Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Despite rushing out to by this book, I was highly disappointed with the end result. It seemed to me that Christopher Andrew was more interested in name dropping and letting us know how many code names he is aware of. After the first 200 pages or so I started to skip pages; a while further I started to skip over entire chapters. Part of the disappointment was due to the fact that Christopher Andrew's History of the KGB ( The Inside story from Lennin to Gorbachev ) was one of the best books I have read; I could not put it down. On the other hand The Mitrokhin Archive was a tremendous disappointment.
Rating: 
Summary: We had a right to be scared during the so-called Red Scare .
Review: We had a right to be scared during the so-called "Red Scare" as the Left likes to call KGB infiltration into almost all walks of American life. Most interesting to me was the character assassination of KGB nemesis J. Edgar Hoover who was described as a sexual pervert by a woman with a long record of spreading false news stories. Her calumnies were immediately accepted as true by many in the American media some of whom had wittingly or unwittingly been suborned by the KGB. It's also shocking to note that when these false charges were made there were very few who stood up for the late FBI Director and they apparently had a problem getting their defense heard by the public. This book can be heavy going to those unfamiliar with the world of espionage. Readers might look in the extensive index and seek out at first the names of spies whose names are well known such as Alger Hiss. From there the reader might be able to start at the beginning and really delve into what is revealed. This is not a book to be taken from the public library on a two week loan. It should be purchased and become part of the library of anyone who wants to know the truth about foreign spies in the USA
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating
Review: A really interesting book. I knew that the KGB did a lot of spying, but had no idea how deep it really went. I wish that Philby's escape from Beirut was mentioned. I agree with Andrew that the election of the Polish Pope helped in the downfall of the Eastern Bloc. I can imagine Pat Buchanan as a KGB agent. That would be funny.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting (but valid ?)
Review: Reading The Triumph and the Glory, novelist Steven Edward Rustad's first book in his highly-touted Cold War series, got me interested in the topic so I picked up a copy of The Sword and the Shield. Pretty heavy reading, folks, but interesting, at times even borders on fascinating. This one though, is going to appeal mainly to the spy buffs and their crowd, it is necessary to be somehwat familiar with cold war era history and the processes of espionage to truly get the most from this book. I don't know if the Mitrokhin Archive is real or not, there seems to be some controversy here, it remains to be seen whether there is a factual basis for this book ot whether this is, ironically, misinformation put together by someone with his own agenda (like making money)
Rating:
Summary: I think reading this book was a complete waste of my time.
Review: Sometimes one picks up a book, thinks it looks interesting, and decides to buy it and read it, only to find out that you wish you hadn't. This is the way I feel about this book. I think this book is absolute blasphemy, and think it never should have come into existence!
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Summary: A great antholoigiezed account from the 30's to the 80's
Review: In addition to the titled archive this is an excellent survey of most of the more recent revealations and biographies from the 1930's to the near present. Excellent and revealing material on soviet active measure/disinformation campaigns in the US. Primary material as well as well sourced documentation.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent and encyclopedic history of Russian intelligence.
