The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West

by Shaun Walker

Overview

The definitive history of Russia’s most secret spy program, from the earliest days of the Soviet Union to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and a revelatory examination of how that hidden history shaped both Russia and the West.

More than a century ago, the new Bolshevik government began sending Soviet citizens abroad as deep-cover spies, training them to pose as foreign aristocrats, merchants, and students. Over time, this grew into the most ambitious espionage program in history. Many intelligence agencies use undercover operatives, but the KGB was the only one to go to such lengths, spending years training its spies in language and etiquette, and sending them abroad on missions that could last for decades. These spies were known as “illegals.” During the Second World War, illegals were dispatched behind enemy lines to assassinate high-ranking Nazis. Later, in the Cold War, they were sent to assimilate and lie low as sleepers in the West. The greatest among them performed remarkable feats, while many others failed in their missions or cracked under the strain of living a double life.


Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews, as well as archival research in more than a dozen countries, Shaun Walker brings this history to life in a page-turning tour de force that takes us into the heart of the KGB’s most secretive program. A riveting spy drama peopled with richly drawn characters, The Illegals also uncovers a hidden thread in the story of Russia itself. As Putin extols Soviet achievements and the KGB’s espionage prowess, and Moscow continues to infiltrate illegals across the globe, this timely narrative shines new light on the long arc of the Soviet experiment, its messy aftermath, and its influence on our world at large.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593319680
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/15/2025
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

SHAUN WALKER is an international correspondent for The Guardian. He reported from Moscow for more than a decade and is the author of The Long Hangover: Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past. He currently divides his time between Warsaw, Kyiv, and London.

Editorial Reviews

Fascinating and meticulously researched. . . . Walker’s illegals aren’t just background characters in history, either. They helped eliminate Trotsky with an ice ax. They warned Stalin about Hitler’s impending attack. They handed Stalin intelligence about the H-bomb before Truman knew the details. . . . Walker’s book serves as a reminder that somewhere in Russia right now, ordinary citizens are being molded into simulacrum Americans, learning to enjoy Starbucks and complain about property taxes, prepared to live among us regardless of who occupies the White House or how many summit handshakes take place.”
—Joseph Finder, The New York Times Book Review

“One of the best books on intelligence to be published in the last several years. An excellent and sweeping history of the Russian Illegals program, based on a great deal of original reporting and interviews with former Illegals & their families.”
—Shashank Joshi, editor for The Economist

“Drawing on archival materials and hundreds of interviews, including with former spies, Walker crafts a fascinating account of Soviet and Russian agents planted in various countries under false names and identities.”
—Maria Lipman, Foreign Affairs

“No matter how many true espionage tales you have read, you will be captivated by Shaun Walker’s crackerjack The Illegals, which focuses on how Russia for decades has dispatched its citizens abroad as deep-cover spies, posing as others while doing Moscow’s bidding. The book opens in 2010, with the notorious roundup of 10 “illegals” in the United States that made a star of the real-estate broker/spy Anna Chapman, and Walker’s job as a Moscow correspondent gives him both a fresh angle on the scandal and sets the stage for much of the book being told from Russian sources. The best-known “illegals” may be the fictional ones played by Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys in The Americans, but Walker proves that truth can not only be stranger than fiction but far more compelling.”
—Jim Kelly, Air Mail

“An incredibly moving history of the Soviet Union’s boldest and most secretive spy program. Walker shows how a nation torn between survival and nostalgia invented a form of espionage that was both inspired and fanatical, delving into the deepest levels of espionage where even spies fear to tread.”
—Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields, Executive Producers of The Americans

“Sinister, clandestine, and deadly—this is essential history, and it is happening now. A fascinating study of the Russian use of illegal deep undercover agents against the West.”
—Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin

“This gripping account takes you into a world of shadows and mystery, the long and checkered history of the Kremlin sleeper agents. In the annals of espionage, they were Russia’s great gamble. Shaun Walker has written a spying classic.”
—David E. Hoffman, author of The Billion Dollar Spy

“A riveting spy thriller, that doubles up as a secret history of Russia that is all too current for comfort.”
—Peter Pomerantsev, author of How to Win an Information War

