Download or read book Western Intelligence and the Collapse of the Soviet Union written by David Arbel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-11-23 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. It was an event of major historic and global dimensions, yet it took the entire world totally by suprise. In this book, the authors interview dozens of people who dealt with Soviet affairs in the 1980s, all of who admit to having been caught off guard.
Download or read book Politics Paradigms and Intelligence Failures written by Ofira Seliktar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-05-20 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Washington's failure to foresee the collapse of its superpower rival ranks high in the pantheon of predictive failures. The question of who got what right or wrong has been intertwined with the deeper issue of "who won" the Cold War. Like the disputes over "who lost" China and Iran, this debate has been fought out along ideological and partisan lines, with conservatives claiming credit for the Evil Empire's demise and liberals arguing that the causes were internal to the Soviet Union. The intelligence community has come in for harsh criticism for overestimating Soviet strength and overlooking the symptoms of crisis; the discipline of "Sovietology" has dissolved into acrimonious irrelevance. Drawing on declassified documents, interviews, and careful analysis of contemporaneous literature, this book offers the first systematic analysis of this predictive failure at the paradigmatic, foreign policy, and intelligence levels. Although it is focused on the Soviet case, it offers lessons that are both timely and necessary.
Download or read book Watching the Bear written by Gerald K. Haines and published by Central Intelligence Agency. This book was released on 2003 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents papers from the conference: "CIA's Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1947-1991" at Princeton University on 9-10 March 2001. Focuses on the organizational evolution of the CIA's analysis of the Soviet economic, political, military, and scientific and technological developments during the Cold War. Assesses the extent to which Western analyses of the Soviet Union may have influenced the USSR's policy making process.
Download or read book The Perestroika Deception written by Anatoliy Golitsyn and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Near and Distant Neighbours written by Jonathan Haslam and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-09-24 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Near and Distant Neighbours is the first ever substantiated and complete history of Soviet intelligence. Based on a mass of newly declassified Russian secret intelligence documentation, it reveals the true story of Soviet intelligence from its very beginnings in 1917 right through to the end of the Cold War. Covering both main branches of Soviet espionage - civilian and military - Jonathan Haslam charts the full range of the Soviet intelligence effort and the story of its development: in cryptography, disinformation, special forces, and counter-intelligence. In a tragic irony, an organization that so casually disposed of others critically depended upon the human factor. Due to their lack of expertise and technological know-how, from early on the Soviets were forced to rely heavily on secret agents instead of the more sophisticated code-breaking techniques of other intelligence agencies. But in this they were highly successful, recruiting spy rings such as the infamous 'Cambridge Five' in the 1930s. Had it not been for Soviet espionage against Britain's code-breaking effort during the Second World War, Stalin might never have won the victory that later enabled him to dominate half of Europe. Similarly, espionage directed at his allies enabled the Soviets to build an atomic bomb earlier than expected and to take calculated risks in post-war diplomacy, such as his audacious blockade of Berlin which led to the Berlin Airlift. Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin in 1956 alienated many of the foreign 'friends' so valued by the Soviet intelligence services. It also made new recruitment of foreign agents much more difficult, as the USSR rapidly lost its glamour and ideological appeal to potential supporters in the West during the 1950s. However, the gap was finally bridged through exploiting greedy and disloyal Western intelligence officers, using blackmail and bribery - and with great success. In fact, it was the ultimate irony that the KGB and GRU had never been more effective than when the Soviet Union began to collapse from within.