Review: This book paints a devasting portrait of Western intelligence services. Were it not for Stalin's insane paranoia, it is likely that the world would be a very different and much less democratic place than it is today. This book is superb; it is probable that not all of Mitrokhin's revelations have been published and ongoing investigations of Western services and personnel are underway as a result of what he brought out of Moscow Centre. Other critical reviews of this book on this site are "protesting too much." A must read for anyone who has ever wondered about the billions we spend on intelligence and its effectiveness.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: I beleave that what you read here has happened in the USA allso
Rating:
Summary: Nothing quite like a Little Local Color
Review: This document represents a great deal of Early Soviet and Cold War History with a "little-local-color". While the book provides the reader with a great deal more detail than other books on the subject, the most critical aspect of this book is, like all of the spy genre, what is missing.Everyone "given-up" in the book immediately becomes old news. Even the Brits are not bothering to prosecute one of the Spies because she is a grandmother. Everyone is simply not very important in today's terms. Even in Russia, everyone's darkly curious about who the real "bad guys from the old days" are. Kind of like doing genealogy in Australia! It would have been much more fun to read that there had been a weakling American college student studying (of all things to study in the Soviet Union) economics. Falling in love with the concept of Communism he then returns to the US to become an agent-of-influence for the old regime. The lesson learned here is actually for those who are or who may spy for the Russians (or anyone else for that matter) that at some time, perhaps decades later, someone will sell you out for money. We seem to forget that Spying has always been a dishonorable profession. "We" hate and sometimes even execute those who spy against "Us", but happily hop-and-skip over to "Them" and preach to their citizens the glory of helping "Us" against "Them". The people that actually do this kind of work are dishonorable people to begin with. What should we expect of them. If this is the only early Soviet and cold war history you ever buy, then it has lots of detail. But don't expect anything new if you are already a history aficionado. The other problem with this book is that it has been bound in one volume. It's just too bloody heavy to read in the bathtub!
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Summary: Sword and the Shield: Good history, meager journalism.
Review: This is an exciting time for lovers of espionage non-fiction. The Rosenberg Files, The Haunted Wood and Venona all take advantage of a new scholarship stimulated by the breakdown of the Iron Curtain. The problem with the above titles is that they only provide additional background and details on known espionage cases. All that is new is the quality of the writer's linking narrative, weaving disconnected facts into a coherent and reasonable pattern. The Sword and The Shield shares this feature. The reader is swamped with even more copious background information based on Mitrokhin's copious notes. And professor Andrew has the experienced historian's ability to organize and link the massive notes into a compelling portrait of shocking KGB penetration into every facet of Western Life. This book is superior in the amount of background detail, and I find it hard to imagine a more exhaustive study. But like "Venona" before it, the weakness of the book is the lack of many new revelations. There are some new facts (and these are used as juicy hooks on the dustcover) The book unmasks a octogenarian British woman and devoted Stalinist who provided the USSR with mounds of data on top secret alloys. We also find clues on hidden weapons caches around the world. The revelations about penetration into Martin Luther Kings inner circle are also news. But regarding other "revelations" I had this neagging reminisence that I read this somewhere before. For example, I am sure I read about the Soviet use of microwave technology against the American embassy in Time many years ago. This is not really new. The writers do not assist the reader in more clearly demarcating old and new. The reader who slyly noted that the new stuff is neatly summarized on the back cover is unfortunately correct. Another weakness is the focus on non-American operations. About one half of the book is devoted to KGB operations in Italy, France, Turkey, the Russian Orthodox Church etc. This is of little interest to American readers, although the commerical appeal of exposing traitors in multiple countries is a great marketing play. On a less cynical note, it is understandable that Mitrokhin would have an intense interest in operations against the Russian Orthodox Church, an institution central to the Russian soul. Readers who maintain a healthy skepticism about materials "leaked" from Soviet sources will wonder why Mitrokihn devoted so much note taking to known cases. As a sophisticated KGB officer (he was an archivist for god sakes!), he must have known there would be more interest in unsolved or unknown cases. Why waste so much time collecting yet more scraps on Philby? It would not be unreasonable to wonder whether this is yet another KGB ploy to fool the West into believing it was now an open society. A harmless way of doing this would be to throw away a few useless spies (who would prosecute an 88 year old nice English lady after so many years??) in exchange for grabbing Western "mind share". I tried to get a feel for his orgnaizaiton scheme and found myself unable to think of one. Did he pick files of convenience, those that were thrown on his desk? Did he have access to ALL the files? Was there greater scrutiny and documentation of who gazes at certain files or not at others? I was left with the feeling that Mitrokhin, indeed, only chose files that were relatively well know, with a few teasers thrown in. Overall, I liked the book because of its scope and superior linking narrative. But like any lover of Soviet era intelligence history, I wonder if I am reading true facts, or just another disinformation campaign. Enough with the KGB. Now if only somebody could get into the GRU archives.... M. Frank Greiffenstein, Ph.D.
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