Oleg Gordievsky, a Soviet Kgb The officer has died who helped change the course of the Cold War, passing covertly in Britain. He was 86 years old.
Gordievsky died on March 4 in England, where he had lived since the defect in 1985. Police said on Saturday that he did not treat his death as a suspect.
Historians consider Gordievsky one of the most important spies of the time. In the 1980’s, his intelligence helped prevent a dangerous climb of nuclear tensions between the USSR and the West.
Born in Moscow in 1938, Gordievsky joined the KGB in the early 1960’s, at the Moscow, Copenhagen and London service, where he became head of KGB station.
He was one of the several Soviet agents who disappointed with the USSR after Moscow tanks crushed the Prague Spring Freedom movement in 1968 and was recruited by the British MI6 in the early 1970’s.
The 1990 book KGB: The Inner HistoryCo -author of the Gordievsky and British intelligence historian, Christopher Andrew, says Gordievsky believed that « the communist state of a party inexorably leads to the bigotry, inhumanity and destruction of freedoms. »
He decided that the best way to fight for democracy was to work in the West. «
He worked for British intelligence for more than a decade during the Coldiest Years of the Cold War.
In 1983, Gordievsky warned in the United Kingdom and the United States that Soviet leadership was so worried about a nuclear attack by the West that a first strike was raised.
As tensions increased during a NATO military exercise in Germany, Gordievsky helped to reassure Moscow, which was not a precursor to a nuclear attack.
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Shortly afterwards, President of the United States Ronald Reagan He began movements to relieve nuclear tensions with the Soviet Union.
In 1984, Gordievsky soon reported Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev before his first visit to the United Kingdom, and also reported the British on how to approach the Gorbachov reformist. Gorbachov’s meeting with the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher It was a huge success.
Ben Macintyre, author of a book about the double agent, « The spy and the traitor, » told the BBC that Gordievsky managed « secretly to launch the beginning of the end of the Cold War ».
Most Soviet spies senior for defects
Gordievsky was called to Moscow for consultations in 1985 and decided to go, despite fear that his role as a double agent had been exposed.
He was drugged and questioned, but not accused, and Britain organized a covert operation by spirit outside the Soviet Union: he smuggled on the border to Finland in the trunk of a car.
It was the largest Soviet espionage to defect during the Cold War.
Declassified documents in 2014 showed that Britain considered Gordievsky so valuable that Thatcher tried to cut an agreement with Moscow: if Gordievsky’s wife and daughters were allowed to join him in London, Britain would not expel all the KGB agents he had exposed.
Moscow rejected the offer, and Thatcher ordered 25 Russians’ expulsion, despite the objections of Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe, who released his relationships in the same way as Gorbev relieved the shutdown between Russia and the West.
Moscow responded by expelling 25 British, causing a second round in which each side expelled six more officers.
But despite the fears of Howe, diplomatic relations were never cut off.
Gordievsky’s family remained under the 24-hour KGB surveillance for six years before being authorized to join England in 1991.
He lived the rest of his life under the protection of the United Kingdom in the quiet city of Godalming, 64 kilometers south -west of London.
Death is not treated as suspicious
In Russia, Gordievsky was sentenced to death for betrayal.
In Britain, Queen Elizabeth II named him a companion of the Order of Saint Michael and Sant Jordi in 2007 for « UK Security Services ».
It is the same recognition of British fictional espionage James Bond.
In 2008, Gordievsky stated that he had been poisoned and spent 34 hours in a coma after taking sleeping tablets that gave him a Russian business partner.
The risks he faced was emphasized in 2018 when the former Russian intelligence officer SERGEI SKRIPAL And her daughter was poisoned and seriously ill with a Soviet nervous agent in the English city of Salisbury, where she had been living quietly for years.
The Surrey police force said that the officers were called to an address in Godalming on March 4, where « an 86 -year -old man was found dead on the property. »
He said that officers against terrorism are leading the investigation, but « death is currently not being considered suspicious » and « there is nothing that suggests a greater risk for members of the public. »
& Copy 2025 The Canadian Press
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