The must-read new book from the host of The Rest is Classified, Gordon Correra. About how a man – Vassili Mitrochin – first became disillusioned and dissenting, then a traitor to the KGB, stealing the most secret Soviet files and smuggling them to the West.

How can you steal a library? Not just any library, but the most secret, heavily guarded archive in the world. The answer is to be a librarian. To be so quiet that no one knows what you’re doing as you work unnoticed among the files. This work continues for decades but remains so low-profile that even after your departure, with the help of MI6, no one notices that you’ve left.

The Spy in the Archive tells the remarkable story of how Vassili Mitrochin – an introverted archaeologist who loved nothing more than dusty files – ended up changing the world. As the in-house archaeologist for the KGB, the secrets exposed to him through the walls of the archive transformed him first into a dissenter and then into a spy, a traitor to his country but a man determined to reveal the truth about the dark forces that undermined Russia, forces that still operate in the country today.

Bestselling author and historian Gordon Correra tells for the first time the story of how this valuable asset was smuggled out of Russia. It is a tense story, with vivid flashbacks to Mitrochin’s early days as an idealist at the KGB, willing to do whatever it takes to serve the Soviet Union, and the growing realization that the communist state imprisoned its own people. It’s the story of what it’s like to live in the Soviet Union, to raise a family, and then the journey of a man from the heart of the Soviet state towards disillusionment, betrayal, and theft. At its core is Mitrochin’s determination to take on the most powerful institution in the world by exposing its darkest secrets. This is the narrative nonfiction at its pinnacle.