Back أرشيف متروخين Arabic Mitrochin-Archiv German Archivo Mitrojin Spanish Mitrohinin arkisto Finnish Archives Mitrokhine French Միտրոխինի արխիվ Armenian Archivio Mitrochin Italian ミトロヒン文書 Japanese Mitrochin-archief Dutch Mitrokhin-arkivet NN
The Mitrokhin Archive refers to a collection of handwritten notes about secret KGB operations spanning the period between the 1930s and 1980s made by KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin which he shared with the British intelligence in the early 1990s.[1] Mitrokhin, who had worked at KGB headquarters in Moscow from 1956 to 1985, first offered his material to the US' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Latvia, but they rejected it as possible fakes.[2] After that, he turned to the UK's MI6, which arranged his defection from Russia.[1]
He secretly made his handwritten notes by copying archival documents in the period between 1972 and 1984, when he supervised the move of the archive of KGB's foreign intelligence department First Chief Directorate from the Lubyanka Building to their new headquarters at Yasenevo.
When he defected to the United Kingdom in 1992, he brought the archive with him, in six full trunks. His defection was not officially announced until 1999.[3]
The official historian of MI5, Christopher Andrew, wrote two books, The Sword and the Shield (1999) and The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World (2005), based on material from the Mitrokhin Archives.[4] The books provide details about many of the Soviet Union's clandestine intelligence operations around the world.
They also provide specifics about Guy Burgess, a British diplomat with a short career in MI6, said to be frequently under the influence of alcohol; the archive indicates that he gave the KGB at least 389 top secret documents in the first six months of 1945 along with a further 168 in December 1949.[5]
The utilization of the Mitrokhin Archive is not without risk because these documents only contain his handwritten notes, and no original documents or photocopies were ever made available to analyze these notes.[2] Many scholars remain skeptical of the context and authenticity of the notes made by Mitrokhin.[1]
- ^ a b c Smith, J.; Davis, S. (2017). Historical Dictionary of the Cold War. Historical Dictionaries of War, Revolution, and Civil Unrest. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 198. ISBN 978-1-4422-8186-8.
- ^ a b Brennan, S. (2022). The KGB and the Vatican: Secrets of the Mitrokhin Files. Catholic University of America Press. p. 6. ISBN 978-1-949822-22-9. Retrieved 2024-07-17.
- ^ "Behind a bittersweet industry". Washington Post. 30 January 2004. Archived from the original on 18 August 2020. Retrieved 30 December 2020.
- ^ "Just How Intelligent" Archived 2019-12-24 at the Wayback Machine The Guardian, February 18, 2003
- ^ "Cambridge Five spy ring members 'hopeless drunks'". BBC News. 7 July 2014. Archived from the original on 19 April 2019. Retrieved 30 December 2020.