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The Guardian
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Five Great Reads: ‘skimpies', going undercover with the far right, and the tragic story of Robert Einstein
Happy Saturday! Another long weekend, which means another shorter working week (for some). In keeping with the high vibes, here are some great reads to accompany a cup of morning brew. Sip and enjoy! Thor Pedersen was 12 years into his career; he had met a lovely woman and all his friends were having kids – and then he decided to set himself a challenge. He wanted to be the first human to visit every country in the world without, wait for it … flying. At 34, Pedersen quit his usual routine to spend nearly a decade on the move and wouldn't return until he was 44. Here's what he learned. Connections: 'I have found myself laughing with a complete stranger in spite of our lack of a common language. I have been invited into people's homes based on gestures alone.' How big is the world? 'It is hard to grasp the distance between London and New York when you fly. But when you travel via seven ships and several buses, it helps you to understand.' How long will it take to read: four minutes. Thomas Harding's story on the tragedy of Robert Einstein, cousin to the world-famous scientist Albert Einstein, is like something out of a second world war movie. The Jewish pair had grown up together in Munich under the same roof during the 1880s – 'you could say they were brother-cousins,' Harding writes. But in the 1930s, Hitler had placed a 'price on Einstein's head', according to London's Daily Herald, after the scientist spoke out against the Nazi regime. Escape plan: Albert fled to England and Robert moved his family to Italy, where both thought they had found safety. Tragedy struck: Then, the day before liberation, Nazis smashed down the front door to the villa (outside Florence) hiding Robert's immediate and extended family. How long will it take to read: seven minutes. Further historical reading: exposing 'the illegals': how KGB's fake westerners infiltrated the Prague Spring. There is a world rarely seen outside the bars of the mining towns around Kalgoorlie-Boulder in Western Australia. In those bars, lingerie-wearing barmaids pour pints to lonely, exhausted men working in some of the most geographically isolated communities in the country. These women are better known as 'skimpies'. After visiting Kalgoorlie during lockdown and getting stuck there, photographer M Ellen Burns earned the women's trust to capture what the job is really like. '[We] take great care of all the lonely sad men we come across in the pubs … because of skimpy women, I wonder how many men's lives have literally been saved.' – Cleo Fly-in fly-out: many 'skimpies' are Fifo workers and on a good weekend can make up to $5,000 in tips. As for Burns? She is now friends with many of the women – and never left town. Sign up to Five Great Reads Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning after newsletter promotion How long will it take to read: three minutes. Nearly 40 million people watched the first episode of the post-apocalyptic zombie show The Last of Us. The Guardian called it one of the 'finest TV shows you will see this year' in 2023. For English actor Bella Ramsey, 'life-changing is one way to describe it', Tim Lewis writes. The 21-year-old from Nottingham plays Ellie, 'the sassy and quirky but also complicated and vicious American protagonist' – and while the young actor's life has transformed since (season two is out now), they say 'people are going to want to talk to me a bit more for a couple of months. Then it'll just die down again.' Staying grounded or in denial? The A-lister still catches the tube in what they describe as a 'ripped T-shirt that needs a wash'. It's probably Prada. How long will it take to read: six minutes. Further reading: Jack Seale's season two review– Bella Ramsey is absolutely wonderful. Harry Shukman's long read about the year he spent undercover with the far right is an honest and riveting account and definitely worth your time. Working with the UK advocacy group Hope Not Hate (which campaigns against racism and fascism) Shukman infiltrated an extremist organisation, befriended its members and got to work investigating their political connections. One recurring theme: Shukman met a lot of men in pubs around London, and 'among the rank and file members of far-right organisations' one thing that really struck him was the loneliness he encountered. A sense of community: 'Isn't it great to have someone to talk to?' he heard from people at a conference in Estonia. How long will it take to read: 11 minutes. If you would like to receive these Five Great Reads to your email inbox every weekend, sign up here. And check out out the full list of our local and international newsletters.
