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Progress of a Pilgrim
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14197 |
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BOOK WORLD
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7 / 1988 |
3,431 Words |
| Author
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Donald Jameson
Donald Jameson is a writer and consultant on Soviet and
Eastern European political and economic affairs. |
ON THE WRONG SIDE: MY LIFE IN THE KGB
Stanislav Levchenko
McLean, Va: Pergamon-Brassey, 1988
258 pp., $18.95
The reason we use the term defector to characterize a person who chooses to leave a Soviet-bloc country is that there is a paragraph in Article 64 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic that makes it a crime ("treason of the motherland") to leave the Soviet Union without permission from the government or, of abroad, to fail to return when so ordered. All the other republics of the Soviet Union copy this paragraph, as do all other communist-run states. That is why they have defectors and the rest of the world has emigrants. If you want to leave the Soviet Union and "they" don't want you to, defection is your only way out. I dwell on this point because some people in the West, and some defectors, get caught up in analyzing defection as though it were a special, exotic art. It isn't, except as Soviet law makes it so.
On the Wrong Side is a defector's story, the story of Stanislav Levchenko. It is the story of his whole life from early childhood to the present. It is the story of a Soviet citizen who rose through the ranks due to his academic achievement, ability with people, and patriotism. He was selected as a KGB agent and cooperated with the agency so that he could live abroad. Finally, however, he became so disaffected through his experiences that he sought asylum in the United States, where he has declared war on the KGB.
Rise to the
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