Download or read book Soviet Intelligence and the Cold War written by Vladislav Martinovich Zubok and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Soviet Leaders and Intelligence written by Raymond L. Garthoff and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-15 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Cold War, the political leadership of the Soviet Union avidly sought intelligence about its main adversary, the United States. Although effective on an operational level, Soviet leaders and their intelligence chiefs fell short when it came to analyzing intelligence. Soviet leaders were often not receptive to intelligence that conflicted with their existing beliefs, and analysts were reluctant to put forward assessments that challenged ideological orthodoxy. There were, however, important changes over time. Ultimately the views of an enlightened Soviet leader, Gorbachev, trumped the ideological blinders of his predecessors and the intelligence service’s dedication to an endless duel with their ideologically spawned “main adversary," making it possible to end the Cold War. Raymond Garthoff draws on over five decades of personal contact with Soviet diplomats, intelligence officers, military leaders, and scholars during his remarkable career as an analyst, senior diplomat, and historian. He also builds on previous scholarship and examines documents from Soviet and Western archives. Soviet Leaders and Intelligence offers an informed and highly readable assessment of how the Soviets understood—and misunderstood—the intentions and objectives of their Cold War adversary.
Download or read book Collapse written by Vladislav M. Zubok and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major study of the collapse of the Soviet Union—showing how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms led to its demise “A deeply informed account of how the Soviet Union fell apart.”—Rodric Braithwaite, Financial Times “[A] masterly analysis.”—Joshua Rubenstein, Wall Street Journal In 1945 the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four million strong with five thousand nuclear-tipped missiles and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse was one of the seismic shifts of the twentieth century. Thirty years on, Vladislav Zubok offers a major reinterpretation of the final years of the USSR, refuting the notion that the breakup of the Soviet order was inevitable. Instead, Zubok reveals how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms, intended to modernize and democratize the Soviet Union, deprived the government of resources and empowered separatism. Collapse sheds new light on Russian democratic populism, the Baltic struggle for independence, the crisis of Soviet finances—and the fragility of authoritarian state power.
Download or read book At Cold War s End written by United States. Central Intelligence Agency and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Intelligence Estimates and other intelligence assessments reveal publicly how US Intelligence Community interpreted and predicted rapidly unfolding events that led to collapse of communism and end of the Cold War. The Bush administration's stewardship of American foreign policy coincided with some momentous changes of the 20th century. Estimates that seemed premature or pessimistic or alarmist often turned out to be too conservative in their forecasts. Some key events happened so quickly and unexpectedly that they do not appear in any of the Estimates. The Estimates often accurately anticipated an event or development but misjudged the time it would take for it to materialize.
Download or read book The Secret Road to World War Two written by Paul W. Blackstock and published by Chicago : Quadrangle Books. This book was released on 1969 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Søgeord: Krigsfaren i 1927 ; Mordplaner mod Stalin ; Skoblinaffæren
Download or read book Spies written by Calder Walton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-06-06 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foreign Policy Best Book of 2023 Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2023 The “riveting” (The Economist), secret story of the hundred-year intelligence war between Russia and the West with lessons for our new superpower conflict with China. Spies is the history of the secret war that Russia and the West have been waging for a century. Espionage, sabotage, and subversion were the Kremlin’s means to equalize the imbalance of resources between the East and West before, during, and after the Cold War. There was nothing “unprecedented” about Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. It was simply business as usual, new means used for old ends. The Cold War started long before 1945. But the West fought back after World War II, mounting its own shadow war, using disinformation, vast intelligence networks, and new technologies against the Soviet Union. Spies is a “deeply researched and artfully crafted” (Fiona Hill, deputy assistant to the US President) story of the best and worst of mankind: bravery and honor, treachery and betrayal. The narrative shifts across continents and decades, from the freezing streets of St. Petersburg in 1917 to the bloody beaches of Normandy; from coups in faraway lands to present-day Moscow where troll farms, synthetic bots, and weaponized cyber-attacks being launched woefully unprepared West. It is about the rise and fall of Eastern superpowers: Russia’s past and present and the global ascendance of China. Mining hitherto secret archives in multiple languages, Calder Walton shows that the Cold War started earlier than commonly assumed, that it continued even after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, and that Britain and America’s clandestine struggle with the Soviet government provided key lessons for countering China today. This “authoritative, sweeping” (Fredrik Logevall, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Embers of War) history, combined with practical takeaways for our current great power struggles, make Spies a unique and essential addition to the history of the Cold War and the unrolling conflict between the United States and China that will dominate the 21st century.
