STAR SPIES COME IN OUT OF THE RUSSIAN COLD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000600270014-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 17, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 29, 2000
• Sequence Number: 14
• Publication Date: October 17, 1965
• Content Type: NSPR

London,
Approved For Release 20fffi/03-: CIA-RUP75-00149R
ssian co
Edmund Stevens, Moscow, Saturday
has the considerable advantage of exe - ~utcd on charges of spying for Britain and the U S In the ,'being still alive. Convicted and
sentenced to 30 years by a' U S
spring of 1963. The object of the new publicity was presum. ~, court, Abel was later exchanged'
for U2 pilot, Gary Powers.. No
ably - to deaden the impact of
articles or books directly naming.
such past and future relations by demonstrating that the Rus- Abel have yet been published,
sians' own spies are no slouches. but he has been lionised on tele?,
The hero first chosen for glori-' vision,
fication was Richard Sorge, head A novel by Vadim Kozhevni?
of the Soviet wartime espionage kov, titled "Shield and Sword "
ring in Tokyo. First as cor- about Soviet. wartime intelligence
respondent for the " Frank- inside Germany is currently be-,
furter Zeitung" and later as Ger- ing serialised in the literary;
man Embassy press attache, Sorge monthl " sed "
had followed top military secrets y y i
to Moscow, including advance The hero, Alexander Belov,'
notice of the scheduled (late of is frankly modelled on Abel's
the Nazi invasion of the U.S S R career at the time. It does not
which Stalin chose to ignore. go into his post-war activities, but
Sorge was executed by the there are rumours that Abel him-
-Japanese, in 1944 and for 20 years.. self plans to publish his more
thereafter the Soviets made no",recent American memoirs.
gesture of recognition and
-,.
appeared to ignore his very ' Russian , Holmes
existence though the Sorge case While publicising real 'master
was widely reported -throughout spies is a new and radical depar- Both stories deal -with bacterio-
the rest of the world. . ture (until not long /ago, their' logical warfare. Fleming's villain
very existence was officially is out to decimate Britain's tur-
the film titled .;' Who are you,
,Dr Sorge ? " released in the sum-
mer of 1964. Billed as a joint
Franco-Italo-Japanese production,
'it was presumably Soviet in-
spired. N
Thereafter, all the stops were
pulled. ' Sorge was posthumously
;proclaimed a hero of the Soviet
;Union.. Newspapers, periodicals
and bookstores were suddenly
awash in a flood of Sorge litera-
1~ A,V LWVCLIy All OUVICL loo's villain seeks to do exactly l
Russia. The best known and most the same thing to Russia's'
durable character in this field is -chickens.
Major Nikolai Ivanovich Pronien.
His creator, Lev Ovalov, has Same weapons
obviously read Western fiction. The weapons they use are vir-.
For a time, Pronien behaves tually identical: test tubes con
rather like a poor man's Shcr-, taining dealy viruses administered
lock Holmes, complete with his to the feathered victims by un
own Doctor Watson, his assistant, suspecting girls in the naive
Victor. Zheleznov. belief that this some kind' of
Basically, Pronlen Is more of a tonic or elixir intended for' im-
Soviet Jam
B
d
N
es
on
.
o dashing proving the breed.
figure but a rather seedy greying' Ovalov and Bond and t h e I r
-scriallsed blograpmes, scores of man in his fifties whose one respective heroes were lined up
recorded roma
ti
i
i
i
n
c memory
nterv
ews with people who had
s of , on opposite sides of the cold war.
allegedly known him and a long a gipsy singer he once rescued This political angle explains the
list of books; a play about Sorge from a fate worse than death. ' sharpness of Soviet attacks on
was written and produced by'. The bond between, Ovalov and James Bond books.. It should be
,several theatres. Fleming seems at times too close
The Sorge cult has since sim- for mere coincidence. This' is
mered down in the'Moscow Press'especially true of Fleming's On
but the pot continues to boil In Her Majesty's Secret Service,"
.the provinces. :-and Ovalov's "Dusya'a Chickets.'
pointed out in fairness, that
Ovalov's stories, Including the one
on poultry, was published several
years before Fleming got around.
to.-creating James Bond.
CP ~ Ted ;For Release 2000/08/03: CIA-RDP75.-001498000600270014-5
far ?. 1es '. come