Stalin’s Top Spies: From WW2 into the Cold War

Formed a mere two months after the Bolshevik Revolution, the Cheka, the Soviet Security and Intelligence Agency, was formed to gather intelligence and promote revolution abroad.This organisation underwent a series of transformations over the following decades and achieved some remarkable successes against Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the USA, and the United Kingdom. Throughout the 1930s, the Soviets pursued their ambition of gaining influence in Eastern Europe.It was a plan that inevitably brought them into conflict with Nazi Germany, against which they began setting up clandestine organisations that were meant to become operational in the event of war. The USA had been of peripheral interest to the Soviets up until the prospect of war loomed ever closer.Then, when it became known that Britain and the USA were exploring the potential of atomic weapons, espionage in the western hemisphere became of paramount importance.Despite their being allies against the Nazis, the Soviets significa