Oleg Gordievsky, the Soviet KGB officer who played a key role in changing the course of the Cold War by secretly passing information to Britain, has died aged 86.
He died on March 4 in England, where he had been living since his escape in 1985. Police said on Saturday they were not treating his death as suspicious.
Historians regard Mr Gordievsky as one of the most important spies of his time. In the 1980s, his intelligence helped prevent a dangerous escalation of nuclear tensions between the Soviet Union and the West.
He was born in Moscow in 1938 and joined the KGB in the early 1960s, serving in Moscow, Copenhagen and London, where he became head of the KGB residency.
He was one of several Soviet agents who became disillusioned with the USSR after the Prague Spring was crushed by Moscow's tanks in 1968 and were recruited by MI6 in the early 1970s.
A 1990 book, “KGB: The Inside Story,” co-written by Mr. Gordievsky and the British intelligence historian Christopher Andrew, said Mr. Gordievsky had come to believe that “a communist one-party state inevitably leads to intolerance, inhumanity and the destruction of freedoms.”
He decided that the best way to fight for democracy was to “work for the West.”
For more than a decade, he collaborated with British intelligence during the most critical years of the Cold War.
In 1983, he told Britain and the United States that Soviet leaders were so worried about a nuclear strike from the West that they were considering a first strike. When tensions rose sharply during NATO military exercises in Germany, Mr Gordievsky helped convince Moscow that it was not a precursor to a nuclear attack.
Soon after, US President Ronald Reagan began taking steps to reduce nuclear tensions with the Soviet Union.
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
