The name of this person often sounded in the media in the first half of the nineties. Moreover, the attitude towards him was very ambiguous. For some, Oleg Gordievsky was a hero, for others a traitor. Currently, they began to forget about him. Let's try to recall this extraordinary figure.
Former intelligence officer biography facts
Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky, whose biography was the subject of a close study of several leading intelligence agencies of the world, was born on October 10, 1938 in Moscow in the family of an NKVD officer. This circumstance in many respects predetermined a choice of a life path for him. After graduating from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 1962, Oleg Gordievsky began serving in the First Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR. For several years, under diplomatic cover, he worked in several countries of Western Europe for the intelligence of the Soviet Union.
Until a certain point, the career was developing quite safely. But at this stage, his unremarkable Soviet biography ends. Oleg Gordievsky today would not be of interest to anyone if he had not made a sharp turn in his destiny. However, this remained a mystery to everyone until 1985.
Turn
At the beginning of 1969, Oleg Gordievsky, a member of the consular department of the Soviet embassy in Denmark, contacted the British secret services in Copenhagen on his own initiative and offered them his services. His offer was accepted. From this moment the Soviet part of his biography ends. Oleg Gordievsky returned to Moscow as an English spy.
And the more successful his career continued to develop, the more valuable he was for British intelligence.
Motivation
Oleg Gordievsky himself assures that a revolution in his mind took place as far back as 1956 after he read the speech of N.S. Khrushchev at the Twentieth Congress on the crimes of Stalin. And the final decision to work against the political regime ruling in the Soviet Union was made after the Soviet troops entered Czechoslovakia in August 1968, when the events of the Prague Spring took place.
The former Soviet intelligence officer categorically denies any mercenary motives for his action. Which, however, did not prevent him from regularly receiving a salary to a bank account from British intelligence for many years.
Failure and escape
Outwardly, everything was quite well. Oleg Gordievsky returned to Copenhagen to his former place with promotion. In the early seventies he served in Moscow in the central apparatus of the intelligence department. After that, under diplomatic cover, he was appointed to the Soviet residency in London, which he later headed. Nevertheless, under the pretext of appointment to a leadership position in the KGB of the USSR, he was recalled to Moscow. In the capital, Oleg Gordievsky realized that he was exposed and was under surveillance. The expectation of an imminent arrest pushes him to a desperate step.
With great difficulty, the exposed spy manages to contact his resident in Moscow. It is believed that it is difficult to escape from the Soviet Union, he Oleg Gordievsky was able to do it. He left the country through the Finnish border in the trunk of a car owned by the British embassy. Diplomatic numbers allow you to cross the border without inspection.
Effects
The escape of the failed spy caused a hefty resonance in the diplomatic community and in the Western media. For some time Oleg Gordievsky was in the center of great attention to his person. He was not going to keep his mouth shut, so with great pleasure he handed over all the intelligence information to the British secret services. This led to resignations, revelations and criminal cases against a number of prominent British figures who collaborated with Soviet intelligence. In the fall of 1985, on the basis of information from Oleg Gordievsky, 31 employees of the Soviet embassy were expelled from the British capital. As is customary in the press, "for activities incompatible with diplomatic status." As a response to the symmetric measure, only 25 employees were deported from Moscow, apparently, the embassy was not found to be able to evenly count the number of spies. It was the largest exchange of its kind in the history of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Western European states.
Of course, the betrayal of the former Soviet intelligence officer did not go unnoticed in his homeland. For treason, Oleg Gordievsky was sentenced to capital punishment - execution with confiscation of property. Of course, in absentia. Subsequently, the confiscation of property at the request of the spy's wife was canceled. The defector's family, his wife and two daughters, could only be reunited with him in September 1991. Currently, Oleg Gordievsky lives in London, leads an active social life, is accepted at the highest level.
