Oleg Gordievsky

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2008

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Oleg Gordievsky. He is the highest-ranking KGB officer ever to become a spy for the British. The insights he gave into the Soviet hierarchy and culture over the course of 10 years were so significant that, according to some, he did more than any other individual in the West to hasten the demise of the communist regime. A bright pupil with an aptitude for languages, he joined the KGB's diplomatic corps thinking it would allow him to travel and fulfil his interest in politics. But he was first enchanted by the liberty enjoyed in the West and then so horrified by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia that he started to feed information to MI6.

He risked his life for a decade, but in 1985 he was recalled to Moscow - his cover had been blown and he realised he had just weeks to live. An incredible escape plan was activated and, after shaking off the KGB surveillance teams that followed him everywhere, he escaped by tram, train and bus to the border with Finland - where British agents bundled him into the boot of a car and carried him to freedom.

Now, his life is in Britain - he has married a British woman and his courage has been recognised through the honours system. But he believes his existence is a precarious one - after the death of his friend Alexander Litvinenko last year he has felt increasingly worried about his own safety and believes Britain is no longer the safe haven it once was.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Erbarme Dich by Johann Sebastian Bach Book: Encyclopaedia Britannica Luxury: Good toiletries for my bath.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2008. My castaway this week is Oleg Gordyevsky. He is the highest ranking KGB officer ever to work as a double agent for the British.
0:35.1	For more than a decade, his undercover work gave an unprecedented insight into the nature
0:40.0	of the Soviet threat.
0:41.8	But his contribution has come at some considerable
0:44.8	personal cost. His courage and scruples wrecked his manage and damaged his
0:49.3	relationship with his children. He lives too with the knowledge that even now in Russia there is a warrant for his death.
0:56.0	Oleg Godiaski, can we go back to 1968? You were a KGB agent working undercover as apparently a Soviet diplomat in Copenhagen and after years of disenchantment you decided that you were going to actively undermine the Soviet system.
1:16.2	What did you take the decision to do?
1:19.8	It was certainly the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union and other
1:24.9	communist countries. It was so outrageous that I decided now it is the end and
1:30.8	I'll stop working for this criminal
1:34.3	awful regime.
1:35.3	And so in 1968 when you decided to take this enormous
1:39.7	personal step what was it you did to make it known to the British that you may be
1:45.0	somebody who was available to them? Yes. I made a telephone call to my wife when I
1:52.2	expressed my outrage. I knew the telephone was listened to by the Danes.
1:58.2	They would immediately tell the British about my attitude and they will pay more attention to me.
2:06.2	So it was in this telephone call that the seeds were planted but it would of course be many
2:10.2	years before you were in a position to start feeding useful information to Britain.
2:15.0	Last summer, very interestingly, the work that you did over all these years was officially recognized through the
	...

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