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World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World | 
 enlarge | Authors: Christopher Andrew, Vasili Mitrokhin
Publisher: Basic Books
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
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Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 29586
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Paperback
Pages: 676
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.7 x 1.6
Dewey Decimal Number: 947
ASIN: B0017HSXXQ
Publication Date: October 30, 2006
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Product Description
In 1992 the British Secret Intelligence Service exfiltrated from Russia a defector whose presence in the West remained a secret until the publication of The Sword and the Shield in 1999. That man was Vasili Mitrokhin, the KGB's most senior archivist. Unknown to his superiors, Mitrokhin had spent over a decade making notes and transcripts of highly classified files which, at enormous personal risk, he smuggled out of the KGB archives. The FBI described the archive as "the greatest single cache of intelligence every received by the West." In The Sword and the Shield, Christopher Andrew revealed the secrets of the KGB's operations in the United States and Europe; now in The World Was Going Our Way, he has written the first comprehensive account of the KGB and its operations throughout the Third World. Our understanding of the contemporary world remains incomplete without taking into account the vast impact of the KGB in developing nations: Andrew reveals the names of political leaders on the KGB payroll as well as the KGB's successful penetration of numerous foreign governments. He also points to the many absurdities of KGB operations-such as agents attempting to assess the spread of influence of rival Chinese communism by visiting African capitals and counting the number of posters of Mao Tse Tung. For decades the KGB believed that the world was going their way-and Americans at the highest reaches of government lived in fear that they were losing the Cold War in the Third World. This extraordinary book will transform our understanding of the history of the twentieth century.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 Extraordinary largely for showing contractors as the weak link September 28, 2005
Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States)
41 out of 50 found this review helpful
This is, like the first book, an extraordinary piece of scholarship. While it can be tedious in both its detail and in the drollness of the "accomplishments" that enjoyed so much Politburo attention and funding, it joins books such as Derek Leebaert's The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World in documenting the insanity and waste that characterized much of the so-called "secret wars" between the US Intelligence Community (within which the CIA is a $3 billion a year runt against the larger defense budget approaching $50 billion a year) and the KGB and GRU.
For those who have the patience or speed to get through this entire book, the single most important revelation and documentation concerns the ease with which the Russians were able to recruit traitors within the US defense community contractors. Ralph Peters has written about this in New Glory : Expanding America's Global Supremacy but speaks mostly of legal treason--corruption and waste. This book carefully addresses the sad reality that DoD is totally penetrated by foreign spies (one would add, Third World and allied spies including France, Germany, and Israel, never mind China and Iran) via the contracting community.
One day someone will do a careful calibration of both the good and the bad of secret intelligence. When that day comes, this book will be as good a place as any with which to start.
Best General Couonterintelligence Books:
Traitors Among Us: Inside the Spy Catcher's World
Merchants of Treason America's Secrets for Sale from the Pueblo to the Present
Wonderful September 26, 2005
Seth J. Frantzman (Jerusalem, Israel)
23 out of 35 found this review helpful
Communism used to have footholds everywhere, and the KGP was the true puppet master. However the KGBs rivals included other deviant forms of communism, heresies if you will, such as China, Albania and Yugoslavia. China tried to penetrate Africa in the 1970s, bankrolling revolutions and dictatorships, Cuba was also deeply involved in Angola(to the tune of 30,000 troops) and in Ethiopia. Russia had a toehold in Vietnam, but China was weary of the Vietnamese attempt to overrun Laos and Cambodia in 1975. In South America different strains of communism helped lead to the death of Che Guevara. The war in central America was about Communism and the KGB infiltrated the governments of the Middle east. Khrushchev was the orginal architect of the turn to the third world, realziing that even reactionary third world dictators could be courted through money to help fight America. It was the opposite of the Stalin policty of viewing everyone as the enemy who was not proclaiming friendship.
This excellent book looks at the KGB's role in africa though newly declassified documents and access to other hitherto unpublished files. We see many funny apsects of the KGBs role and learn many new things about the extent of the penetration.
A fascinating book.
Seth J. Frantzman
GOD BLESS RONALD WILSON REAGAN ! September 22, 2005
James J. Varela (Sarasota, FL United States)
22 out of 70 found this review helpful
I think the over all moral of this book is evil will triumph if good people do nothing or try to adopt the tactics of the evil. We lost Vietnam because policymakers forgot this nation was supposed to stand for certain principles even in war. The Soviet leaders wanting to change the world to Communism had nothing to do with belief in Marxism as opposed to what they felt was a vehicle for which to assert Russian influence on the world. Geopolitical influence in these poor nations was a status symbol of imagined empire and wealth. The left often loves to attack the U.S. for its policies toward third world nations. In some cases the criticism is justified but as is so often the case life here is seldom black and white but often gray. The problem in so many third world countries are often the masses are often uneducated and their governments of these countries do not have the means to spend large amounts on public education, a necessity in creating a middle class of educated informed voters. When Fidel Castro took power in Cuba in 1959 Cuba had a high literacy rate for Latin America, 75% of the population but only a small percentage of these literate Cubans had an education beyond elementary school. For a charismatic demagogue like Mr. Castro taking over Cuba must have been like taking candy away from a baby.
Time to Re Write the History Books January 23, 2006
Michael Hanson (Lansing, Il United States)
11 out of 18 found this review helpful
With a paltry budget of $3bil a year, the CIA's counter intelligence operation had to fight a KGB/GRU monstrosity 20 times its size, one wonders how the West won the Cold war. For far to long, any time the KGB was implicated in a situation it was dismissed by the press as some kind of "right wing hyperventilation". Many of the cold war martyrs canonized by the left, i.e. Allende, turned out to be on the KGB's payroll. Simply put, this book has the potential to change the history of the Cold War as we know it.
Perkele January 15, 2006
Nikita (Atlanta, GA)
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
A good account of facts which were relatively unknown to common people. Corruption and exploitation are two main problems encountered by the Third World, perhaps initiated by different superpowers during those days. Superpowers do not exist any more but unfortunately those countries of the Third World are still struggling both politically and economically.
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