Summary of Serhii Plokhy's The Man with the Poison Gun

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 In the fall of 1961, American and Soviet tanks faced one another at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, and David Cornwell was contemplating the writing of his first bestselling novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. The West German police were interrogating a Soviet spy named Bogdan Stashinsky, who had delivered a bombshell testimony implicating the Kremlin rulers in political assassinations abroad.
#2 The Stashinsky story is one of the first examples of the KGB trying to kill a Westerner in the West. It also demonstrates the impact the Soviet police state had on the population living east of the Iron Curtain.
#3 On October 15, 1959, a man named Heinz Lammer was watching the Opel Kapitan that was owned by the German Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology. He was waiting for the owner to come and get it. When the owner came out of the building, he was surprised to see Heinz there.
#4 The young man waited for the owner of the Opel Kapitan, who was carrying tomatoes in his open bag. When the man arrived, the young man pantomimed tying his shoe with his right hand, while pointing his left hand gun at the man’s face with his right hand.

Sujets

• Policier & Thriller
• Thriller
• Thrillers
• Espionage
• Fiction
• Politique

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 05 juin 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822527089
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Serhii Plokhy's The Man with the Poison Gun
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

In the fall of 1961, American and Soviet tanks faced one another at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, and David Cornwell was contemplating the writing of his first bestselling novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. The West German police were interrogating a Soviet spy named Bogdan Stashinsky, who had delivered a bombshell testimony implicating the Kremlin rulers in political assassinations abroad.

#2

The Stashinsky story is one of the first examples of the KGB trying to kill a Westerner in the West. It also demonstrates the impact the Soviet police state had on the population living east of the Iron Curtain.

#3

On October 15, 1959, a man named Heinz Lammer was watching the Opel Kapitan that was owned by the German Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology. He was waiting for the owner to come and get it. When the owner came out of the building, he was surprised to see Heinz there.

#4

The young man waited for the owner of the Opel Kapitan, who was carrying tomatoes in his open bag. When the man arrived, the young man pantomimed tying his shoe with his right hand, while pointing his left hand gun at the man’s face with his right hand.

#5

In December 1949, Nikita Khrushchev was in the middle of a speech when a note was delivered to the podium asking him to call Moscow as soon as possible. It was December 1, 1949, and Khrushchev was addressing professors and students in the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv.

#6

Stalin wanted Bandera, and he wanted him now. The German-Soviet alliance had turned out to be short-lived, and on June 22, 1941, the German armies crossed the Soviet border and began their movement eastward. Bandera and his people declared the creation of an independent Ukrainian state.

#7

The Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which was led by Bandera, was formed to fight the Soviets. They were able to kill more than 100,000 Soviets during 1944–1946, and hundreds of thousands of civilians were deported from Western Ukraine.

#8

After the assassination, Khrushchev came to Lviv to oversee the investigation. He brought along a full team to help increase police and party control over locals. He wanted his underlings to turn Lviv and Western Ukraine into a fortress.

#9

Khrushchev was promoted after the trip, and he was given control of Moscow’s party organization to fight internal enemies. Stalin wanted him to return to Ukraine and wrap up unfinished business there, and he wanted him back in Moscow for Stalin’s seventieth birthday in December 1949.

#10

In 1950, Khrushchev took part in the celebrations for Stalin’s birthday in Moscow, while his former subordinates in Ukraine continued their hunt for the leaders of the Ukrainian underground. Among them was General Pavel Sudoplatov, who was sent from Moscow to Lviv to destroy the leadership of the armed resistance.

#11

Stalin wanted to kill Konovalets, and he asked the Soviet secret police to construct a bomb disguised as a box of chocolates. On May 23, 1938, Sudoplatov met with Konovalets in Rotterdam and gave him the box. The assassin then went into a shop and bought a hat and a raincoat to disguise his appearance.

#12

The assassination of Konovalets was a classic example of the KGB carrying out an elegant, efficient, and politically expedient murder. It made Sudoplatov a celebrity in the ranks of the Soviet secret police, and his career received a significant boost during the war when he was in charge of all diversionary and assassination activity behind German lines.

#13

Sudoplatov was given the task of finding and killing the leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Roman Shukhevych, in late 1949. He managed to capture and interrogate Husiak, who did not reveal Shukhevych’s location. The secret police then put her in a cell with a female informer, who got a note from Husiak to be passed to Shukhevych in a village near Lviv.

#14

The assassination of the Soviet propagandist Yaroslav Halan by the members of the nationalist underground had only solidified Bandera’s position at the top of the list of the enemies of the Soviet regime.

#15

In 1950, a policeman showed up at the doorstep of the Stashinsky family in Lviv. The father, Petro, was an activist of the Ukrainian cultural movement and a member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. He was arrested and shot in a prison just days before the Soviets left Lviv.

#16

The policeman wanted to talk to Bogdan Stashinsky, the pride of the family, who was popular with the local girls. He was a slim young man with an open, long face and a pronounced nose. He wore his hair high and fluffy.

#17

The secret police increased its efforts to recruit informers among Lviv students, who were being harassed by the authorities because of their involvement with the underground.

#18

Bogdan Stashinsky was a young man in Ukraine who was recruited by the KGB to be a spy. He was told that if he cooperated, he could save his family from Siberia and his sisters from prison. He agreed to cooperate.

#19

The secret agent Stashinsky was sent to infiltrate the underground group led by Ivan Laba. He learned that one of Halan’s assassins had recently joined the group, and he was to locate him in the forest and gain his trust.

#20

The secret police had kept its word, and while others were arrested, the Stashinsky family was left alone. Bogdan Stashinsky had no choice but to accept the offer and continue working for the NKVD.

#21

The Soviet secret police, the MGB, had a unit that specialized in capturing insurgents who had been turned by the MGB against their will. The members of these units were former insurgents who had agreed to work for the other side.

#22

In 1951, a special MGB unit consisting of former members of the underground established contact with a man named Myron Matviyeyko, who was the chief of Stepan Bandera’s security service. The British had high hopes for Matviyeyko and his group.

#23

On May 7, 1951, Matviyeyko and five members of his team were supplied with British military uniforms, handed documents issued in the name of Polish nationals, and flown on a British military airplane to Malta. Their subsequent flight to Ukraine was delayed because of bad weather, and they spent a long, anxious week on Malta waiting to be cleared for the airdrop.

#24

The radio game between the MGB and the British was a sham guerrilla group in the woods, led by Matviyeyko, who was prepared to send radio messages abroad. The British and Bandera were happy to receive the information, but the Soviets were triumphant.

#25

The arrival of Matviyeyko in Ukraine, his confession, and the information gathered from the radio game highlighted the increasing importance of Stepan Bandera’s headquarters in the resistance struggle being conducted by the remnants of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Ukraine.

#26

Joseph Stalin set out to reform and restructure his intelligence services in 1952. He wanted agents who would be prepared to carry out any order coming from Moscow.

#27

Stashinsky was given a new identity in Stargard. He was put up with a member of the Polish secret police and for five months studied the invented biography of the person whose identity he was to assume once in Germany. His new name was Josef Lehmann, born to a German-Polish family in eastern Poland on November 4, 1930.