Oleg Gordievsky

I decided to read this book after reading The Spy and the Traitor by Ben MacIntyre which is about Oleg Gordievsky. I really enjoyed that book and felt that it would be interesting to read the story from the point of view of the man who it was about. I was slightly worried that it would be the same story as told by Macintyre but felt it was worth a shot. Gordievsky starts with his escape from the Soviet Union and then circles back to his life and how we ended up in the KGB. I generally don't like it when autobiographies of famous people do this as I want to read about the thing that made them famous not a dreary childhood. However, this book is the exception because the whole back story is a great insight into how life was for someone growing up on the privileged side of Soviet life. We get a really detailed look into how the atmosphere of fear and suspicion of life was created and how is affected everyone regardless of where they sat in the hierarchy of society.… (meer)