Publishers Weekly
10/10/2016
Plokhy (The Gates of Europe), professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University, details the little-known story of KGB asset Bogdan Stashinsky, who in the late 1950s assassinated two prominent exiled Ukrainian nationalists living in West Germany, using a gun that fired a liquid poison that left no traces. At 19, Stashinsky joined the KGB to escape prosecution for a minor offense and informed on his Ukrainian nationalist family. In 1957, he killed political theorist Lev Rebet, but two years later claimed a more prominent victim: leading Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera. Stashinsky and his East German wife defected to West Germany in 1961, whereupon he was held for interrogation. Plokhy recounts his trial for both murders, which led Soviet leaders to end the policy of assassinating anti-Soviet nationalists, having made martyrs of men like Bandera. Stashinsky received an eight-year sentence, the defense successfully arguing that the real murderers were the Soviet leaders who ordered the killings. After serving six years, he left for South Africa, aiding the country’s government on intelligence that would counter the anti-apartheid movement. Plokhy misses an opportunity to more broadly contextualize the Ukrainian anti-Soviet movement, but his gripping, well-researched account of Stashinsky’s life illuminates a pivotal juncture of the Cold War. Agent: Jill Kneerim, Kneerim & Williams. (Dec.)
From the Publisher
Publishers Weekly:
[Plokhy's] gripping, well-researched account of Stashinsky's life illuminates a pivotal juncture of the Cold War.
Washington Times:
"A gripping work by Serhii Plokhy that is rich in the tradecraft with which Stalin's killers stalked opponents - as a matter of state policy."
Peter Finn, co-author of The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, andthe Battle Over a Forbidden Book
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 man 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.
Kirkus Reviews:
"With gusto and verve, Plokhy details Stashinsky's intelligence work.... A thrilling, well-researched tale of espionage that has all the spycraft hallmarks of a blockbuster movie.
From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY
"A thrilling, well-researched tale of espionage that has all the spycraft hallmarks of a blockbuster movie." —Kirkus
Library Journal - Audio
02/15/2017
In the fall of 1961, Bogdan Stashinsky, a Ukrainian national, defected to authorities in West Germany, declaring that he had been an agent of the Soviet KGB and that he had personally assassinated two leaders of the Ukrainian dissident movement under orders from the highest levels of the Soviet leadership. His public trial and subsequent debriefing by the CIA was a Cold War coup for the West and unmasked some of the methods and practices of Soviet spy craft. Harvard historian Plokhy intricately details how the KGB plucked Stashinsky from the life of a simple student and ensnared him in a web of blackmail and deceit, pressing him into service as a trained assassin. While the personal details of the protagonist's life and the recounting of his murders are riveting, the book is overlong and occasionally redundant. The narration by British actor Clive Chafer is competent, if occasionally soporific. VERDICT Recommended for spy story enthusiasts and students of the Cold War. ["Extensively researched and well documented…fascinating": LJ 11/1/16 review of the Basic: Perseus hc.]—Forrest Link, Coll. of New Jersey, Ewing
Library Journal
01/01/2017
Plokhy tells a tale that eerily foreshadows the 2006 poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and KGB. Memoirs, interviews, and recently opened KGB and CIA files substantiate this story of intrigue. (LJ 11/1/16)
Kirkus Reviews
2016-09-19
The story of Ukrainian Bogdan Stashinskys rise from an agricultural student to a KGB assassin who defected to the West in 1961.Stashinskys career as a member of the Soviet secret police did not have an auspicious beginning. As an aspiring university student during the postwar Soviet occupation of Ukraine, he had family ties to the nationalist underground and was sympathetic to anti-Soviet groups. Local Soviet officials knew this well and blackmailed Stashinsky by giving him an ultimatum: betray his loyalties or watch the Soviets persistently harass and potentially assassinate his family members. He chose to collaborate with his occupiers. However, Stashinsky was quickly outed and shunned by his family; with nowhere else to turn, he accepted an offer to join the MGB, a precursor to the KGB. So began his rise as a professional assassin. With gusto and verve, Plokhy (Ukrainian History/Harvard Univ.; The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, 2015, etc.) details Stashinskys intelligence work in East Germany, where he eventually received assignments to assassinate dissident journalist Lev Rebet and Stepan Bandera, leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. To complete the deed, he was given a novel device that shot untraceable poison directly into the face of his victims. However, Stashinsky was a reluctant assassin and was eager for reassignment to the West. Upon being recalled to Moscow with his wifeand much KGB meddling with their personal affairshe decided to make a daring escape and defect to West Germany. Ironically, Stashinsky had to prove that he had killed Rebet and Bandera in order to save himself, though that was easier said than done. More than just the story of Stashinskys involvement with the KGB, the book wonderfully details the entire intelligence milieu of postwar Germany, Russia, and much of Eastern Europe, including the paranoid atmosphere created by the legions of secret police that had taken hold throughout the region. A thrilling, well-researched tale of espionage that has all the spycraft hallmarks of a blockbuster movie.
