Original version

BBC World Service Online

Witness History

Podcasts

Factual: Life Stories

Factual: History

History as told by the people who were there

History as told by the people who were there.

BBC World Service Australasia

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa Schedule

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

BBC World Service schedule for American satellite radio and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean

BBC World Service

BBC World Service South Asia

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

BBC World Service West and Central Africa Schedule

BBC World Service West and Central Africa

BBC World Service East Asia

Witness History: The KGB's Whistleblower

Documentaries

mitrokhin ready to use.jpg

29/10/2018 GMT

The KGB's Whistleblower

BBC World Service - Witness History, The KGB's Whistleblower

KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin's top secret archive was smuggled to Britain in 1992

KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin risked his life smuggling thousands of top-secret Soviet foreign intelligence files out of KGB headquarters, eventually bringing them to the West

Senior KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin risked his life smuggling thousands of top-secret Soviet intelligence files out of KGB headquarters, and bringing them to the West. His archive was one of the largest hauls of information to leak out of a major intelligence service anywhere in the world. Louise Hidalgo talks to Cambridge historian Professor Christopher Andrew, one of the few people let into Mitrokhin's secret who helped him turn his archive into a book.

Picture: Vasili Mitrokhin, taken in March 1992 when he walked into the British embassy in Latvia and announced he had a big haul of KGB intelligence (Credit: Churchill Archives Centre, University of Cambridge)

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Witness History

The KGB's Whistleblower

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC World Service Online

About BBC World Service