The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin's Secret Service - Softcover

Meier, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393335356 ISBN 13: 9780393335354

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009

Synopsis

“Utterly fascinating, a sad and sinuous study.”―Richard Schickel, Los Angeles Times

For half a century, the case of Isaiah Oggins, a 1920s New York intellectual brutally murdered in 1947 on Stalin’s orders, remained hidden in the secret files of the Soviet and American intelligence services―a footnote buried in the rubble of the Cold War. It surfaced briefly in 1992, when Boris Yeltsin handed over a dossier to the White House, but the full story of what happened remained a mystery. After eight years of international sleuthing, Andrew Meier at last reveals the truth in The Lost Spy: Oggins was one of the first Americans to spy for the Soviets.16 pages of illustrations

About this title

About the Author

Andrew Meier, the author of Black Earth: A Journey Through Russia After the Fall, is a recent Fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars & Writers and currently a writer-in-residence at the New School University. He lives in New York City.

From Publishers Weekly

Former Time Moscow correspondent Meier (Black Earth: A Journey Through Russia After the Fall) tells a remarkable story about Cy Oggins, a Columbia University undergraduate who joined the fledgling Communist Party in 1920. Recruited by Soviet intelligence in 1926, he went to Europe in the guise of an academic; his residences acted as centers for Soviet espionage. After 1930 he sailed to China and Manchuria for various undercover schemes, then traveled to Moscow in 1939 during Stalin's purges. Despite long, loyal service, he was arrested and sent to an Arctic gulag and despite frantic pleas for Oggins's release from his wife, and more modest U.S. government efforts, the Soviets murdered Oggins in 1947 to keep his story from getting out. In Soviet archives, Meier saw a heavily censored fraction of Oggins's 162-page file, supplemented by the FBI's massive records, compiled thanks to J. Edgar Hoover's lifelong fixation on Communists. These files plus the author's extensive research have produced a rich account of American communism's early years as well as the bizarre, tragic odyssey of an American who devoted his life to serving the U.S.S.R. 16 pages of illus. (Aug. 11) ""
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About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0393335356
• ISBN 13: 9780393335354
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416