About this item
The authors of The Red Web examine the shifting role of Russian expatriates throughout history, and their complicated, unbreakable relationship with the mother country--be it antagonistic or far too chummy.The history of Russian espionage is soaked in blood, from a spontaneous pistol shot that killed a secret policeman in Romania in 1924 to the attempt to poison an exiled KGB colonel in Salisbury, England, in 2017. migrs have found themselves continually at the center of the mayhem.Russians began leaving the country in big numbers in the late nineteenth century, fleeing pogroms, Tsarist secret police persecution, the Revolution, then Stalin and the KGB, and creating the third-largest diaspora in the world. The exodus created a rare opportunity for the Kremlin. Moscow's masters and spymasters fostered networks of spies, many of whom were emigrants driven from Russia. By the 1930s and 1940s, dozens of spies were in New York City gathering information for Moscow.But the story did not end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some migrs have turned into assets of the resurgent Russian Nationalist state, while others have taken up the dissident challenge once more--at their personal peril. From Trotsky to Litvinenko, The Compatriots is the gripping history of Russian score-settling around the world.
About the Author
Andrei Soldatov is an investigative journalist and Editor of Agentura.Ru, an information hub on intelligence agencies. In 1996, he began his career as a reporter. He has been covering security services and terrorism issues since 1999.In September 2000, he launched with several colleagues the Agentura.Ru project. He covered terrorist attacks and hostilities in the country and abroad, including the siege of Nord-Ost in Moscow, the hostage crisis in Beslan, the war in Lebanon and the tensions in the Gaza strip. Soldatov regularly makes comments on terrorism and intelligence issues for Russian and international media. He lives in Moscow.
