Review by Choice Review
This is the first time a dictionary of Chekist terminology has appeared publicly. Cheka (VChK), the All-Russian Emergency Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, is the forerunner to later Soviet intelligence services (GPU, OGPU, NKVD, GULAG, GRU, KGB, etc.). The dictionary consists of two separate KGB lexicons, one for intelligence, the other for counterintelligence. Mitrokhin, over a ten-year period, at extreme personal risk to himself and to his family, hand-copied from KGB archives a suitcase of notes, delivering them to British intelligence. (US intelligence had rejected Mitrokhin's initial contact as too outlandish to believe.) The dictionary's intended readership was once limited to professionally trained experts in the KGB (State Security Committee). The dictionary is now available to all intelligence communities, scholars, linguists, philologists, and any intellectually curious person. Originally compiled as a field manual for intelligence and counterintelligence agents, it is arranged alphabetically by translated English term or phrase with transliterated Russian equivalents and includes indexes of transliterated Russian and English terms. It gives a fascinating view of hitherto secret spy-counterspy Russian and Soviet history. For general readers and all academic libraries. A. C. Vara Temple University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
