist International or Comintern), the Fourth International, the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, Maoist Internationalist Movement, the World Socialist Movement, and variant offshoots. The methods and political theories of each International remain distinct in their pursuit of the global commun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arnold Deutsch
Arnold Deutsch (1903–1942?), variously described as Austrian, Czech or Hungarian, was an academic who worked in London as a Soviet spy, best known for having recruited Kim Philby. Much of his life remains unknown or disputed. Early life He was a cousin of Oscar Deutsch, the proprietor of the Odeon Cinemas chain. Though he claimed to be an observant Jew to disguise his role as a Communist agent, Deutsch was in fact lapsed in his religious beliefs. At the age of 24, Deutsch received his PhD with distinction in chemistry from the University of Vienna. He was also a follower of Wilhelm Reich and his "sex-pol" movement. Espionage career At the same time, Deutsch embarked on his lifelong involvement with Communism and the Soviet Union. In the 1920s he was working for the OMS, the International Liaison Department of the Comintern. A co-worker of his there was Edith Suschitzky, whom he met at 1926 in Vienna and who would be instrumental in his later espionage career. Soon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 191211 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963, he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring that had divulged British secrets to the Soviets during World War II and in the early stages of the Cold War. Of the five, Philby is believed to have been the most successful in providing secret information to the Soviets. Born in British India, Philby was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was recruited by Soviet intelligence in 1934. After leaving Cambridge, Philby worked as a journalist, covering the Spanish Civil War and the Battle of France. In 1940, he began working for the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6). By the end of the Second World War he had become a high-ranking member. In 1949, Philby was appointed first secretary to the British Embassy in Washington and served as chief British liaison with Americ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cambridge Five
The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during the Second World War and the Cold War and was active from the 1930s until at least the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted for spying. The number and membership of the ring emerged slowly, from the 1950s onwards. The general public first became aware of the conspiracy in 1951 after the sudden flight of Donald Maclean (1913–1983, codename Homer) and Guy Burgess (1911–1963, codename Hicks) to the Soviet Union. Suspicion immediately fell on Kim Philby (1912–1988, codenames Sonny, Stanley), who eventually fled to the Soviet Union in 1963. Following Philby's flight, British intelligence obtained confessions from Anthony Blunt (1907–1983, codename Johnson) and then John Cairncross (1913–1995, codename Liszt), who have come to be seen as the last two of a group of five. Their involvement was kept secret for many years: until 1979 for Blun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Three
The Red Three () was the Switzerland section of the so-called Red Orchestra. It was established and maintained by Soviet Military Intelligence Staff Division 4. Name history, and activities The terms ''Red Three'', and ''Red Orchestra'' respectively, were invented by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), the counter-espionage arm of the SS. As an essential part of the ''Red Orchestra'', the ''Red Three (radio stations)'' (de: die ''Roten Drei (Funkstellen)'') were outside the reach of German security forces, located in Switzerland. It was headed by Alexander Radó (code name: DORA), a Hungarian émigré, Communist, and geographer. The ''Red Three'' was founded in 1936, when ''Radó'' arrived in Geneva. By April 1942, the organization had been established with ''Radó'' as group leader, and also had three subgroup leaders: Rachel Dübendorfer (code name: SISSY), Georges Blun (code name: LONG), and Otto Pünter (code name: PAKBO). After the imprisonment of Leopold Trepper (cod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Radó
Alexander Radó (also ''Alexander Radolfi'', ''Sándor Kálmán Reich'', ''Alexander Rado''; born Sándor Radó, ; 5 November 1899 – 20 August 1981) was a Hungarian cartographer who later became a Soviet Union, Soviet military Intelligence (information gathering), intelligence-agent in World War II. Radó (codename "DORA") was also a member of the resistance () to Nazi Germany, devoted to the service of the so-called Red Orchestra (espionage), Red Orchestra, the Soviet espionage and spy network in Western Europe between 1933 and 1945. Within the Red Orchestra, he headed the Switzerland-based Red Three (espionage), Red Three group, one of the most efficient components of the Soviet intelligence network. Life Radó was born into a middle-class List of Hungarian Jews, Jewish family in Újpest, at the time an industrial suburb of Budapest. His father ( Gábor Reich) was first a clerk at a trading firm and later became a wealthy businessman through the ownership of a small timber ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leopold Trepper
Leopold Zakharovich Trepper (23 February 1904 – 19 January 1982) was a Polish- Israeli Communist, career Soviet military intelligence officer of the Red Army Intelligence and resistance fighter. With the code name Otto, Trepper had worked with the Red Army since 1930. Trepper and Richard Sorge, a Soviet military intelligence officer, were the two main Soviet agents in Europe and were employed as ''roving agents'' to set up espionage networks throughout Europe and in Japan. While Sorge was a penetration agent, Trepper ran a series of clandestine cells for organising agents in Europe. Trepper used the latest technology at the time—small wireless radios—to communicate with Soviet intelligence. Although the Funkabwehr's monitoring of the radios transmission eventually led to the destruction of Trepper's organisation, this sophisticated use of the technology enabled the espionage organisation to behave as a network with the ability to achieve tactical surprise and deliver ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Orchestra (espionage)
The Red Orchestra (, ) was the name given by the Abwehr Section III.F to anti-Nazi resistance workers in Germany in August 1941. It primarily referred to a loose network of resistance groups, connected through personal contacts, uniting hundreds of opponents of the Nazi regime. These included groups of friends who held discussions that were centred on Harro Schulze-Boysen, Adam Kuckhoff and Arvid Harnack in Berlin, alongside many others. They printed and distributed prohibited leaflets, posters, and stickers, hoping to incite civil disobedience. They aided Jews and resistance to escape the regime, documented the atrocities of the Nazis, and transmitted military intelligence to the Allies. Contrary to legend, the Red Orchestra was neither directed by Soviet communists nor under a single leadership. It was a network of groups and individuals, often operating independently. To date, about 400 members are known by name. The term was also used by the German Abwehr to refer to as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
