The illegals Russia's most audacious spies and their century-long mission to infiltrate the West

Shaun Walker

Book - 2025

"A century ago, the new Bolshevik government began sending Soviet citizens abroad as deep-cover spies, training them to pose as foreign aristocrats, merchants, and students. Over time, this became the most ambitious espionage program in human history. Many intelligence agencies use undercover operatives, but the KGB was the only one to go to such lengths, spending years training its spies to pass for foreigners, then sending them on missions that could last for decades. These spies were known as the illegals. During the Cold War, illegals were dispatched to assassinate world leaders and steal technological secrets-the greatest among them performed remarkable feats, while many others failed in their missions or cracked under the strain ...of living a double life. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with illegals and their descendants, as well as archival research in more than a dozen countries, Shaun Walker brings the illegals to life in a page-turning tour-de-force that takes us into the heart of the KGB's most secretive program. A riveting spy drama peopled with richly drawn characters, The Illegals also uncovers a hidden thread in the story of Russia itself. As Putin extols Soviet achievements and the KGB's espionage prowess, and Moscow continues to infiltrate illegals across the globe, this timely narrative shines new light on the long arc of the Soviet experiment, its messy aftermath, and its influence on our world at large"--

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2nd Floor EXPRESS shelf 327.1247/Walker Due Jun 24, 2025
2nd Floor New Shelf 327.1247/Walker (NEW SHELF) Due Jun 23, 2025
2nd Floor New Shelf 327.1247/Walker (NEW SHELF) Due Jun 24, 2025
Subjects
Genres
Informational works
Published
New York : Alfred A. Knopf 2025.
Language
English
Main Author
Shaun Walker (author)
Edition
First hardcover edition
Item Description
"A Borzoi book" --Title page verso.
Physical Description
vi, 433 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 367-412) and index.
ISBN
9780593319680
  • Introduction
  • A Note on Sources and Terminology
  • Part 1. The First Illegals
  • 1. Roots: The Bolshevik Underground
  • 2. The Old Man: The First Head of Soviet Foreign Intelligence
  • 3. The Fast Flier: The Greatest of the Great Illegals
  • 4. The Terror: Stalin's Purges
  • Part 2. War and Cold War
  • 5. Inroads to America: The First Illegals in the United States
  • 6. Operation Duck: The Assassination of Leon Trotsky
  • 7. Operation Barbarossa: Hitler Invades the Soviet Union
  • 8. The Whistler: Undercover Behind Enemy Lines
  • 9. Early Infiltrations: The Cold War Begins
  • 10. Signor Ambasciatore: The Mission to Kill Tito
  • 11. The Illegals Go Public: The Abel Trial and the CIA's First Illegals
  • Part 3. An Illegal Life
  • 12. Origin: The Recruitment and Training of an Illegal
  • 13. Matchmaking: The Search for a Partner and Co-illegal
  • 14. Infiltration: Entering the West
  • 15. Operation Progress: Undermining the Prague Spring
  • 16. The Mobile Resident: On Assignment in Israel
  • Part 4. The Cold War Battlefronts
  • 17. The Baron von Hohenstein: Undercover in West Germany
  • 18. The Main Enemy: Spying on the Americans
  • 19. The Inheritor: The Attempt to Create a Second-Generation Illegal
  • 20. Diminishing Returns: The KGB Keeps Going
  • 21. Eleven Days in Kabul: The Birth of the "Fighting Illegal"
  • Part 5. Collapse and Resurrection
  • 22. The Threat of War: Rising Tensions and New Illegals
  • 23. The End: The Collapse of the Soviet Union
  • 24. Stierlitz Takes Over: The Rise of Vladimir Putin
  • 25. Operation Ghost Stories: The FBI Swoops
  • 26. The Virtual Illegals: Election Meddling and Easy Deniability
  • 27. The Lives of Wonderful People: The Cult ofthe Illegal
  • Afterword
  • KGB Terminology and Structure
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index
Review by Booklist Review

While most nations use intelligence operatives to obtain knowledge not publicly available about other countries, the Soviet Union took the concept to extremes by creating remarkably elaborate false identities for their spies. These operatives were called the illegals. Walker's deep dive into the KGB's extensive program is a fascinating story of espionage that spans the Bolshevik Revolution, the Stalinist purges, WWII, and the brutal USSR. Under the KGB agent-turned-president Putin, the illegals were resurrected as social media trolls disseminating toxic disinformation to influence and disrupt the U.S. Paranoia, frustration, and family secrets permeate this study of konspiratsiya (subterfuge). Walker's chronicle has all the elements of a great spy novel--assassinations, invisible ink, radio encryption, sabotage, misdirection, and treachery. Walker also examines the efficacy of the program. Was it really worth the resources dedicated to training and inserting agents who ended up as mere messengers and menial laborers in the West? Walker puts a human face on the illegals, especially agents in arranged marriages who had to live complicated lies, forbidden to speak Russian even in private and forced to conceal the truth from their children. Many illegals cracked under the strain and had to be withdrawn from service. The Illegals is outstanding in its engaging details and harrowing disclosures.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

On the hunt for Soviet and Russian spies from Lenin's time to our own. It's the stuff of TV drama (The Americans) brought to real life: From the earliest days of the Bolshevik Revolution, Russian spies were sent abroad to gather intelligence. Many were posted as diplomats, which meant that counterintelligence agencies could easily keep track of them; others went abroad as journalists, academics, businesspeople. But early on, writesGuardian international correspondent Walker, the "father of Russian intelligence," a man named Meer Trilisser, was putting "illegals," Soviet spies posing as natives of the countries in which they were working, to work. Trilisser himself, "posing as a specialist on Gothic architecture…traveled to Berlin, ostensibly to attend an academic conference," but used the occasion to connect with an undercover agent. In time, writes Walker, "the Soviets were far ahead of their adversaries when it came to espionage," emboldened enough to begin to insert illegals, once almost exclusively male but eventually including women, into countries under cover so deep that their children didn't know they were spies. Such was the case with Don Heathfield (né Andrei Bezrukov) and Ann Foley (née Elena Vavilova), whom the FBI arrested in June 2010, posing as a married Canadian couple working in Boston, having taken their identities from real Canadians who had died in infancy. Elena/Ann styled herself as a soccer mom, "but once the kids were tucked away in bed, she crept into a back room and decrypted radio messages from Moscow." Both, working for first the KGB and then Russia's new SVR, were traded for Western spies imprisoned in Russia. There are surely more illegals out there, Walker concludes, especially since after Putin's invasion of Ukraine, "ordinary" Russians traveling abroad are subject to greater scrutiny than before. A fast-paced tale of real-world spycraft that will have you wondering whether your neighbors are who they say they are. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.