Farewell: The Greatest Spy Story of the Twentieth Century by Sergei Kostin (PDF)

Description

1981. Ronald Reagan and François Mitterrand are sworn in as presidents of the Unites States and France, respectively. The tension due to Mitterrand’s French Communist support, however, is immediately defused when he gives Reagan the Farewell Dossier, a file he would later call “one of the greatest spy cases of the twentieth century.”Vladimir Ippolitovitch Vetrov, a promising technical student, joins the KGB to work as a spy. Following a couple of murky incidents, however, Vetrov is removed from the field and placed at a desk as an analyst. Soon, burdened by a troubled marriage and frustrated at a flailing career, Vetrov turns to alcohol. Desperate and needing redemption, he offers his services to the DST. Thus Agent Farewell is born. He uses his post within the KGB to steal and photocopy files of the USSR’s plans for the West—all under Brezhnev’s nose. Probing further into Vetrov’s psychological profile than ever before, Kostin and Raynaud provide groundbreaking insight into the man whose life helped hasten the fall of the Soviet Regime.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐One who enjoys spy stories will be unable to put this book down. It’s not a spy story. It’s a biography. But it’s a biography written with careful analysis of the character and personality of the principal. The text is literate, carefully written and very analytical.This is a story of a man who may have gone mad but on the other hand may have been the most cold-blooded intelligent and sane person on the planet and his era. he was a Soviet member of the KGB. he became a mole and distributed to the French government whom he knew would hand off to the Americans, the British and the Germans comprehensive evidence of Soviet technology spying and appropriation.Just following the trail in the wiki while reading this book of the various spies diplomats and statesman who were involved was an amazing tour of history. It’s worth reading the book for that opportunity alone.There is a movie with Willem Dafoe titled “farewell” which approximates the information in this biography.50 years ago I read “Microbe Hunters” by Paul DeKruif. It’s the only book I’ve read that matches my sense of significance while reading this book.

⭐This is the story of one of the most consequential Western intelligence success stories of the Cold War. Like most of the very damaging Soviet agents, Vladimir Vetrov volunteered his services to the West unexpectedly — he was not actively recruited. Vetrov was motivated by unspectacular motives — his KGB career had come to a dead-end, and he was highly resentful of the notorious fact that the children of Communist Party big-shots had the inside track for promotion and recognition within the KGB. In fact, Vetrov did not approach the CIA or MI6, both of which had very active intelligence programs in Moscow, where Vetrov was located. No, he approached French Counter-Intelligence, the DST, which functions in a manner similar to the US FBI. The KGB “knew” that the DST or for that matter French Intelligence, did not run espionage operations in Russia (they did not) and thus Vetrov’s French handlers escaped detection. In fact, Vetrov was eventually caught for the most banal of reasons — he had become a drunken wreck, and he had a blow-up with his mistress, who he attempted to murder in brutal fashion.To their infinite credit, the French shared the fruit of their agent, code-named “Farewell” with the United States upon the election of Francois Mitterand as President of France. Mitterand handed over the “Farewell” product as a way to show the United States and Ronald Reagan that despite being a Socialist, and having four Communist Party cabinet ministers, he (Mitterand) and France were solidly in the Western camp. And it worked — President Reagan, in no small part because of the “Farewell” intelligence, developed warm relations with Mitterand.Specifically, Veltrov had an unspectacular job in the KGB analyzing technology that the KGB stole from the West. This enabled him to see secret documents that revealed the previously unknown (and vast) extent to which the KGB was stealing Western defense and industrial secrets. Further, he was able to identify Soviet KGB personnel abroad, and even their traitorous Western sources, defense workers and the like. Over a period of years, Veltrov passed thousands of classified KGB documents to the French and the CIA which had far-reaching consequences in President Reagan’s ultimately successful strategy to pressure the Soviet Union into economic and military collapse. This book explains this with insight and considerable detail.All of this makes for fascinating reading. While this book starts out a bit dry, being written in the third person, the reader quickly becomes engrossed in learning about the life of a professional KGB officer who became disaffected from the KGB. This book also provides fascinating insights into the details of everyday living in the lives of more or less ordinary Russians. Indeed, it was Veltrov’s ordinary human failings, alcoholism and adultery, that ultimately led to his downfall.Highly recommended. RJB.

