Mitrokhin Archive
 Mitrokhin Archive    | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | file of unspecified type |
| Publication date | 1992 |
| Author(s) | • Vasili Mitrokhin • Christopher Andrew |
The Mitrokhin Archive is a vast number of handwritten notes allegedly smuggled out of KGB archives. The MI5 made them public - using one level of distance - through historian Christopher Andrew, who wrote 3 books based on the notes, receiving extensive media coverage.
Official narrative
The archive is a collection of handwritten notes which were secretly made by the KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin during the thirty years in which he served as a KGB archivist in the foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Directorate.
According to his version, the offices of the Archives were shifted from one building to another between 1972 and 1984. During this period, he was put in charge of supervising the safe transfer of the files. He had an opportunity of seeing the contents of many files relating to sensitive KGB operations all over the world. Every day, he used to copy on pieces of paper in his own hand-writing the contents of important files. He would then secretly take them to his house, type them at night, conceal them inside empty milk cartons and hide the cartons under the floor of his house. He had thus copied in his own hand and typed 25,000 pages of allegedly sensitive information over a period of 12 years. When he defected to the United Kingdom in 1992, he brought the archive with him, in six full trunks.
The official historian of MI5, Christopher Andrew,[1] wrote two books, The Sword and the Shield (1999) and The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World (2005), based on material in the archives. The books purport to provide details about many of the Soviet Union's clandestine intelligence operations around the world.
For the official narrative on the revelations in the papers, see the Wikipedia article.
