About This Database

Soviet Defectors

This database is a companion to the 2020 book, Soviet Defectors: Revelations of Renegade Intelligence Officers 1924-1954 (Edinburgh University Press). It is the result of research in over a dozen archives, national and university, that contain information about Soviet intelligence history. It offers brief biographies of Soviet intelligence and state security officers who defected from the Soviet Union to countries around the world.

A defector is a person who renounces allegiance to one state or cause in exchange for allegiance to another, in a way that is considered illegitimate by the losing entity. Defectors are a phenomenon that governments fear: they both repudiate the system from which they came, and, if they held a position of trust, provide a source of information about the inner workings of the system.

This is particularly true of defectors from intelligence services, because they have privileged access to sensitive information that a government takes great care to keep secret.

The Book

Soviet Defectors: Revelations of Renegade Intelligence Officers 1924-1954

Edinburgh University Press

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