Special Tasks

From the New Foreword by Robert Conquest

Contributors

By Anatoli Sudoplatov

By Jerrold L. Schecter

By Pavel Sudoplatov

By Leona P. Schecter

Formats and Prices

Price

$25.99

Price

$33.99 CAD

Format

Trade Paperback (Revised)

Format:

Trade Paperback (Revised) $25.99 $33.99 CAD

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around June 1, 1995. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

This astonishing memoir written by a former KGB leader is a singular historical document from behind the Iron Curtain and "the most informative autobiography ever to emerge from the Stalinist milieu" (Robert Conquest). 

According to KGB archives, Pavel Sudoplatov directed the secretive Administration for Special Tasks.This department was responsible for kidnapping, assassination, sabotage, and guerrilla warfare during World War II, it also set up illegal networks in the United States and Western Europe, and, most crucially, carried out atomic espionage in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. Sudoplatov served the KGB for over fifty years, at one point controlling more than twenty thousand guerrillas, moles, and spies.

But his involvement with the most nefarious Soviet activities — and the rulers who ordered them — made Sudoplatov an unwanted witness, and he was arrested in 1953 after Beria's fall. Despite torture and solitary confinement he refused to "confess", disavowing any criminal actions. He spent fifteen years in prison, then struggled two decades more for rehabilitation.

Genre:

  • "A good inside look at Soviet intelligence."
    Wall Street Journal

On Sale
Jun 1, 1995
Page Count
576 pages
Publisher
Back Bay Books
ISBN-13
9780316821155