Oleg Goldievsky, the UK's most important Cold War dual agent within the KGB, passed away at his home in Sally, 86.
Goldievsky, who eventually fled to Britain from Moscow under the threat of exposure, was considered an important agent working for the British intelligence agency working within the Soviet Union.
Counterterrorism police were said to be supporting the coroner, but his death at Surry's home was not treated as suspicious.
Goldievsky's career as a double agent might have come from John Le Carré's novel about the heights of the deadly and dangerous spy wars of the Cold War.
Gordievsky, a KGB colonel, the predecessor of the present FSB, provided information to Mi6 and Mi5, who led to the expulsion of dozens of Russian agents in the UK.
However, it was generally agreed that his most important contribution was his warning to increasingly paranoid thoughts within the Kremlin regarding the Western nuclear attitude during Thatcher Reagan era.
NATO cut down major military exercises and avoided potentially dangerous escalations.
After the intercept information suggested he had concerns about Soviet policy, he smashed the Prague Spring crush in 1968 while stationed in Denmark – after he was recruited as a British spy under the codename “Sunbeam” in the 1970s before being posted to London as the KGB rezide – Or station chief.
Although he was believed to have provided many valuable intelligence, his claim in the book that former Labour leader Michael Foott is a Soviet “agent of influence” would ultimately lead to a considerable off-court settlement.
However, Gordievsky exposed the activities of Michael Bettany, a disgruntled alcoholic MI5 officer, who approached Russia to reveal how some Soviet agents were discovered by the British Intelligence Report.
However, his secret career as a British spy, and his life, was threatened after a tip-off from Aldrich Ames, a CIA officer working for the Soviets. He was recalled to Moscow in 1985 and was placed under surveillance despite being offered an opportunity for flaws by London.
Realizing the dangers in Moscow, he caused a long-standing extraction by MI6, evading the KGB watcher while jogging, and fled to escape to the Finnish border where he was safely smuggled.
Explaining his motivation, Goldievsky stated, “I hated the communist system, I wanted to fight it.”
“Gordievsky was once described to me by a man in Mi6 as the only true ideological Soviet spy he could think of,” Journalist Mark Urban wrote to X after the news of his death.
“He tried to undermine the Soviet Union by diminishing it and passing its secret intelligence to the West.”
After his exile in the UK, Goldievsky lived near the Godol family in Surrey. There, his identity was protected.
However, as Richard Norton Taylor points out in his obituary of his guardians, he was lonely without his family and “and suffered from withdrawal symptoms, which are often experienced after their secret lives and the excitement of asylum.”
Later, with the encouragement of MI6, he wrote several books, including one that would encourage honor-loss actions from his feet.
In 2007, Goldievsky was honored by Queen Elizabeth II of St. Michael and St. George's most prominent group of order.
His first marriage to KGB executive Elena Akopian ended with a divorce. In 1979 he married Leila Alieva. Leila Alieva met in Copenhagen, where she worked for the World Health Organization. They had two daughters, Maria and Anna, who are believed to still live in the UK.
