Oleg Gordievsky - Life in The UK

Life in The UK

Gordievsky has written a number of books on the subject of the KGB and is a frequently-quoted media pundit on the subject.

Gordievsky noted that the KGB were puzzled by and denied the claim that Director General of MI5 Roger Hollis was a Soviet agent.

In 1990, he was consultant editor of the journal Intelligence and National Security, and he worked on television in the UK in the 1990s, including the game show Wanted. In 1995 the former British Labour Party leader Michael Foot received an out of court settlement (said to be "substantial") from The Sunday Times after the newspaper alleged, in articles derived from claims in the original manuscript of Gordievsky's book Next Stop Execution (1995), that Foot was a KGB "agent of influence" with the codename 'Boot'. In The Daily Telegraph in 2010 Charles Moore gave a "full account", which he claimed had been provided to him by Gordievsky shortly after Foot's death, of the extent of Foot's alleged KGB involvement. Moore also wrote that, although the claims are difficult to corroborate without MI6 and KGB files, Gordievsky's past record in revealing KGB contacts in Britain had been shown to be reliable.

On 26 February 2005, he was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters by the University of Buckingham in recognition of his outstanding service to the security and safety of the United Kingdom.

Gordievsky had a letter published in the Daily Telegraph on 3 August 2005, accusing the BBC of being "The Red Service". He said:

"Just listen with attention to the ideological nuances on Radio 4, BBC television, and the BBC World Service, and you will realise that communism is not a dying creed."

Gordievsky was featured in the PBS documentary Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy.

Gordievsky was appointed Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) for "services to the security of the United Kingdom" in the 2007 Queen's Birthday Honours (in the Diplomatic List). The Guardian newspaper noted that it was "the same gong given his fictional cold war colleague James Bond."