Spectator Books: the life of Richard Sorge, Stalin's master spy
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2019
⏱️ 31 minutes
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Summary
In this week’s books podcast Sam is joined by Owen Matthews to talk about the man many have claimed was the greatest spy of the 20th century, Richard Sorge, the subject of Owen’s riveting new book An Impeccable Spy (reviewed in the new issue of The Spectator by Nicholas Shakespeare). Sorge (he’s pronounced 'zorgey', by the way — not, as I introduce the podcast, idiot that I am, 'sawj'). Here was a man who supplied information that changed the course of the Second World War — and far from being the sort of glum duffelcoated figure who populates Le Carre’s “Circus” — he really did lead an existence of James Bondish extravagance. He played the Germans off against the Japanese, all for the benefit of the Russians — and did so while drinking like a fish, seducing every woman he crossed paths with, waving around samurai swords and roaring about on a motorbike. Owen has the low-down on this “bad man who became a great spy”.
Literary interviews and discussions on the latest releases in the world of publishing, from poetry through to physics. Presented by Sam Leith.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Spectator Radio, The Spectator's curated podcast collection. |
| 0:10.1 | Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Books podcast. |
| 0:13.0 | I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor-ed for The Spectator. |
| 0:15.4 | And this week I'm joined by Owen Matthews, whose new book is an impeccable spy, |
| 0:23.1 | Richard Sorge Stalin's master agent. Oh, welcome. I, you know, we hear endlessly about the Cambridge spy ring. |
| 0:29.6 | You know, if I never heard Guy Burgess's name again, I'd be very happy. But Richard Sorge was |
| 0:33.7 | sort of a new one on me, even though it appears he's enormously famous in Russia and |
| 0:37.8 | enormously famous in Japan. Who was this guy? And how did you chance on him? |
| 0:43.2 | Well, he was arguably the greatest spy of World War II. I think actually most spy authors make |
| 0:48.8 | some grandiose claim for their hero, or perhaps anti-hero in my case. But I think Zorgi, in fact, really did play a very important part in determining the outcome of World War II. |
| 1:01.2 | And he was, as well as being a very brilliant and effective secret agent, intelligence officer and spy runner, recruiter, and all the rest. |
| 1:10.4 | He also had something that other spies |
| 1:13.6 | do not, including Kim Filby, who's probably his equal, in terms of his access. Zorget was an analyst, |
| 1:22.4 | a player, a political animal who understood the currents of his time and actually didn't just report on the |
| 1:29.1 | doings of other spies. He actually took a very active role in involving himself in the politics |
| 1:36.4 | of the country in which he was based, i.e. Japan. He was a German communist, an idealist. He was very devoted to the idea after his traumatic experiences |
| 1:50.6 | and the trenches in the world, one, of changing the world, |
| 1:54.2 | that the old world was rotten and bitter. |
| 1:56.8 | And he very quickly in the 1920s was drawn into the orbit of the Soviet intelligence services. |
| 2:02.7 | To quickly set him, sort of frame him, he was sort of Russian born, wasn't he? |
| 2:09.1 | Yes, that's right. He was born in Baku to a Russian mother, a German father. |
| 2:14.7 | His father was an oil engineer, and he grew up extremely wealthy and in a very |
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