The Guardian
20-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Exposing ‘the illegals': how KGB's fake westerners infiltrated the Prague Spring
During the spring of 1968, as revolutionary sentiment began to grow in communist Czechoslovakia, a group of friendly foreigners began arriving in Prague, on flights from Helsinki and East Berlin, or by car from West Germany. Among them were 11 western European men, a Swiss woman named Maria Weber and a Lebanese carpet dealer called Oganes Sarajian. They were all supporters of what would become known as the Prague Spring, an ultimately doomed attempt to build a more liberal and free version of socialism and escape from Moscow's suffocating embrace. Many of the visitors sought to get close to the movement's leading lights, offering support in the battle to reform communist rule. But these visitors were not what they seemed. They were spies from the KGB's 'illegals' programme – Soviet citizens who spent years training to be able to pose convincingly as westerners. Previously, illegals had been used to burrow into western societies and ferret out secrets for Moscow. But now the KGB was terrified that the Prague movement could end Soviet influence in the country, and decided for the first time to deploy its most prized spies inside the eastern bloc, in a mission called Operation Progress. To this day, Russia's intelligence services have never admitted it took place. Unpublished documents about the mission, along with interviews with participants, shed new light on how Moscow used its spies to keep tabs on reformers in Prague: informing on its leaders, planting fake evidence, and in one case getting a man who planned a dramatic self-immolation as protest committed to a psychiatric institution before he could carry out the deed. The Prague Spring, which was ultimately crushed by a massive Soviet invasion in August 1968, was a reflection of a huge desire for change in Czechoslovak society. The reform movement was supported by local Communist party leader Alexander Dubček, who coined the term 'socialism with a human face', but it was also a grassroots movement, as Prague became the most buzzing city in the eastern bloc. 'Blue jeans and long hair are everywhere,' wrote one American correspondent at the time. Students from western Europe travelled to Prague, where they sang songs, strummed guitars and smoked joints with their new friends. The openness terrified the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and his KGB chief, Yuri Andropov, but in the openness Andropov also saw an opportunity for his spies to infiltrate. They could easily pass through the liberal Czechoslovak border regime with their fake western passports. Five of the new arrivals were told to visit restaurants, museums, galleries and hotels and find opposition-minded Czechs. If necessary they could pay for useful political information, gently hinting that the money might be coming from western intelligence. Some were tasked with befriending Czech newspaper editors and goading them into printing anti-Soviet statements to further escalate tensions. Others buried a fake cache of American weapons to 'prove' that the reform movement was backed by the United States. In 1969, as the Soviet Union continued to crack down on the reform movement post-invasion, more illegals were able to infiltrate. One, Yuri Linov, travelled to Prague posing as Austrian businessman Karl-Bernd Motl. Before long he was socialising in bars with student leaders and progressive journalists from state television, he recalled. In the nights he drank 'a river of cheap red wine' with the protesters; in the mornings he wrote up reports about their plans and passed them over to his handler. The spies were handled on the ground by Dmitry Vetrov, a lumbering giant of a man in his early 50s, who brushed off any doubts the KGB spies might have had about informing on idealistic young people who simply wanted to reform communism. Vetrov admonished Linov and other illegals for thinking too much. He liked to recall an operation he had apparently taken part in, to neutralise a dissident in Berlin, in which he went in disguised as a removals man, knocked the target unconscious, then rolled him up in a carpet and sent him back to the Soviet Union. 'Carpet. Plane. Siberia,' he repeated, to emphasise that he believed the dissidents in Czechoslovakia should be treated the same way. Among Linov's new circle of friends was Jan Křížek, a tall, hard-drinking 25-year-old with a mop of unkempt blond hair. Křížek was obsessed with Jan Palach, a student who had killed himself by self-immolation and become a hero of the resistance. He told Linov he planned to set himself on fire on 21 August to mark the first anniversary of the Soviet invasion. 