Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin (russian: link=no, Васи́лий Ники́тич Митро́хин; March 3, 1922 – January 23, 2004) was a major and senior archivist for the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
's foreign intelligence service, the
First Chief Directorate of the
KGB, who defected to the United Kingdom in 1992 after providing the British embassy in
Riga
Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the ...
with a vast collection of his notes purporting to be written copies of KGB files. These became known as the
Mitrokhin Archives.
The intelligence files given by Mitrokhin to the
MI6 exposed an unknown number of Soviet agents, including
Melita Norwood.
He was co-author with
Christopher Andrew of ''The 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
Mitrokhin was born in
Yurasovo, in
Central Russia,
Ryazan Oblast,
Russian SFSR
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...
. After leaving school, he entered artillery school, then attended university in
Kazakh SSR, graduating with degrees in history and law.
Career
Military
Towards the end of the
second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
, Mitrokhin took a job in
prosecutor
A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the common law adversarial system or the civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the case in a criminal tria ...
's office in
Kharkiv
Kharkiv ( uk, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest city and municipality in Ukraine. in the
Ukrainian SSR
The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic ( uk, Украї́нська Радя́нська Соціалісти́чна Респу́бліка, ; russian: Украи́нская Сове́тская Социалисти́ческая Респ ...
. He entered the
MGB as 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 the
Olympic Games
The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a multi ...
in 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
Mitrokhin sometimes dated the beginnings of his disillusionment to
Nikita Khrushchev's famous speech to the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
" Hymn of the Bolshevik Party"
, headquarters = 4 Staraya Square, Moscow
, general_secretary = Vladimir Lenin (first) Mikhail Gorbachev (last)
, founded =
, banned =
, founder = Vladimir Lenin
, newspape ...
congress denouncing
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union, Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as Ge ...
, though it seems he may have been harbouring doubts for some time before that. For years, he had listened to broadcasts on the
BBC and
Voice of America
Voice of America (VOA or VoA) is the State media, state-owned news network and International broadcasting, international radio broadcaster of the United States, United States of America. It is the largest and oldest U.S.-funded international br ...
, 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's
systematic repression of 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."
Between 1972 and 1984, he supervised the move of the archive of the First Chief Directorate from the
Lubyanka to the new KGB headquarters at
Yasenevo. While doing so, he made handwritten copies and immensely detailed notes of documents from the archive. He retired in 1985.
Defection
During the Soviet era, Mitrokhin made no attempts to contact any Western intelligence services. After the
dissolution of the Soviet Union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...
in 1991, he traveled to
Latvia
Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...
with copies of material from the archive and walked into the American embassy in
Riga
Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the ...
.
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
officers there did not consider him to be credible, concluding that the copied documents could have been faked. 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 the
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intellige ...
(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 then
exfiltrated to the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...
, 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 the
dacha
A dacha ( rus, дача, p=ˈdatɕə, a=ru-dacha.ogg) is a seasonal or year-round second home, often located in the exurbs of post-Soviet countries, including Russia. A cottage (, ') or shack serving as a family's main or only home, or an outbu ...
.
Mitrokhin Archive
These works are collectively referred to as the
Mitrokhin 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, ; trade paperback (September 2000),
*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 pages
*
*Vasiliy Mitrokhin, ''KGB Lexicon: The Soviet Intelligence Officer's Handbook'', Frank Cass & Co. Ltd (2002), 451 pages,
*''"Chekisms", Tales of the Cheka, A KGB Anthology, Compiled and introduced by Vasiliy Mitrokhin.
"Чекизмы". The Yurasov Press (2008), 435 pages, . (The book could be obtained from any copyright library).
Other publications
*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
*
Mitrokhin Archive
*
List of Eastern Bloc defectors
A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to:
People
* List (surname)
Organizations
* List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
* SC Germania List, German rugby union ...
*
List of KGB defectors
This is a list of KGB officers and agents who have defected.
See also
* List of GRU defectors
* List of Soviet and Eastern Bloc defectors
* List of Soviet Union defections
* List of Cold War pilot defections
* Petrov Affair
References
Fur ...
References
Sources
* ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ( ...
'', January 29, 200
* ''
The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.
It was f ...
'', February 2, 2004
External links
The Mitrokhin Archivefro
the Cold War International History Project*
*
The Papers of Vasiliy Mitrokhinheld at
Churchill Archives Centre
The Churchill Archives Centre (CAC) at Churchill College at the University of Cambridge is one of the largest repositories in the United Kingdom for the preservation and study of modern personal papers. It is best known for housing the papers of ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mitrokhin, Vasili
1922 births
2004 deaths
People from Ryazansky District, Ryazan Oblast
KGB officers
Soviet military personnel of World War II
Soviet intelligence personnel who defected to the United Kingdom
Soviet archivists
Historians of espionage
Russian non-fiction writers
Soviet spies
Cold War spies