Spies and Commissars

Robert Service, world-leading expert in Russian history, presents a fresh portrait of the early years of the Revolution. ‘Fascinating . . . Service has a wonderful eye for the telling detail’ – Independent 1917. The world is locked in an ideological battle. The Western powers are anxious to prevent Bolshevism spreading across Europe. Lenin and Trotsky are equally anxious that their Communist vision should do just that. But in the wake of the Revolution and Russia’s withdrawal from the First World War, there is a distinct lack of reliable information available to either side. Into this intelligence void step an extraordinary collection of journalists, spies – sometimes not mutually exclusive categorisations – and opportunists. In Moscow Britain’s Arthur Ransome, the American John Reed and Sidney Reilly –the ‘Ace of Spies’ – trade information and broker deals between Russia and the West; in Berlin, Paris and London, the likes of Maxim Litvinov, Adolf Ioffe and Kamenev try to infiltrate