They did not have special access to military secrets and, in fact, became victims of spy mania. During the Cold War, the hunt for KGB, CIA and MI6 agents did not stop for a moment, although it was conducted with varying success. Let's remember the names of the most famous scouts and spies!
Kim Philby (1912 -1988)
What is famous for. A senior British intelligence and counterintelligence officer (ICU), after World War II, he headed the department for interaction between British and American intelligence in the fight against communism. A Soviet agent with pre-war experience, led the "Great Five" - an intelligence network (Guy Burgess, Donald McLean, Anthony Blunt, John Cairncross). These people were the most powerful illegal group operating abroad in the history of Soviet foreign intelligence. After the failure of one of the agents in 1963, he fled to the USSR.
Life after failure. 1963-1988 worked as a KGB consultant for the Western intelligence services, participated in the training of intelligence officers. Awarded with Soviet government awards. Author of the book "My Secret War".
Konon the Young (1922 -1970)
What is famous for. Illegal KGB resident in Great Britain. In 1954 he found himself in Canada under the name of Gordon Lonsdale. A year later he moved to London, opened his own business, became the owner of several companies and a millionaire. Through the network of agents he headed, the USSR received the most valuable information of a military and political nature. Arrested in 1961 on a tip from a defector, sentenced to 25 years in prison.
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Life after failure. In 1964, Molodoy was exchanged for an English intelligence officer, Greville Wynn, arrested in the USSR. After returning home, he worked in the central apparatus of the KGB. He died suddenly from a stroke. A feature film "Dead Season" has been created about his work.
Klaus Fuchs (1911 -1988)
What is famous for. German scientist, nuclear physicist. After Hitler came to power, he fled to England, from 1940 he took part in the creation of the atomic bomb at the University of Birmingham. Voluntarily began to cooperate with Soviet intelligence, which supplied valuable information about the atomic I research of the British. In 1943-1945. worked in the Los Alamos laboratory, USA, without interrupting communications with Soviet intelligence. Arrested in Great Britain in 1950 according to the FBI, sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Life after failure. In 1959 he was released early for good behavior, after which he moved to the GDR. He worked as Deputy Director of the Institute of Nuclear Physics. Laureate of the GDR State Prize, awarded the Order of Karl Marx.
George Blake (born 1922)
What is famous for. Professional English intelligence officer. He was captured in 1951. During the Korean War, where he was recruited by the state security organs of the USSR. For about 10 years he gave away agents and employees of the ICU. He passed on information about the "Berlin tunnel", which made it possible to wiretap secret Soviet underground communication lines. He gave up the defector, Lieutenant General of the State Security Service of the GDR, Robert Bialek, who lived in West Berlin under an assumed name. In 1961, as a result of the betrayal of a Polish intelligence officer, he was arrested, tried, and sentenced to 42 years in prison.
Life after failure. After 4 years, he fled, moved first to Berlin, then to Moscow. For his services in ensuring state security, he was awarded the Orders of Lenin and the Red Banner, and rose to the rank of colonel of foreign intelligence. He wrote a book of memoirs "There is no other choice."
Aldrich Ames (born 1941)
What is famous for. He worked in the CIA, where he headed the department dealing with counterintelligence against the USSR. He loved to live beautifully with his wife Rosaria, the salary was not enough. It was on this basis that he was recruited by the Soviet intelligence in 1985 and until 1994 (!) Transferred to the USSR and then to Russia information about dozens of CIA agents working on our territory. In the United States, it is believed that the result of his activities was the death of nine American agents in the USSR and the disclosure of the secrets of intelligence technology used by the CIA.
Life after failure. In 1994 he was exposed and, together with his wife, was sentenced to life imprisonment. Over the years of cooperation with the special services of our country, he was paid the largest fee - more than $ 2.5 million.
Bogdan Stashinsky (1931 -?)
What is famous for. An employee of the KGB is a "liquidator" who killed the ideologist of Ukrainian nationalist emigrants Lev Rebet in 1957 in the FRG. Two years later, with a shot from a gas pistol loaded with potassium cyanide, he killed the head of the OUN, Stepan Bandera. For this, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR awarded Stashinsky the Order of the Red Banner. In 1961, the day before the erection of the Berlin Wall, Stashinsky fled to West Berlin with his German wife.
Life after failure. He confessed to two murders, was sentenced by a West German court to 8 years. After his release, according to some sources, he lived in the United States with new documents. From that moment on, traces of Stashinsky are lost.
Oleg Penkovsky (1919 -1963)
What is famous for. Colonel of the GRU. worked as deputy chief
of the Department of External Relations of the State Committee for the Coordination of Scientific Research. In the early 1960s, he established contacts with the British and American intelligence services, to which he handed over 7.5 thousand pages (!) Of secret information concerning Soviet ballistic missiles and the composition of rocket fuel. Friendship with the Chief Marshal of Artillery Barents, who led the Rocket Forces, helped to obtain secret information.
Life after failure. As a result of the show trial, he was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court.
Dmitry Polyakov (1921 - 1988)
What is famous for. Major General of the GRU, front-line soldier, head of the Chinese direction in the work of Soviet military intelligence. He offered his services to the FBI and CIA back in 1961. Before retiring in 1980, he managed to "hand over" to the Americans 19 illegal Soviet intelligence agents, 150 foreign agents and 1,500 (!) Active employees of the USSR intelligence services. It is curious that Polyakov, one might say, became a victim of a “colleague” - the same “mole” like himself, only working for the CIA and collaborating with the KGB.
Life after failure. Arrested in 1986 after 25 years as a spy. In 1987 he was sentenced to death and in 1988 he was shot.
Arkady Shevchenko (1930 -1998)
What is famous for. In the 70s of the last century, being a protege of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR A. Gromyko, he worked as a diplomat in the United States. He served as Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations for Political Affairs and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the USSR to this organization. Since 1975, he has regularly informed the CIA about the disagreements in the first Kremlin in the Soviet elite and the strategy that the USSR will adhere to in the negotiations on SALT. In 1978, feeling that he was about to be exposed, he asked for political asylum in the United States.
Life after failure. After Shevchenko handed over to the Americans all the employees of the Soviet special services whom he knew, he fell into fiction. He wrote the book "Break with Moscow", became a very wealthy person. Nevertheless, he died all alone from cirrhosis of the liver.
Oleg Gordievsky (born in 1938)
What is famous for. An employee of the First Main Directorate of the KGB (foreign intelligence). While working at the Soviet embassy in Denmark, he began to cooperate with the British intelligence MI6. In 1982 he was appointed to the Soviet embassy in London, where he took the position of adviser. Since January 1985 - the first resident of the KGB foreign intelligence in London. Issued to the British lists of KGB residents in large Western countries. On suspicion of treason, he was recalled to Moscow, from where he managed to escape (!). In the USSR he was sentenced to death in absentia.
Life after failure. Since 1985 he lives in the suburbs of London, receives a pension from the British government. Gives paid interviews and actively criticizes everything that happens in modern Russia.
Oleg Gerchikov