Download or read book Spy Swap written by Nigel West and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2021-06-30 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Monday, 4 March 2019, Sergei Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia collapsed in the centre of Salisbury in Wiltshire. Both were suffering the effects of A-234, a third-generation Russian-manufactured military grade Novichok nerve agent. As three suspects, all GRU officers, were quickly identified, it was also established that the door handle to the Skripals’ suburban home had been contaminated with the toxin. Whilst the Skripals had lived in the cathedral city for the past seven years, what Sergei’s neighbours did not know was that he had once been a colonel in the Russian Federation’s military intelligence service. Back in July 1996, he had been posted under diplomatic cover to Madrid where he was subsequently cultivated by Pablo Miller, an MI6 officer operating as a businessman under the alias Antonio Alvares de Idalgo. Sergei’s recruitment by Miller was one of many successes achieved by Western agencies following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. These counter-intelligence triumphs had their origins in a joint FBI/CIA project codenamed COURTSHIP which was based on the rather risky tactic of making an approach to almost any identified KGB or GRU officer, in almost any environment – a technique known as a ‘cold pitch’. It soon yielded results; within five years COURTSHIP had netted about twenty assets. Codenamed FORTHWITH, Sergei was betrayed in December 2001. Arrested in 2004, he was convicted of high treason in Russia, but was subsequently included in a prisoner swap in July 2010 and brought to the UK. The journey to the attempt on his life had begun. The Vienna spy swap was the culmination of a CIA plan to free a specific individual, Gennadi Vasilenko, who had been the Agency’s key mole inside the KGB since March 1979. To acquire the necessary leverage, the FBI swooped on a large network in the United States, bringing to an end a surveillance operation, codenamed GHOST STORIES, that lasted ten years. Anxious to avoid further embarrassment over the arrests, Vladimir Putin personally authorised an exchange, unaware of Vasilenko’s true status. It was only after the transaction had been completed, and two further Russian spies were exfiltrated from Moscow, that the Kremlin learned of Vasilenko’s value, and the scale of the deception. For the very first time, a Russian government had been persuaded to release four traitors and send them to the West. The humiliation was complete. As Spy Swap reveals, Putin’s retribution would manifest itself in a quiet Wiltshire market town.
Download or read book Assessing the Soviet Threat written by Woodrow J. Kuhns and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1999-10 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book From Washington to Moscow written by Louis Sell and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-04 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the United States and the Soviet Union signed the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks accords in 1972 it was generally seen as the point at which the USSR achieved parity with the United States. Less than twenty years later the Soviet Union had collapsed, confounding experts who never expected it to happen during their lifetimes. In From Washington to Moscow veteran US Foreign Service officer Louis Sell traces the history of US–Soviet relations between 1972 and 1991 and explains why the Cold War came to an abrupt end. Drawing heavily on archival sources and memoirs—many in Russian—as well as his own experiences, Sell vividly describes events from the perspectives of American and Soviet participants. He attributes the USSR's fall not to one specific cause but to a combination of the Soviet system's inherent weaknesses, mistakes by Mikhail Gorbachev, and challenges by Ronald Reagan and other US leaders. He shows how the USSR's rapid and humiliating collapse and the inability of the West and Russia to find a way to cooperate respectfully and collegially helped set the foundation for Vladimir Putin’s rise.
Download or read book Western Intelligence Penetration of the Soviet Union includes Material on the Death of Sergei Mironovich Kirov written by and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Espionage Intelligence and Security written by K. Lee Lerner and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Encyclopedia of espionage, intelligence and security (GVRL)
Download or read book The Collapse of Soviet Military Power written by Christoph Bluth and published by Dartmouth Publishing Group. This book was released on 1995 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a study of Soviet military doctrine and capabilities, and their relation to Soviet foreign policy objectives and East-West relations during the Gorbachev period. The role of military power in Gorbachev's foreign policy and the dismantling of the military confrontation in Europe is examined.