'Palach is a Czech hero now, everyone knows his name, and soon everyone will know Křížek too,' he boasted. Linov reported the plans to Vetrov, who later told him Křížek had been detained and committed to a psychiatric institution. Operation Progress was first revealed in 1999, when the historian Christopher Andrew released a book based on copies of KGB files made by the dissident archivist Vasily Mitrokhin, who defected to Britain in 1992. But Mitrokhin's original files, now open to the public in Cambridge, contain many more revelations, about the Prague Spring and the later use of illegals in the Soviet bloc. Andropov was so pleased with how Operation Progress had helped the Soviets manage dissent in Prague that he expanded it to cover the whole socialist bloc, where short-term missions continued for the next two decades. In Hungary, the KGB was obsessed with supposed 'Zionist' influence among the party and intellectual elite. In Yugoslavia, illegals travelled to Kosovo to investigate tension between Serbs and Albanians. In Poland, they took an interest in the Catholic church, attempting to get close to several influential religious figures, including the circle of Karol Wojtyła, archbishop of Kraków, who would later become Pope John Paul II. Eventually, the KGB even began using illegals inside the Soviet Union, posing as western provocateurs to test the loyalty of suspected dissidents. Russia has used illegals since the earliest days of Soviet power a century ago, and continues to infiltrate them into the west today. Vladimir Putin has spoken on numerous occasions about their great achievements over the decades, but there is no place in this narrative for their work against dissidents inside the Soviet bloc. Instead, they are portrayed as heroic warriors, uncovering secrets in the west to help the motherland. 'Illegals are built in a particular way, with strong morals and a firm character,' said Putin in 2017. 'We are proud of them.' The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West by Shaun Walker, is out now (Profile Books, £22; Knopf in the US). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
New York Times
28-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Trump Could Hand China a ‘Strategic Victory' by Silencing Voice of America
In December 1967, when he arrived at a snowy farm on China's northeastern border with the Soviet Union, Xu Chenggang carried with him an electron tube to help him assemble a radio. Mr. Xu, a 17-year-old Beijing native, would spend the next 10 years there, living in a horse stable and subjected to re-education and persecution for his anti-revolutionary thinking. One thing that got him through the cold, dark decade was the tube radio that brought him Voice of America programs. He learned about the Prague Spring, the Watergate scandal and President Richard Nixon's resignation, as well as criticisms of Chairman Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. The radio was also used by his peers as evidence of what was called his thoughtcrime, which led them to torture him physically and mentally. But he never regretted it. 'Voice of America was my school,' said Mr. Xu, 74, who attended Tsinghua University and Harvard after the end of the Cultural Revolution and is now an economist at Stanford. The VOA programs beamed into China shaped his worldview, his understanding of constitutional democracy and his values about freedom and human dignity, he said. He also learned English through a special program that provided news and information using a limited vocabulary and slow and clear pronunciations. Millions of Chinese, me included, learned English through Voice of America and listened to its news reports, which contradicted the Chinese Communist Party's narratives. Through its programs, we had a glimpse of the world on the other side of the Bamboo Curtain and, later, the Great Firewall, technology China uses to block most popular foreign websites from its citizens. We got to imagine a world where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were held as ideals. That's why it came as a shock to many Chinese when they learned that President Trump had decided to dismantle Voice of America and end grants to Radio Free Asia. It's unfathomable to them that Washington would surrender the battle of narratives by silencing these news outlets, which produce uncensored and factual reporting on countries like China that lack a free press. It's a decision that 'pains one's loved ones and pleases one's enemies,' as a Chinese saying goes. Nationalist Chinese celebrated the news. 'The so-called beacon of freedom, VOA, has now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag,' Global Times, the Communist Party tabloid, wrote in an editorial. Beijing has long loathed Voice of America's China coverage, especially its reporting on the persecutions of Uyghurs and Tibetans, the protests in Hong Kong in 2019, the draconian 'zero Covid' measures during the pandemic and the country's economic slowdown. 'Almost every malicious falsehood about China has VOA's fingerprints all over it,' the editorial said. I interviewed and had email exchanges with a dozen Chinese, including some in their 20s and 30s. They expressed their sadness and disappointment about the closing or weakening of these agencies. Other than Mr. Xu, they all asked for anonymity, or that I use only their first names, for fear of retribution from Beijing or Washington. Over the past decade or so, Beijing has killed independent journalism, first in China and increasingly in Hong Kong. That makes agencies like VOA some of the few reliable institutional sources of news that people in the Chinese speaking world can turn to. 