The topic of defection is taboo in the USSR, and the Soviets, are anxious to silence, downplay, or distort every case of defection. Surprisingly, Vladislav Krasnov reports, the free world has often played along with these Soviet efforts by treating defection primarily as a secretive matter best left to bureaucrats. As a result, defectors' human rights have sometimes been violated, and U.S. national security interests have been poorly served.

When intelligence officers defect, they take with them privileged information and often communicate it to the receiving state.

Alexandra Costa, wife of the first secretary of the Russian Embassy in Washington, relates the account of her escape to freedom, with all its excitement--secret codes and signals, aliases, vicious threats, and encounters with security officers. Hers is the first book to describe what it is to step into an alien land, with a new name, no past, and no friends or business experience. Filled with humor, suspense, emotion, and details about two lands and two ways of life, the book offers a rare insight into the everyday world of an intelligent, educated Russian woman--what she confronted in her own society and what she confronted in American society when she dared to leave her own. ISBN 0-399-13195-7: $16.95.

Stalin's Defectors is the first systematic study of the phenomenon of frontline surrender to the Germans in the Soviet Union's 'Great Patriotic War' against the Nazis in 1941-1945. No other Allied army in the Second World War had such a large share of defectors among its prisoners of war. Based on a broad range of sources, this volume investigates the extent, the context, the scenarios, the reasons, the aftermath, and the historiography of frontline defection. It shows that the most widespread sentiments animating attempts to cross the frontline was a wish to survive this war. Disgruntlement with Stalin's 'socialism' was also prevalent among those who chose to give up and hand themselves over to the enemy. While politics thus played a prominent role in pushing people to commit treason, few desired to fight on the side of the enemy. Hence, while the phenomenon of frontline defection tells us much about the lack of popularity of Stalin's regime, it does not prove that the majority of the population was ready for resistance, let alone collaboration. Both sides of a long-standing debate between those who equate all Soviet captives with defectors, and those who attempt to downplay the phenomenon, then, over-stress their argument. Instead, more recent research on the moods of both the occupied and the unoccupied Soviet population shows that the majority understood its own interest in opposition to both Hitler's and Stalin's regime. The findings of Mark Edele in this study support such an interpretation.

An analysis of the insider information and insights that over eighty Soviet intelligence officer defectors revealed during the first half of the Soviet periodIdentifies 88 Soviet intelligence officer defectors for the period 1917 to 1954, representing a variety of specializations; the most comprehensive list of Soviet intelligence officer defectors compiled to date. Shows the evolution of Soviet threat perceptions and the development of the "e;main enemy"e; concept in the Soviet national security system. Shows fluctuations in the Soviet recruitment and vetting of personnel for sensitive national security positions, corresponding with fluctuations in the stability of the Soviet government. Compiles for the first time corroborative primary sources in English, Russian, French, German, Finnish, Japanese, Latvian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.When intelligence officers defect, they take with them privileged information and often communicate it to the receiving state. This book identifies a group of those defectors from the Soviet elite - intelligence officers - and provides an aggregate analysis of their information to uncover Stalin's strategic priorities and concerns, thus to open a window into Stalin's impenetrable national security decision making. This book uses their information to define Soviet threat perceptions and national security anxieties during Stalin's time as Soviet leader.

The bestselling author of Leaving Berlin and Istanbul Passage “continues to demonstrate that he is up there with the very best...of spy thriller writers” (The Times, UK) with this “fascinating” (The Washington Post) novel about two brothers bound by blood but divided by loyalty. In 1949, Frank Weeks, agent of the newly formed CIA, was exposed as a Communist spy and fled the country to vanish behind the Iron Curtain. Now, twelve years later, he has written his memoirs, a KGB- approved project almost certain to be an international bestseller, and has asked his brother Simon, a publisher, to come to Moscow to edit the manuscript. It’s a reunion Simon both dreads and longs for. The book is sure to be filled with mischief and misinformation; Frank’s motives suspect, the CIA hostile. But the chance to see Frank, his adored older brother, proves irresistible. And at first Frank is still Frank—the same charm, the same jokes, the same bond of affection that transcends ideology. Then Simon begins to glimpse another Frank, capable of treachery and actively working for “the service.” He finds himself dragged into the middle of Frank’s new scheme, caught between the KGB and the CIA in a fatal cat and mouse game that only one of the brothers is likely to survive. “A finely paced Cold War thriller with [Kanon’s] usual flair for atmospheric detail, intriguing characters, and suspenseful action” (Library Journal), Defectors takes us to the heart of a world of secrets, where even the people we know best can’t be trusted and murder is just collateral damage.