Spymaster: My Thirty-Two Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West

It could be said that Oleg Kalugin's tale picks up where Andrew Meier's book, The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin's Secret Service, leaves off, at least chronologically: Kalugin began his spying career in the 1950s, participating in the very first exchange of students in 1958 (half the participants were spies like him, Kalugin asserts). Kalugin masqueraded as a journalist, climbed the KGB ladder for two decades, became the youngest general in its history (in 1974) and reached its pinnacle as head of foreign counterintelligence (overseeing, among other things, the assassination of Bulgarian writer Georgy Markov), only to be railroaded by careerists and dullards (one of whom, Vladimir Kryuchkov, was a leader in the failed 1991 coup). He retired early from the KGB (in 1990) and joined the democratic movement, even getting elected to the Congress of People's Deputies on an anti-KGB stance. Kalugin's book (originally published in 1994), has been reissued with a rather lackluster Epilogue (explaining his final break with the Kremlin and winning of US asylum, when, in 2002, the Putin government tried him for treason in absentia), yet the book itself is an engrossing chronicle of Soviet spycraft and intelligence gathering in the 1960s to 1980s. As reviewed in Russian Life

For any member of the babyboom generation, Mr. Kalugin provides insight into the inner workings of our Cold War opponent particularly the KGB. The author tends to jump around the timeline but provides information never before known to those of us outside the intelligence field.

A well-written exposure of Soviet espionage by one who was a major participant. Of interest was Kalugin's rehabilitation of Kim Philby.

Oleg Kalugin's book is very good and very creditable. I have studied Soviet history and the history of Cold War espionage. I have heard General Kalugin speak. The accuracy of his book is verified by the information that surfaced with the opening of KGB archives in the 1990s. Individuals involved in intelligence during the Cold War also support Kalugin's book.

Major General Kalugin, formerly of the KGB, has written an excellent book about his antics and shenanigans while spying on the decadent capitalists who he ultimately joined. Great reading !!