“Groundbreaking, authoritative and exhilarating—this book is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand Russia’s clandestine malign activities. Built on true life stories as good as any spy novel, it blows open the secrets of Russia’s deep cover Illegals spy program, beloved as much by Putin today as previous dictators in the Kremlin like Stalin.”
—Calder Walton, intelligence scholar at Harvard’s Kennedy School, author of Spies: The Epic Intelligence War between East and West

“Filled with astonishing personal details, The Illegals reveals the paranoia and drama of the secret lives devoted to undermining the west. A gripping history critical to understanding many of Russia’s influence operations today.
—Catherine Belton, author of Putin’s People

“Shaun Walker skillfully shows how Russia’s modern-day election meddling is rooted in the subterfuge and trickery of the bad old days. A fascinating read.”
—Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland and The Last Man in Russia

“Walker’s chronicle has all the elements of a great spy novel—assassinations, invisible ink, radio encryption, sabotage, misdirection, and treachery. . . . Walker puts a human face on the illegals, especially agents in arranged marriages who had to live complicated lies, forbidden to speak Russian even in private and forced to conceal the truth from their children. Many illegals cracked under the strain and had to be withdrawn from service. The Illegals is outstanding in its engaging details and harrowing disclosures.”
— Booklist, starred

“The stuff of TV drama brought to real life. . . . A fast-paced tale of real-world spycraft that will have you wondering whether your neighbors are who they say they are.”
—Kirkus

From the Publisher

03/28/2025

Veteran journalist and Russian expert Walker (The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past) traces what he terms a uniquely Russian espionage and intelligence strategy of training and preparing mostly Russian nationals to infiltrate, on a long-term basis, other nations disguised as ordinary citizens. He describes how since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Russia infiltrated men and women (commonly described as "the Illegals") into the USA, European countries, South America, and Africa to carry out intelligence gathering. Walker argues that despite changing the target countries, intelligence goals, and agent training over the decades, there were very few success stories. Most often, the impossible tasks given to the infiltrators and the paranoia and mistrust of the agents' Moscow overseers, he argues, prevented success. A most important exception and a radically different approach, he points out, was the huge success of Putin's 21st-century social media effort which flooded the U.S. and Europe with misinformation and seeded mistrust of Western establishments. Walker gives a very full account of the Illegals from 1917 until now. VERDICT This book will attract readers interested in espionage, spy tradecraft, Soviet-Russian intelligence efforts, Western counterintelligence, and U.S.-Soviet/Russian relations.—Mark Jones

Library Journal

2025-01-31
On the hunt for Soviet and Russian spies from Lenin’s time to our own.

It’s the stuff of TV drama (The Americans) brought to real life: From the earliest days of the Bolshevik Revolution, Russian spies were sent abroad to gather intelligence. Many were posted as diplomats, which meant that counterintelligence agencies could easily keep track of them; others went abroad as journalists, academics, businesspeople. But early on, writesGuardian international correspondent Walker, the “father of Russian intelligence,” a man named Meer Trilisser, was putting “illegals,” Soviet spies posing as natives of the countries in which they were working, to work. Trilisser himself, “posing as a specialist on Gothic architecture…traveled to Berlin, ostensibly to attend an academic conference,” but used the occasion to connect with an undercover agent. In time, writes Walker, “the Soviets were far ahead of their adversaries when it came to espionage,” emboldened enough to begin to insert illegals, once almost exclusively male but eventually including women, into countries under cover so deep that their children didn’t know they were spies. Such was the case with Don Heathfield (né Andrei Bezrukov) and Ann Foley (née Elena Vavilova), whom the FBI arrested in June 2010, posing as a married Canadian couple working in Boston, having taken their identities from real Canadians who had died in infancy. Elena/Ann styled herself as a soccer mom, “but once the kids were tucked away in bed, she crept into a back room and decrypted radio messages from Moscow.” Both, working for first the KGB and then Russia’s new SVR, were traded for Western spies imprisoned in Russia. There are surely more illegals out there, Walker concludes, especially since after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, “ordinary” Russians traveling abroad are subject to greater scrutiny than before.

A fast-paced tale of real-world spycraft that will have you wondering whether your neighbors are who they say they are.

Kirkus Reviews