"Undaunted, Jonathan Haslam has inspected the workings of the Soviet Union's entire spying machinery from the October Revolution to the end of the cold war, and produced, in Near and Distant Neighbors , an account of the KGB and its military counterpart, the GRU, that is, he says, "about as comprehensive as can be contained within one volume, given prevailing restrictions." Certainly, one would not ask for more. Haslam's book is full of colorful characters who excel in stealing secrets and killing people, including their own colleagues. Haslam writes that in 1938 Pavel Sudoplatov, arguably the most talented of the KGB's assassins, murdered a Ukrainian nationalist in Rotterdam with an exploding cake. These accounts of early Russian derring-do could spawn a shelf of noir paperback thrillers." --Robert Cottrell, The New York Review of Books "Intelligence was central to Soviet security policy, and yet until now we have lacked a comprehensive history of it. This Jonathan Haslam has given us, with extensive research and penetrating analysis. From the internal intrigues to the foreign exploits, the story is as fascinating as it is important" --Robert Jervis, author of Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War "A meticulous survey of Russian and Western sources makes for a lively account of the history of all the Soviet intelligence agencies--the first time anyone has succeeded with this.

" --Robert Service, emeritus professor of Russian history, St. Antony's College, Oxford University, and author of Trotsky: A Biography.