About the book: 2021 / Oleg Gordievsky seemed an ideal product of the system - his father worked in the NKVD, his brother became an illegal KGB intelligence officer, he himself graduated elite MGIMO, entered service in the First Main Directorate, received the rank of KGB colonel. However, he worked for MI6 for more than ten years and became one of the key British intelligence agents who played a significant role in the history of the Cold War. According to him, he did this solely for ideological reasons. In The Spy and the Traitor, based in part on interviews with Gordievsky, British writer and historian Ben MacIntyre tries to understand what made this man, so deeply rooted in the system, rebel against it..