⭐This book is different. It is an attempt to reconstruct the life of a real Russian traitor from the 80s from his birth to his execution. Enormous efforts have gone into this. More efforts, I think than ever went into examining the lives of the “Cambridge traitors,” a group of British communists who created a lot of devastation to the intelligence community in the 40is and 50ies. Burgess, Maclean and Philby defected to the USSR. Although these spies remained in the news for the next fifty years (even more so because there were two more who were not discovered), there is no comparable study of them.One of the authors, probably Kostin, is fond of playing chess: a lot of reasoning in the book is similar to chess playing: is this hypothesis correct? What about this one? Or maybe a third one? That unnerved some readers, it amused me. But when the authors do not want to emphasize point, they just make it disappear: discussion suddenly is absent or is brushed in half a page. It amused me too. The interplay between what the authors say,what they know, what they guess and what they don’t want you to know makes the book really interesting.As a comparison: what I hated in Philby self-righteousness is that he never considered or cared that his treason did cost lives. What about Vetrov’s treason? Did it cost Russian lives? The answer to this is brushed under the rug, the authors suggesting that the spies in Western countries are never killed, they are just expelled. It is a slightly naive view of the west.The greatest DST (French counter-espionage) success is shown as it probably was: a piece of luck in the middle of an incredibly poorly handled situation by amateurs. It amused me too: it certainly makes the book worth reading. The reason that makes traitors successful is usually the sloppiness of their own agency. Why would any KGB agent be allowed to take papers home? Not just sloppiness, the tendency to underestimate the adversary. There are many examples of that, in France and in the US. The British did that in WW 2 with the Cicero Affair in Turkey (this became a good but not accurate movie with James Mason:

⭐In the end, Vetrov appears to me very close to any real traitor I ever heard of: he was not a very interesting man. Burgess – the American traitors Aldrich Ames

⭐, John Walker

⭐and FBI special agent Robert Philip Hanssen (

⭐or Vetrov (this book): they are all the same: self-centered jerks who think that they are superior to all of us. No distinguished psychoanalytical analysis changed my opinion about it.Vetrov has one amusing characteristic though, when he is in jail for an unrelated crime of murder, he compares himself to Christ. I found this very telling, because I happen to remember that Oscar Wilde did the exact same thing.As for the translation, I loved it: it must have been hard enough to navigate between the Russian mind and the French style.

⭐It takes a special sort of skill to make a story about spies and espionage and secret agents and the KGB a dull and tedious trudge. But that’s exactly what the author has done here – in spite of his interesting subject matter and his painstaking and meticulous research (every last bit of which he includes in his narrative). I found this book really hard to wade through. I kept with it as Russia is my subject and I wanted to learn about this double agent but I could only manage it in small doses. Vladimir Vetrov was recruited early in his career by the KGB and after postings to France and Canada he returned to Moscow as an analyst. For reasons that are a little hard to understand, in spite of the author’s attempts to do so, he becomes a double agent working for the French intelligence service under the code name Farewell. The book is repetitive, concentrates too much and too often on extraneous detail, and the translation is shaky at best and clunky at worst. A thorough edit would have helped, and a more concise account would have retained some of the suspense and tension that must have been part of the original events. Even Vetrov’s execution felt strangely tepid. And I hated the frequent use of imagined conversations, feelings and motives, about which the author could not have known. Examples from near the end of the book. “Two strapping men, over 6 feet 6 inches tall….” interviewed Svetlana. Who had the tape measure? “Both men were imbued with a sense of the moment’s solemn intensity.” Were they? Did they say so? “Like a sleepwalker she left the office….she sat on a bench to …collect herself. The news sank in only later that evening.” Really? How does Kostin know? Making up stuff detracts from the overall credibility of the narrative. So all credit for the research, but little for the writing style.

⭐This account of ‘the greatest spy story’ has some real strengths – it has been thoroughly researched and is very complete, shows the story from all perspectives – leaving it up to the reader to form his/her final opinion on Vetrov, and has some very interesting facts…That being said – it took me ages to get through the book as I had to put it down from time to time. While the number of facts brought in is sometimes overwhelming, these also get repeated. And repeated. And some more… Only after 2/3rd of the book, did I feel that the story picked up its pace and got exciting. Only to lose its momentum again 3 chapters later.In conclusion, I did finish this book and learned quite a lot in the process. It wasn’t the most exciting reading experience though… A bit of a shame, to be honest!

⭐This is fascinating true story of an unhappy KGB agent who turned against his own kind. I also found it desperately sad reading for his family and in particular his son. The author managed to get some amazing interviews, bringing back to life a man you may admire or dislike. However, some say his providing of a flow of valued information helped bring an end to the Cold War. Recommended reading.June Finnigan – writer

⭐This is a very good spy tale, all the better for it as its true, and gives an excellent insight to the Russian mentality (I have worked there) Although I almost never read spy stuff, the reality opf it caught my eye, and I’m glad it did…if you are of the same non-spy habit, ytou might think about seeing this one…it is different.

⭐This book is a very slow starter because the author takes his time setting the background and procedures of both the KGB and the French Secret Service. Once Farewell decides to betray his country or as he saw it the KGB the story gathers speed. A interesting insight into the workings of the Soviet system and the complex personality of the responsible for ending the Cold War.

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