Family Betrayal: Agent Sonya, Mi5 And The Kuczynski Network

Description

The remarkable story of the Kuczynskis, a family of Soviet spies under cover in Britain. In 1933, the celebrated German economist Robert Kuczynski and his wife Bertha arrived in Britain. They were two Jewish refugees from Nazism, followed shortly afterwards by their six children. Jurgen, known to be a leading Communist, was an object of great concern to MI5. Ursula, codename Sonya, was a colonel in Russia's Red Army who had spied on the Japanese in Manchuria, while MI5 also kept extensive files on her four sisters, Brigitte, Barbara, Sabine and Renate. A FAMILY OF SPIES charts the history of a family at the heart of Soviet intelligence in Britain. During almost seventy years of espionage activity the Kuczynskis gained access to high-ranking officials in government, the civil service and the justice system. For the first time, acclaimed historian David Burke tells the whole story of one of the most significant spy rings in the early days of the Cold War. AUTHOR: David Burke graduated from the University of Greenwich and studied for his PhD at the University of Greenwich and the University of Birmingham, including five months in the Soviet Union. He has taught at the Universities of Cambridge, Greenwich, Leeds and Salford. His books include The Spy Who Came in From the Co-op (Boydell, 2008), The Lawn Road Flats (Boydell, 2014) and Russia and The British Left (I. B. Tauris, 2018).