Porter, Jon

English

Digital Commons @ Butler University

Butler University Digital Commons @ Butler University LAS Faculty Book Reviews College of Liberal Arts & Sciences 4-1-2009 The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin's Secret Service by Andrew Meier, Norton, 2008 Jon Porter Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/las_bookreviews Recommended Citation Porter, Jon, "The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin's Secret Service by Andrew Meier, Norton, 2008" (2009). LAS Faculty Book Reviews. 152. https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/las_bookreviews/152 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at Digital Commons @ Butler University. It has been accepted for inclusion in LAS Faculty Book Reviews by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Butler University. For more information, please contact digitalscholarship@butler.edu. Because Ideas Matter... The faculty and staff of Butler University's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences presents Recommended Readings The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin's Secret Service by Andrew Meier, Norton, 2008 Reviewed by Jon Porter    In January 1943, the consular list of every U. S. citizen known to be living in the Soviet Union contained 169 names: 56 government officials, 30 students, 11 journalists, 4 teachers, a missionary, and Cy Oggins, an American citizen in Moscow's dreaded Butryka Prison. Meier, in this masterful book, tells his story, painstakingly reconstructed from private and governmental archives, including access to Oggins's censored KGB files. The son of Russian Jewish emigrants, Oggins graduated from Columbia University and was soon recruited by Soviet operatives, working first for the Comintern in a Berlin safe-house, then moving to Paris to spy on exiled Romanovs for the OGPU (which later became the KGB), and then working undercover for the Soviets in Shanghai and Japanese-occupied Manchuria. Accused of being a double agent, he was arrested in Moscow in 1939 and sentenced to eight years in the gulag for espionage, despite the revelation at his trial that there was no evidence to confirm his guilt. In 1947, his sentence completed, Oggins was "liquidated:" killed on Moscow's orders with an untraceable injection of curare to prevent him from revealing what he knew about clandestine Soviet operations and the horrors of the gulag. Beautifully written, The Lost Spy is a compelling story of youthful idealism during the great social upheaval between the wars and a haunting historical thriller. -Jon Porter teaches in the interdisciplinary Global and Historical Studies Program at Butler University.  

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