A new volume containing a small part of the still secret Mitrokhin Papers will be soon printed.
The book also reveals that Soviet agents stashed weapons and communications equipment in secret locations around Nato countries. Included is also a map of Rome showing three caches, along with instructions for finding them. It is unclear how many such weapons dumps have been tracked down by Western authorities. It contains a list of 10.000 names of spies who were working for the soviets.
Upset about the changes which were made by the new leadership (not enough communist in his opinion) he went knocking at the US Embassy in a unknown State of the Soviet Republic but was turned away. He then went to the British where a junior diplomat sat him down and asked: “Would you like a cup of tea?”Andrew said: “That was the sentence that changed his life.” The Brits realized almost immediately what a great catch he was.
His complete archive was them shipped to England in 1992 even if no one knows how were they able to do it. One the British agent organizing the shipment was Richard Tomlinson – later expelled from the MI6 and hunted down by Margaret Thatcher – who later published a book in 2001 The Breach in Moscow.
Smuggled out of Russia, Mitrokhin spent the rest of his life in Britain under a false name and police protection, dying in 2004 aged 81. The world did not learn of Mitrokhin until Andrew published a book based on his files in 1999.
Only a small part of the papers have been made public.
The files describe Guy Burgess as “constantly under the influence of alcohol”, while Donald Maclean was “not very good at keeping secrets”.
The files list undercover agents sent to then-Czechoslovakia to infiltrate the dissidents behind the 1968 Prague spring pro-democracy uprising. Others targeted the entourage of Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, who would later become Pope John Paul II.