Longform

  • Podcast
  • Best Of
    • 2021
    • 2020
    • 2019
    • 2018
    • 2017
    • 2016
    • 2015
    • 2014
    • 2013
    • 2012
  • Archive

    • Sections
    • Publications
    • Writers
    • Tags
  • Random Article
  • Contact

    • podcast@longform.org

Tags

Kgb

History

The Amazing Story of the Russian Defector Who Changed his Mind

To the KGB and back.

Jason Fagone Washingtonian Feb 2018 20min Permalink

"I Thought I Was Smarter Than Almost Everybody"

The double life of a KGB spy living in 1980s Manhattan.

Shaun Walker The Guardian Feb 2017 20min Permalink

World

What Makes a Man Betray His Country?

The life of Adolf Tolkachev, Soviet dissident and CIA spy.

Read more

Excerpted from The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal.

David E. Hoffman The Atlantic Aug 2015 15min Permalink

World

Requiem for a Russian Spy

A CIA veteran remembers his Soviet nemesis, Leonid Vladimirovich Shebarshin, who was the chairman of the KGB for a single day during the 1991 coup against Gorbachev, and committed suicide in Moscow in March.

Milton Bearden Foreign Policy Jul 2012 10min Permalink

Politics World

The Concealed Battle to Run Russia

Putin, Medvedev, and how the Russian security agency FSB became the “new nobility.”

Amy Knight New York Review of Books Jan 2011 Permalink