This is John Baster, a conversation with the author, Svetlana Lakova.

The book is The Spy Who Changed History.

This is the story of the Soviet in espionage ring in the United States assigned by Stalin from 1930s onward.

To gather up intellectual property, otherwise steal secrets, especially about

aeronautics, but really about everything. Russia felt, Stalin felt, Lenin felt. They were well

behind and had to steal, similar to how the Chinese have approached their job catching up

after the revolution in 1940s.

However, there are romantic characters in all directions, and here's Svetlau introduces us to a young woman graduate of Hunter College,

who becomes the trainer for the Soviet espionage ring in America in the 1930s and 40s and 50s.

They go very far. They meet everybody. They're very good, especially the hero.

The spy who changed history. And here's his trainer, the woman who trained him.

Svetlana Lakova, much more of this tonight and tomorrow night.

Raisa Bennett, who later becomes known as Ray in America, was born in

Tsarist Russia, and age seven or eight, her father takes, so her mother dies, unfortunately,

young age, and her father takes her to America together

with the other children and the family. And they settle in the United States where she grows up.

And she becomes a prominent member of the Jewish, Russian community. And her father is a editor of a very important Jewish communist newspaper called Forward.

And so she associates herself with all the communists around New York.

She ends up going to Hunter's College.

And after she graduates, she's dreaming like many other Russians who want to go back to Soviet Union now, back to Russia, but now it becomes Soviet Union to help to build the new society.