Oleg Gordievsky
 Oleg Gordievsky    ( spook, defector, double agent) | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky 10 October 1938 Moscow |
| Died | 4 March 2025 (Age 86) Godalming, Surrey, United Kingdom |
| Nationality | Soviet |
| Alma mater | Moscow State Institute of International Relations |
Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky was a Soviet spy who, in April 1985, became KGB resident-designate (rezident) and bureau chief in London. He was actually a double agent, and had been providing information to the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) for over a decade.
Gordievsky was recalled to Moscow on 19 May 1985, and put under surveillance by the KGB. Two months later, he escaped and was given asylum in the United Kingdom.
Following his escape from the USSR, Gordievsky was sentenced to death in absentia for treason by the Soviet authorities.[1]
Death
Gordievsky died at his home in Godalming, Surrey, on 4 March 2025, at the age of 86.[2]
Exfiltration to the UK
On 19 July 1985, Gordievsky managed to evade his KGB tails in Moscow and boarded a train to Leningrad, and then travelled to a rendezvous south of Vyborg, near the Finnish border. There he was met by British embassy cars, after they had managed to lose the three KGB surveillance cars that had been following them, and was smuggled across the border into Finland in the boot of a Ford Sierra saloon. Gordievsky was flown to the UK via Norway.
He's unique
In an interview with The Herald on 23 June 2024, Baroness Ramsay called Oleg Gordievsky "unique":
- Gordievsky was MI6’s most prized double agent. “He was the gold standard. Very special,” Ramsay says. A KGB colonel, Gordievsky ran Russia’s spying operations in Britain. Unbeknown to MI6, a CIA officer called Aldrich Ames – who had turned traitor and was working for the Kremlin – blew Gordievsky’s cover, telling the KGB he was a British agent.
- In 1985, Gordievsky was recalled to Moscow, and soon realised he faced execution. MI6 launched an “exfiltration” plan to spirit Gordievsky out alive. An MI6 officer arranged to smuggle Gordievsky over the border to Finland in the boot of his car.
- At the border, Soviet guards were using sniffer dogs to search for Gordievsky. The MI6 officer had taken his wife and baby along as cover. As the guards approached their car, his wife got out and changed her baby’s nappy on the boot, with Gordievsky hiding inside, literally throwing the dogs off the scent.
- Ramsay was MI6 “head of station” in Helsinki, waiting for Gordievsky’s arrival in Finland. She won’t say what role she had. “Everything to do with Oleg was to go to the grave with us,” she explains. If Gordievsky hadn’t later written about his exploits, Ramsay wouldn’t even offer the few tidbits she’s willing to discuss today. “I’d still pretend I didn’t know anything about him. I got to know him very well afterwards, but we won’t go into that.”
- It was the stuff of Hollywood movies. Yet she still won’t accept there’s anything unique about her career. Is that Glaswegian reluctance to get to big for your boots – fear of tall poppy syndrome? Perhaps, she says.
- However, she doesn’t hold back on Ames, the CIA traitor. Other agents he gave up were executed by the Soviets. “What an awful man. He did it for money. It’s no thanks to him Oleg survived. I could kill Ames.”
- He was later caught and sentenced to life in prison where he remains.
- “How could you live with yourself knowing you caused the death of people who trusted you and were helping you?” Ramsay asks. “Our lives are about loyalty, not treachery.” She taps the table again with her fingernails. “You can never excuse treachery – betrayal is unforgivable in any circumstances.”
- Gordievsky’s information was vital to Britain and America, and helped pave the path towards the fall of Communism. Gordievsky swapped sides when he was first posted to Copenhagen and realised “the Soviet system was a lie”.
- “You get to meet a lot of defectors,” Ramsay says. Most are motivated by selfinterest – “they didn’t get a promotion, there’s an unhappy marriage” – but Gordievsky was totally ideological. “There was nothing quite like Oleg. He’s unique.”[3]
References
- ↑ "The Spy and the Traitor review – a gripping tale of escape from the USSR"
- ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2025/03/25/oleg-gordievsky-dead/
- ↑ "In an unprecedented interview, Baroness Meta Ramsay meets our Writer at Large and reveals what it’s like to be an officer at the heart of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service"
