The most important assassination case in Cold War history
Serhii Plokhy is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard and the director of the university’s Ukrainian Research Institute. A leading authority on Eastern Europe, he is the author of several books including The Last Empire, which won the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize in 2015. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.
‘Remarkable…moves nimbly from midnight shenanigans in Berlin to the
bigger picture of superpowers arguing over captive nations.’
*The Times*
‘With tensions once again rising…this book makes fascinating
reading.’
*Spectator*
‘Imaginative…insightful…alarmingly resonant.’
*New Statesman*
‘Brims with skulduggery…balances its cloak-and-dagger element with
historical insight.’
*Telegraph*
‘Gripping.'
*GQ*
‘One of the greatest espionage stories of all
time. Plokhy’s riveting tale of how a KGB assassin
came in from the cold reads like a thriller because it is a
thriller and all the more powerful because every word is true.’
*Michael Smith, author of Foley: The Spy Who Saved 10,000
Jews*
‘This is a remarkable story about one Soviet agent’s attempt to
free himself from the overweening and terrifying grip of the KGB at
the height of the Cold War. Serhii Plokhy superbly captures the
tense mood of the late 1950s and early 1960s in the
USSR...thrilling.’
*Roger Hermiston, author of The Greatest Traitor: The Secret
Lives of Agent George Blake*
‘Evoking classic spy thrillers, Serhii Plokhy – one of the
foremost experts on Russian and Cold War history alive today
– masterfully tells the stranger than fiction tale of soviet
spy Bogdan Stashinsky and the most publicized assassination case of
the Cold War.’
*Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag: A History and Iron
Curtain*
‘The Man with the Poison Gun is the classic old-school Cold War spy
tale. It’s all here—the trench coats, the cigarette smoke, the
high stakes, the special weapons—deeply documented and smoothly
told by Professor Plokhy. In the literature on 20th-century
espionage, this book belongs on the top shelf.’
*Mark Riebling, author of Church of Spies*
‘This book often reads like an Ian Fleming spy novel, but it is
actually about real events that occurred during the tensest phase
of the Cold War in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Serhii Plokhy
provides a riveting account of the exploits of a Soviet assassin
who used poison gas to kill exiled opponents of the Soviet regime
amid East-West preparations for all-out war. Plokhy’s meticulously
researched book sheds valuable light on the Soviet regime’s
continued use of political assassinations in foreign countries long
after the death of Joseph Stalin. A wonderful read for scholars and
spy novel fans alike.’
*Mark Kramer, director of Cold War Studies, Harvard University*
‘A gripping portrait of an assassin and his journey from
recruitment to mission to defection, The Man with the Poison Gun
exhumes one of the Cold War’s stranger episodes—the KGB’s murder of
Ukrainian émigrés with a spray gun that squirted poison. Author
Serhii Plokhy tells an evocative and informative tale, based on
original archival research, that immerses us in the tradecraft of
Soviet spies operating in Western Europe.’
*Peter Finn, co-author of The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the
CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book*
‘Serhii Plokhy, one of the most brilliant historians of our era,
has retraced the steps of a murderer and this gripping book is the
result. The Man with the Poison Gun will appeal equally to
students of history and lovers of spy thrillers.’
*Mary Elise Sarotte, author of The Collapse: The Accidental
Opening of the Berlin Wall*
‘Serhii Plokhy has alighted upon a fascinating episode in the
history of Soviet intelligence…Plokhy, a leading Harvard professor,
details the story in startling clarity and pinpoint accuracy from
an impressive array of sources, German, Russian, Ukrainian and
American. Yet he carries his learning lightly, which makes for a
very readable story that could as well have emerged from the pen of
a spy thriller writer.’
*Jonathan Haslam, George F. Kennan Professor, School of Historical
Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and author of
Near and Distant Neighbours: A New History of Soviet
Intelligence*
‘An extraordinary story told with verve and scholarship.’
*Andrew Lownie, author of Stalin’s Englishman: The Lives of Guy
Burgess*
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