Life and Death in the KGB, with The Rest is Classified’s Gordon Corera (Part Two)

The legacy of KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin is not just a Cold War relic—it's a warning that echoes into today's geopolitical chaos. In 1999, his archive revealed a vast network of Soviet espionage, including the shocking exposure of Melita Norwood, a communist sympathizer who passed atomic secrets to the KGB. But the real tragedy, as journalist Gordon Corera argues, is that the world dismissed Mitrokhin’s warnings. His archive detailed the KGB’s playbook: sabotage, disinformation, political interference, and assassination—methods that would resurface decades later under Vladimir Putin. By the time Putin rose to power, the KGB had not died—it had transformed. Corera reveals how the same ideology, now embedded in Russia’s security state, continues to shape global conflict. The statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky erected at the SVR headquarters in 2023 is not a historical nod—it’s a declaration of continuity. The real lesson? The past isn’t past. The KGB’s methods evolved, not disappeared. And the world only began to understand that after it was too late. Mitrokhin’s life was a quiet act of defiance, but his death in 2004 came without the recognition he deserved. His son, after years of estrangement, ultimately preserved his father’s legacy by donating the archive to Cambridge. The story is not just about espionage—it’s about memory, denial, and the cost of ignoring history.