Oleg Gordievsky (right) with US President Ronald Reagan (left).

Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky (Russian: ???? ????????? ???????????), CMG (born 10 October 1938 in Moscow, Russia), was a Colonel of the KGB and KGB Resident-designate (rezident) and bureau chief in London, who defected to the United Kingdom. He became the highest-ranking KGB defector.

Early career

Oleg Gordievsky attended the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, and on completion of his studies, joined the foreign service where he was posted to East Berlin in August 1961, just prior to completion of the Berlin Wall. He joined the KGB in 1963, and was posted to the Soviet embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Double agent

During his Danish posting, Gordievsky became disenchanted with his work and his country, particularly after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 – sentiment that did not go unnoticed by the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, who sent an officer from the British embassy to make contact with Gordievsky and request his services as an agent for British intelligence. The value of MI6's recruitment of such a highly-placed and valuable intelligence asset increased dramatically when, in 1982, Gordievsky was assigned to the Soviet embassy in London as the KGB Resident-designate ("rezident"), responsible for Soviet intelligence gathering and espionage in the UK.

Two of Gordievsky's most important contributions were averting a potential nuclear confrontation with Russia when NATO exercise Able Archer 83 was mis-interpreted by the Soviets as a potential first strike, and identifying Mikhail Gorbachev as the Soviet heir apparent long before he came to prominence.

Gordievsky was suddenly ordered back to Moscow on 22 May 1985 and arrested at the dacha of one of his superiors. It was not known how Gordievsky's cover was blown, but MI6 analysts later strongly suspected Aldrich Ames, an American CIA officer, who had been selling secrets to the KGB.

Defection

Gordievsky was interviewed by the KGB for several weeks, and told he would never work overseas again. Although he was suspected of espionage for a foreign power, his superiors appeared to have no solid proof, and in June 1985, he was allowed to return to his Moscow flat, where he was joined by his wife and two children.

Although he almost certainly remained under KGB surveillance, Gordievsky managed to inform MI6 of his situation, and the British reactivated an elaborate exfiltration (escape) plan which had been in place for many years, ready for just such an emergency.

On 19 July 1985, Gordievsky went for his usual jog, but he instead managed to evade his KGB tails and boarded a train to the Finnish border, where he was met by British embassy cars and smuggled across the border into Finland, then flown to England via Norway. His wife and children – on holiday in Azerbaijan at the time – finally joined him in the UK six years later, after extensive lobbying by the British Government, and personally by the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during her meetings with Gorbachev.

Recent times

Gordievsky congratulated by Baroness Thatcher on investiture, 18 Oct 2007

In 1990, he was consultant editor of the journal Intelligence and National Security, and he worked on television in the UK in the 1990s, including the game show Wanted^[1].

On 26 February 2005, he was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters by the University of Buckingham in recognition of his outstanding service to the security and safety of the United Kingdom^[2].

Gordievsky had a letter published in the Daily Telegraph on 3 August 2005, accusing the BBC of being "The Red Service". He said:

"Just listen with attention to the ideological nuances on Radio 4, BBC television, and the BBC World Service, and you will realise that communism is not a dying creed."

Gordievsky was featured in the PBS documentary Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy.

Gordievsky was appointed Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) for "services to the security of the United Kingdom" in the 2007 Queen's Birthday Honours (in the Diplomatic List).^[3] The Guardian newspaper noted that it was "the same gong given his fictional cold war colleague James Bond."^[4]

Suspected poisoning

On November 2 2007, Gordievsky was taken by ambulance from his home in Surrey to a local hospital, where he spent 34 hours unconscious. He is still partially paralysed. He claimed that he had been poisoned in an assassination attempt, saying he had obtained tablets of what he believed to be the sedative Xanax from abroad with the assistance of an unnamed Russian. He said he took tablets on October 31. He told The Mail on Sunday that he was certain he had been targeted by the KGB (its successors), and that the pills were almost certainly tainted.^[5]

Publications

• Jakob Andersen med Oleg Gordievsky: "De Røde Spioner - KGB's operationer i Danmark fra Stalin til Jeltsin, fra Stauning til Nyrup", Høst & Søn, Copenhagen (2002).

References and notes

External links

• Time Out magazine: Oleg Gordievsky: Interview
• http://www.videofact.com/english/agents21.htm
• Oleg comments on British 'spy rock'

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