Oleg Gordievsky, 1938-2025

Oleg Gordievsky
1938-2025

The second recent death of a notable man, as mentioned in my previous blog, was that of Oleg Gordievsky, and the peaceful nature of his passing probably surprised many, including Oleg. He had survived, or avoided, many actual, or planned, attempts on his life, in his role as double agent for Russia and Britain.

A younger Oleg

He came from a privileged background as the son of an officer in the NKVD [the Soviet secret police and forerunner of the KGB] and was an excellent student, learning German at school then studying at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. During his NKVD training, as well as learning espionage skills, he also really mastered German and in addition learned to speak Danish, Swedish and Norwegian.  On completion of these studies, he joined the Russian foreign service and was posted to East Berlin in August 1961 just before the erection of the Berlin Wall, a development which appalled him and triggered the first stirring of his disillusionment with the Soviet system.

He joined the KGB in 1963 and was posted to the Russian embassy in Copenhagen in 1966, again 

Operation Pimlico 

Oleg and his eventual
autobiography

 becoming outraged at the 1968 Prague Spring when the USSR brutally crushed the uprising in Czechoslovakia. He began sending covert signals to Danish and British intelligence agencies of his willingness to co-operate with them and in 1974 he agreed to pass secrets to MI6. He was posted to Denmark around this time but was quickly returned to Russia after an affair with Leila Alieva, and divorce from Yelena his first wife, both practices frowned upon by the Russians as immoral. During his prolonged ‘home stay’ he learned English and lobbied for a post in London which eventually resulted in the KGB appointing him to London in June 1982. His advancement in rank there was facilitated by MI6 which passed him abundant, relatively low level information to feed back, and organised trumped-up charges against his superiors so that Gordievsky was almost automatically promoted thereby

Aldrich Ames, double agent  who sold
American secrets to Russia and
betrayed Oleg

 gaining access to increasingly sensitive Soviet data. 

In April 1985 he was promoted to KGB station chief in London at the Soviet Embassy, but shortly after his promotion, he was suddenly summoned back to Moscow via a telegram on 16 May, 1985. MI6 allowed him to decide what to do; to return home to possible torture, interrogation or execution if the KGB suspected his betrayal, or remain in Britain under a false name and UK Govt. protection. He chose the former although he did not know that he had indeed, been betrayed in May 1985 by CIA officer, Aldrich Ames. On his return to Russia, he was drugged, interrogated then placed in a non-existent job in the KGB under increasing surveillance, suspected of having become a double agent. Despite the surveillance, Oleg managed 

Russian Embassy in London

to send a covert signal to MI6 to activate ‘Operation Pimlico’ an escape plan in place for many years. He waited on a certain street corner, on a particular weekday at 7.00p.m. carrying a Safeway’s bag as a signal. An MI6 agent walked past, carrying a Harrods bag and eating a Mars bar, and the two made eye contact. This all signalled the immediate activation of the escape/rescue plan. On July 19, 1985, Gordievsky went for his usual morning run but managed to evade his KGB followers and boarded a train to Leningrad thence to Vyborg near the Finnish border. There he was met by British Embassy cars and smuggled in the boot of a car, into Finland from where he was flown to the U.K. via Norway. The Soviet authorities subsequently sentenced him to death in absentia, for treason. Meanwhile, his wife, Leila, daughter of a KGB officer, and unaware of her husband’s defection, was interrogated and detained by the Soviet authorities for six years, the Soviets wrongly presuming she was complicit in her husband’s activities. This put the final touch to the end of his Soviet espionage career.

Oleg Gordievsky and wife 
in happy retirement in Sussex.

The revelation of Gordievsky's spying for Britain and his betrayal of Russia greatly embarrassed the Soviet Union and the KGB, and led to the ending of several careers such as that of Sergei Ivanov, KGB chief in Finland; Victor Babunov, KGB chief of counter intelligence and numerous members of the Leningrad KGB who were responsible for the surveillance of British subjects like Gordievsky, and included several people close to Vladimir Putin, a member of the Leningrad KGB.

Queen Elizabeth conferring Companion
 of the Order of St Michael and St George
on Gordievsky in 2007

In April 2008, it was reported that on November 2 2007 Gordievsky had spent 34 hours unconscious after a poisoning attempt on his life. The poison was Thallium and he believed that the culprit was a UK-based, Russian business associate who had supplied him with pills which he had believed was Xanax, for insomnia. At the time he accused MI6 of forcing Special Branch to drop its early investigations in an attempt to hide news of the poisoning which were only re-opened after the intervention of former MI5 Director, Elizabeth Manningham-Buller. His protection was increased immediately however.

Ten years later, in 2018, Gordievsky's protection was further intensified in the light of the Salisbury Poisonings. Sergei and daughter Yulia, Skripval were the butt of a botched poisoning attempt using Novichok [the Russian poison of choice] in which a policeman was accidentally poisoned and also a woman who had used an abandoned perfume bottle found in the street! Sergei Skripval was a former GRU military spy who had presumably offended someone in Moscow. No one died during this episode but Gordievsky's minders considered it at least as a warning of the potential danger in which he remained.

Gordievsky lived in London for several years finishing his remaining years in Godalming, Surrey. During his retirement, he wrote several books including an autobiography, edited articles in journals, worked in TV and received several honours. He was awarded an Honorary Degree of the Order of St. Michael and St George [CMG] for services to the security of the U.K. in the 2007 Queen's Birthday Honours List and 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 U.K. in 2005. MI6 awarded him a pension of £20,000 a year.

Mikhail Gorbachev
1931-2022

 Two of Gordievsky’s most important contributions in the Cold War were:

 a)  averting a potential nuclear confrontation with the Soviets when they misinterpreted a NATO exercise [Able Archer 83] as a potential first strike and 

 b)   identifying Mikhail Gorbachev as the Soviet heir apparent long before he came to prominence.    Indeed, information obtained by Gordievsky was the first proof for the West of how worried the Soviet leadership had become about a NATO nuclear first strike.