Puckstruck: The spy who came into the cold

[Puckstruck]

A bit of a literary/Cold War/hockey cross-over story in the wake of the sad news from December 12 of the death of novelist John le Carré at the age of 89.

Before he launched his bestselling career writing spy thrillers, le Carré was himself an intelligence agent for Britain's MI6 in the early 1960s. His cover was betrayed to the KGB by none other than Kim Philby, the notorious British double agent who defected to Moscow in 1964.

And the hockey connection? Connect the dots and view the full story on Puckstruck.

Click to read more...

 

[Theokritos]

Interesting and unusual story. The blog is referring to a biography by Ben Macintyre from 2014, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal. Apparently there is also a Russian biography of Kim Philby that was published in 2012 and has seen two subsequent re-editions. The author is well-known journalist Nikolai Dolgopolov (who actually started as sports journalist and has been the president of the Russian figure skating federation since 1998).

Now here's one of the quotes from Macintyre's book from the blog:

He did odd jobs for the Soviet state, including training KGB recruits and helping to motivate the Soviet hockey team — even though, as [his former friend, the MI6 intelligence officer Nicholas] Elliott once noted, he was addicted to cricket and “showed no interest whatsoever in any other sort of sport.”​

I don't have Dolgopolov's book, but prior to publishing it he wrote an article about his research in the newspaper Krasnaya zvezda (December 2011). In this article (available online here, all in Russian), he cites an interview with Philby's widow Rufina Ivanovna Pukhova. Answering Dolgopolov's question whether it's true that Kim Philby was a hockey fan in Russia, she said:

Like football, he never missed hockey. He usually watched it on TV. Sometimes he also visited the stadium. Indeed, he was particularly fond of hockey. Together with [television announcer] Nikolai Ozerov, he shouted deafeningly: "Goal! Goal!" He was a desperate fan.​

Then Dolgopolov says he had seen a photo of Philby with the Dinamo team and the familiar faces of Vladimir Yurzinov, Valeri Vasilyev and Alexander Maltsev. Pukhova replied:

Back then he went to their training base in Novogorsk. Kim himself was very athletic. In his youth at Cambridge he was a swimming champion. He played football [soccer], rugby and boxed.​

Another find: On the website of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service there is an interview about Philby with a retired major general, Viktor Budanov. He says that Philby once asked him for jerseys (soccer or hockey?) of Dinamo Moscow when he was visited by his daugther and her two children from England. Budanov asked him why. Philby replied they were for his grandchildren and he wanted Dinamo Moscow to be represented in England.

 

[Puckstruck]

This is great, thank you. The plot thickens ... Will have to update the post.

 

[Theokritos]

So I've managed to get my hands on the relevant parts of Dolgopolov's book (beyond the interview with Philby's widow already quoted above).

"Philby found new hobbies in Moscow. He, who had been rooting for Arsenal London all his life, got acquainted with our football and hockey. He visited the stadium, albeit with company. In 1978 he met with the victorious Soviet national team – he was into the previously unfamiliar game. After that he was at a meeting with Dinamo where he had conversations with coach Yurzinov, and the great players Maltsev and Vasilyev. It was clear he was rooting for Dinamo – which other team could it have been? He told the young guys some episodes from his life that they could relate to and wished them luck."