Description
Torrance, CA: Diane Books Publishing Co, 1982. Reprint. Mass-market paperback. Good. [4], 281 pages, 21 cm. No dust jacket as issued. Ink notation (numbers) on t-p. Cover has some wear and soiling. Anatoli Mikhailovich Granovsky (born 1922) is a former NKVD agent who defected to the West in 1946 and authored an autobiographical book about his career in Soviet intelligence. When Berlin fell, Granovsky was one of the NKVD men who appropriated files and supplies from the Gestapo and other German agencies and sites, transferring such resources back to Moscow. Anatoli Granovsky was reassigned to appear as a sympathetic Soviet war veteran "fighter-poet" on tour in London, spreading pro-Soviet propaganda. Granovsky, was reassigned a cover as a member of the Merchant Navy in 1946. In Odessa Granovsky had been approached by the MGB, successor to the NKVD, and asked to be their spy aboard the ship Petrodvorets, with which he would rendezvous in Stockholm after traveling aboard another ship. He slipped away from his colleagues in a crowd and went to see the assistant U.S. Military Attache. The Americans refused to grant Granovsky asylum and he was arrested by Swedish authorities. On November 8, 1946, shortly before he was to be repatriated to Soviet authorities, Granovsky was granted asylum by King Gustaf V of Sweden. Granovsky wrote his memoirs under the title All Pity Choked [London 1955], but later editions were published under the title I Was An NKVD Agent. This is an account of the training and work of an NKVD agent, an officer of the Soviet secret security policy. He reportedly spied on members of the Soviet elite, including Stalin's son. This work addresses the techniques of terror, subversion, blackmail and murder. Derived from a Kirkus review: As one of the few true tell-alls about the Soviet secret police, covering the mid-twenties onwards to the 2nd World War, I Was An NKVD Agent makes a suspenseful and startling showing, as well as offering an important insight to the totalitarian mind. Beginning life as a favored son of the revolution, former comrade Granovsky cavorted with the corps d'elite, cold-bloodedly accepted the new order's rattle of regimentation. When, however, his father, an industrial bureaucrat, during one of the bloody purges is branded "enemy of the people", young Granovsky, half -dead from Butirki prison, agrees to play counterspy, whereby he watches his fellows while several others are watching him. Over the years he catalogues a day-to-day chamber of horrors: orgies, suicides, mass murders, espionage, sabotage, propaganda, false confessions, lessons in sexual automation, international intrigues, impersonations- all making him as calculating as a machine. But after the rape and death of his sweetheart and against the battle-torn backdrops of Kiev, Berlin and Prague, a drained and disillusioned Granovsky decides he can take no more; defecting to the West he is given sanctuary by Sweden's Gustave II. Molotov, Beria, Zorin, Gottwald, American ambassador Davies and "Uncle Joe" are all commented upon in ripe, revealing style. A dark side of recent history frighteningly illuminated.
