Oleg Gordievsky is the most valuable Cold War spy in the UK, a spy within the KGB, who died at the age of 86 – Country
Soviet KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky was dead, and he helped change the process of the Cold War by secretly passing it to Britain. He is 86 years old.
Gordievsky died in England since his defection in 1985. Police said Saturday they did not regard his death as suspicious.
Historians believe that Gordievsky was one of the most important spies of the era. In the 1980s, his intelligence helped to avoid the dangerous escalation of nuclear tension between the Soviet Union and the West.
Born in Moscow in 1938, Gordievsky joined the KGB in the early 1960s, serving in Moscow, Copenhagen and London, where he became the head of the KGB station.
After Moscow's Tanks smashed the Prague Spring Freedom Movement in 1968, he was one of several Soviet agents who were disillusioned with the Soviet Union and were recruited by British MI6 in the early 1970s.
Book of 1990 KGB: Internal StoryCo-written by Goldivsky and British intelligence historian Christopher Andrew, he said Goldivsky began to believe that “a one-party state of communism inevitably leads to the destruction of intolerance, inhumanity and freedom.”
He believes that the best way to fight for democracy is to “work for the West.”
During the coldest years of the Cold War, he worked in British intelligence for more than a decade.
In 1983, Gordievsky warned Britain and us that Soviet leaders were so worried about the Western nuclear attack that it was considering a first strike.
As tensions in Germany NATO military exercises increased, Goldivsky helped Moscow ensure that it was not a pioneer of nuclear attacks.
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Soon after, U.S. President Ronald Reagan began to move to relieve nuclear tensions with the Soviet Union.
In 1984, Gordivsky briefed the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev before his first visit to Britain – and also briefed the UK on how to approach Gorbachev of the reformists. Gorbachev's meeting with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was a huge success.
Ben MacIntyre, the author of a book about the dual agent “Spy and Traitors”, told the BBC that Gordievsky “in a secret way to launch the beginning of the end of the Cold War.”
The most advanced Soviet spy
Gordievsky was recalled to Moscow in 1985 for consultations and decided despite fears that his role as a dual agent had been exposed.
He was drugged, questioned but not charged, and Britain arranged an undercover operation to drive him out of the Soviet Union – smuggled into the border in the trunk of a car to reach Finland.
He was the most senior Soviet spy during the Cold War.
Documents declassified in 2014 show that Britain thought Goldivsky was so valuable that Thatcher tried to reach a deal with Moscow: Britain would not expel all the KGB agents he exposed if Goldivsky's wife and daughter were allowed to join London.
Moscow rejected the proposal, and despite opposition from Foreign Minister Geoffrey Howe, Thatcher ordered the expulsion of 25 Russians, and his performance could undermine relations, just as Gorbachev eased the deadlock between Russia and the West.
Moscow's response was to expel 25 British people, triggering a second round of matches, and both sides kicked out six more officials.
But despite Howe's fear, diplomatic relations have never been cut off.
Gordievsky's family was surveillance for six years for 24 hours before being allowed to join England in 1991.
He lived for the rest of his life under the protection of the quiet town of Godalming, 64 kilometers southwest of London.
Death is not considered suspicious
In Russia, Goddievs was sentenced to death for treason.
In the UK, Queen Elizabeth II appointed him as a companion to the Order of St. Michael and St. George in 2007 to “serve the security of Britain”.
This is a praise held by the fictional British spy James Bond.
In 2008, Gordievsky fell into a coma for 34 hours after claiming that his poisoned sleeping pills were given to him by Russian business partners.
The risks he faced highlighted in 2018 that Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned and seriously nauseated by Soviet-made nerve agents in Salisbury, England, where he lived quietly for years.
Police officers were called on March 4 at a Godaming address where “an 86-year-old man was found dead in the property,” Surrey Police Force said.
It said counterterrorism officials are leading the investigation, but “the death is not considered suspicious yet” and “there is nothing to suggest an increased risk to the public.”
& Copy 2025 Canadian Press
