Red Spies
SOVIET ESPIONAGE. By David J. Dallin. (O.U.P., 45s.)
IN this country remarkably little has been told us about the operations and contacts of Maclean and the other Soviet agents who have come to notice since the war. This book's brilliant accounts of some of the Soviet spy rings in other countries, includ- ing those penetrating the American government machinery, show the sort of way in which our own must have been treated. All Mr. Dallin's works on Soviet subjects are both expert and interest- ing. And this one is exceptionally so. Like almost all other com- mentators, he does not think highly of the efficiency of the Soviet spy system. But it is so large and has such a stratum of recruits ready with 'canned ideology in their heads and emptiness in their hearts' that it is bound to get something, at least from the democratic countries. Mr. Dallin feels that democracies cannot entirely defend themselves, but does not regard this, at present at least, as more than a minor loss, if normal precautions are taken. This was not the case in the great atomic spy era. Nor is it the case in France now, where the author gives an astonishing account of the way in which political pressures have prevented the authori- ties from getting to the bottom of important cases of betrayal.
The author shows some sympathy for those Soviet spies operating in other totalitarian States, like the Rote Kapelle ring in Nazi Germany. For they at least risked the execution that their own masters inflict on foreign agents by the hundred every year, while the Soviet spy in the West betrays his country with compara- tive impunity; witness the hypocritical fuss made about the single
Previous page