'Without VOA and RFA's independent reporting, Beijing and other authoritarian actors could more easily flood the information space with state propaganda, presenting a distorted view of reality to both domestic and international audiences,' wrote Kris Cheng, a journalist from Hong Kong. Mr. Cheng, like more than 1,000 of his peers, was forced to leave home and has been freelancing for VOA out of London since 2021. 'This would be a strategic victory for the Chinese and Hong Kong governments.' The U.S. government needs media organizations that convey American values to the world, said a 35-year-old biotech worker in the San Francisco Bay Area who started listening to Voice of America when he was in high school in China. 'Since the United States views China as its biggest competitor, you should have a tool like this in your toolbox,' he said. He is set to become a naturalized citizen next month and invoked the Declaration of Independence in our video call. He said he supported President Trump but had not expected the administration to dismantle these agencies without a backup plan. In a statement on the White House website, the Trump administration listed reasons behind Mr. Trump's executive order to shutter Voice of America, including a report by The Daily Caller, a right-wing website, that said multiple VOA reporters had posted anti-Trump content on their social media accounts. Radio Free Asia and some VOA employees are challenging the administration's efforts in court. In February, Elon Musk posted on X that the agencies were 'just radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1B/year of US taxpayer money.' That's not true. Voice of America reaches more than 361 million people a week around the world on an annual budget of $268 million. Its English channel on YouTube has 3.7 million subscribers. Its Chinese channel has 2.3 million subscribers. Many of its programs' episodes had millions of views, including an hourlong one by Mr. Xu, the Stanford economist, on China's economic troubles, which was viewed 5.1 million times. A weekly commentary program by Cai Xia, a retired professor of the Communist Party central school turned critic of the party, garnered hundreds of thousands of views for each episode on YouTube. They and some other regular commentators on VOA and Radio Free Asia are far from radical leftists. Radio Free Asia broadcasts in Burmese, Cantonese, English, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Mandarin, Tibetan, Uyghur and Vietnamese. It has an annual budget of $60.8 million and reaches 58 million people a week. 'The cost is inconsequential compared to the value of news that challenges the narratives of autocratic regimes,' The Wall Street Journal's editorial board wrote last week. The Cold War ended partly because the thinking of Europeans living in Eastern bloc countries changed, Mr. Xu said. 'There might be nothing cheaper than disseminating ideas,' he added. Agencies like VOA and RFA were created to use uncensored information to fight communism and promote democratic values. Like any traditional media, they have been forced to adapt to the digital age. In 2020, Radio Free Asia launched an online newsmagazine, called WHYNOT, aimed at young Chinese speakers. It quickly gained traction with its coverage of the White Paper protests in 2022. The U.S. government is giving up on telling its story to the world while China is getting better at shaping narratives and promoting its geopolitical goals. In a 2023 report, the State Department said Beijing had invested billions of dollars to construct an information ecosystem to propel China's propaganda. 'Unchecked,' the report said, 'the P.R.C.'s efforts will reshape the global information landscape,' using an abbreviation for the People's Republic of China, the country's official name. In interviews, Chinese told me how Voice of America and Radio Free Asia had changed their lives. Zilu, who is in their 30s, started listening to VOA during family breakfast because their father didn't like the Chinese government. Zilu hummed the opening music of the morning news program to me. In 2001, at the age of 12, they were appalled that their classmates clapped at the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks. Now they read WHYNOT. Another Chinese person I spoke to, Xuanyi, 29, started listening to Voice of America in high school to learn English. Its news programs led him to conclude that his government did bad things and refused to admit its mistakes. Now a government worker in northern China, he is worried that without U.S. government news outlets, Chinese who circumvent the Great Firewall will find that the internet outside China is full of misinformation. 'They might lose interest and retreat back inside the Great Firewall quickly,' he said.
