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Title: Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War
Author: Pete Early
Genre: Biography
Thingummies: 3.5
Synopsis: The authorized biography of the KGB rezident for the Russian UN mission, who defected in 2000.
Thoughts: I'll admit right off the bat that I have no idea how much of this is true. The author seems reasonably well known and does seem to believe most of what Tretyakov claims. Many of the people he claimed as agents or informants deny it, which they naturally would do. So take this with a grain of salt.
That said, it's a reasonably interesting look behind the scenes of the KGB/SVR. Tretyakov was one of their better operatives; he quit in disgust at the corruption and incompetence of modern Russia, after the hope of glasnost. We learn about his training, various Russian spy techniques, many of the agents he ran, how Russia stole billions of dollars through the Oil-for-Food Iraq program, and the staggering (but well-known) corruption following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. (Not that Tretyakov claims that the Soviet Union was perfect--he was fairly exasperated with them, too. But it was the exasperation of someone with a beloved but embarrassingly racist grandmother, whereas the new regime did not even capture his loyalty through virtue of being what he grew up with.)
There are no feats of derring-do here--the most exciting bits are a faked lobster dinner and some clandestine dumping of smashed equipment in a river in the middle of the night. Tretyakov was an accomplished recruiter and bureaucrat, not James Bond. This isn't a page-turner. But for a look into relatively modern Russian espionage, it's detailed and interesting.
Author: Pete Early
Genre: Biography
Thingummies: 3.5
Synopsis: The authorized biography of the KGB rezident for the Russian UN mission, who defected in 2000.
Thoughts: I'll admit right off the bat that I have no idea how much of this is true. The author seems reasonably well known and does seem to believe most of what Tretyakov claims. Many of the people he claimed as agents or informants deny it, which they naturally would do. So take this with a grain of salt.
That said, it's a reasonably interesting look behind the scenes of the KGB/SVR. Tretyakov was one of their better operatives; he quit in disgust at the corruption and incompetence of modern Russia, after the hope of glasnost. We learn about his training, various Russian spy techniques, many of the agents he ran, how Russia stole billions of dollars through the Oil-for-Food Iraq program, and the staggering (but well-known) corruption following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. (Not that Tretyakov claims that the Soviet Union was perfect--he was fairly exasperated with them, too. But it was the exasperation of someone with a beloved but embarrassingly racist grandmother, whereas the new regime did not even capture his loyalty through virtue of being what he grew up with.)
There are no feats of derring-do here--the most exciting bits are a faked lobster dinner and some clandestine dumping of smashed equipment in a river in the middle of the night. Tretyakov was an accomplished recruiter and bureaucrat, not James Bond. This isn't a page-turner. But for a look into relatively modern Russian espionage, it's detailed and interesting.