Euronews
22-03-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB spy who defected to the UK in the Cold War, dies at 86
ADVERTISEMENT Gordievsky died on March 4 in England, where he had lived since defecting in 1985. Police said on Saturday that they are not treating his death as suspicious. Historians consider Gordievsky one of the era's most important spies. In the 1980s, his intelligence helped avoid a dangerous escalation of nuclear tensions between the USSR and the West. Born in Moscow in 1938, Gordievsky joined the KGB in the early 1960s, serving in Moscow, Copenhagen and London, where he became KGB station chief. He was one of several Soviet agents who grew disillusioned with the USSR after Moscow's tanks crushed the Prague Spring freedom movement in 1968, and was recruited by Britain's MI6 in the early 1970s. The 1990 book 'KGB: The Inside Story,' co-authored by Gordievsky and British intelligence historian Christopher Andrew, says Gordievsky came to believe that 'the Communist one-party state leads inexorably to intolerance, inhumanity and the destruction of liberties.' He decided that the best way to fight for democracy 'was to work for the West.' He worked for British intelligence for more than a decade during the chilliest years of the Cold War. In 1983, Gordievsky warned the U.K. and U.S. that the Soviet leadership was so worried about a nuclear attack by the West that it was considering a first strike. As tensions spiked during a NATO military exercise in Germany, Gordievsky helped reassure Moscow that it was not a precursor to a nuclear attack. Soon after, U.S. President Ronal Reagan began moves to ease nuclear tensions with the Soviet Union. In 1984, Gordievsky briefed soon-to-be Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev ahead of his first visit to the U.K. — and also briefed the British on how to approach the reformist Gorbachev. Gorbachev's meeting with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was a huge success. Most senior Soviet spy to defect Ben Macintyre, author of a book about the double agent, 'The Spy and the Traitor,' told the BBC that Gordievsky managed 'in a secret way to launch the beginning of the end of the Cold War.' Gordievsky was called back to Moscow for consultations in 1985, and decided to go despite fearing — correctly — that his role as a double agent had been exposed. He was drugged and interrogated but not charged, and Britain arranged an undercover operation to spirit him out of the Soviet Union — smuggled across the border to Finland in the trunk of a car. He was the most senior Soviet spy to defect during the Cold War. Documents declassified in 2014 showed that Britain considered Gordievsky so valuable that Thatcher sought to cut a deal with Moscow: If Gordievsky's wife and daughters were allowed to join him in London, Britain would not expel all the KGB agents he had exposed. Moscow rejected the offer, and Thatcher ordered the expulsion of 25 Russians, despite objections from Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe, who fared it could scuttle relations just as Gorbachev was easing the stalemate between Russia and the West. Moscow responded by expelling 25 Britons, sparking a second round in which each side kicked out six more officials. But, despite Howe's fears, diplomatic relations were never severed. Gordievsky's family was kept under 24-hour KGB surveillance for six years before being allowed to join him in England in 1991. He lived the rest of his life under U.K. protection in the quiet town of Godalming, 64 kilometres from London. ADVERTISEMENT Death not being treated as suspicious In Russia, Gordievsky was sentenced to death for treason. In Britain, Queen Elizabeth II appointed him a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George in 2007 for 'services to the security of the United Kingdom.' It is the same accolade held by the fictional British spy James Bond. In 2008, Gordievsky claimed he had been poisoned and spent 34 hours in a coma after taking tainted sleeping pills given to him by a Russian business associate. The risks he faced were underscored in 2018 when former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned and seriously sickened with a Soviet-made nerve agent in the English city of Salisbury, where he had been living quietly for years. The Surrey Police force said officers were called to an address in Godalming on March 4, where 'an 86-year-old man was found dead at the property.' ADVERTISEMENT It said counter-terrorism officers are leading the investigation, but 'the death is not currently being treated as suspicious' and 'there is nothing to suggest any increased risk to members of the public.'
Boston Globe
22-03-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Oleg Gordievsky, Britain's most valuable Cold War spy inside the KGB, dies at 86
Born in Moscow in 1938, Mr. Gordievsky joined the KGB in the early 1960s, serving in Moscow, Copenhagen, and London, where he became KGB station chief. He was one of several Soviet agents who grew disillusioned with the USSR after Moscow's tanks crushed the Prague Spring freedom movement in 1968, and was recruited by Britain's MI6 in the early 1970s. Advertisement The 1990 book 'KGB: The Inside Story,' co-authored by Mr. Gordievsky and British intelligence historian Christopher Andrew, says Mr. Gordievsky came to believe that 'the Communist one-party state leads inexorably to intolerance, inhumanity and the destruction of liberties.' He decided that the best way to fight for democracy 'was to work for the West.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up He worked for British intelligence for more than a decade during the chilliest years of the Cold War. In 1983, Mr. Gordievsky warned the U.K. and U.S. that the Soviet leadership was so worried about a nuclear attack by the West that it was considering a first strike. As tensions spiked during a NATO military exercise in Germany, Mr. Gordievsky helped reassure Moscow that it was not precursor to a nuclear attack. Soon after, President Reagan began moves to ease nuclear tensions with the Soviet Union. In 1984, Mr. Gordievsky briefed soon-to-be Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev ahead of his first visit to the U.K. — and also briefed the British on how to approach the reformist Gorbachev. Gorbachev's meeting with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was a huge success. Ben Macintyre, author of a book about the double agent, 'The Spy and the Traitor,' told the BBC that Mr. Gordievsky managed 'in a secret way to launch the beginning of the end of the Cold War.' Advertisement Most senior Soviet spy to defect Mr. Gordievsky was called back to Moscow for consultations in 1985, and decided to go despite fearing — correctly — that his role as a double agent had been exposed. He was drugged and interrogated but not charged, and Britain arranged an undercover operation to spirit him out of the Soviet Union — smuggled across the border to Finland in the trunk of a car. He was the most senior Soviet spy to defect during the Cold War. Documents declassified in 2014 showed that Britain considered Mr. Gordievsky so valuable that Thatcher sought to cut a deal with Moscow: If Mr. Gordievsky's wife and daughters were allowed to join him in London, Britain would not expel all the KGB agents he had exposed. Moscow rejected the offer, and Thatcher ordered the expulsion of 25 Russians, despite objections from Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe, who fared it could scuttle relations just as Gorbachev was easing the stalemate between Russia and the West. Moscow responded by expelling 25 Britons, sparking a second round in which each side kicked out six more officials. But, despite Howe's fears, diplomatic relations were never severed. Mr. Gordievsky's family was kept under 24-hour KGB surveillance for six years before being allowed to join him in England in 1991. He lived the rest of his life under U.K. protection in the quiet town of Godalming, 40 miles southwest of London. Death not being treated as suspicious In Russia, Mr. Gordievsky was sentenced to death for treason. In Britain, Queen Elizabeth II appointed him a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George in 2007 for 'services to the security of the United Kingdom.' It is the same accolade held by the fictional British spy James Bond. Advertisement In 2008, Mr. Gordievsky claimed he had been poisoned and spent 34 hours in a coma after taking tainted sleeping pills given to him by a Russian business associate. The risks he faced were underscored in 2018 when former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned and seriously sickened with a Soviet-made nerve agent in the English city of Salisbury, where he had been living quietly for years. The Surrey Police force said officers were called to an address in Godalming on March 4, where 'an 86-year-old man was found dead at the property.' It said counterterrorism officers are leading the investigation, but 'the death is not currently being treated as suspicious' and 'there is nothing to suggest any increased risk to members of the public.'
