Alexander Vassiliev

Alexander Vassiliev
Born	1962

Alexander Vassiliev (Russian: Александр Васильев; born 1962) is a Russian journalist, writer, and espionage historian living in London. A former officer in the Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB), Vassiliev is known for his two books based upon KGB archival documents: Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, co-authored with John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, and The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America: the Stalin Era, co-authored with Allen Weinstein.

Alexander Vassiliev was born in Moscow, Russia — then the capital of the Soviet Union — on May 1, 1962.

Vassiliev joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1983 while he was a student at Moscow State University (MGU). He graduated from MGU with a degree in journalism in 1984.

Vassiliev was married in 1983 and fathered a son in 1986. He was divorced in 2009.

Vassiliev worked in the international department of Komsomolskaya Pravda (Young Communists' Truth) from 1984 to 1985. In 1985, he became a student in the Andropov Red Banner Institute of the KGB of the USSR, completing his studies there in 1987.

Vassiliev worked as an operative of the First (American) Department of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB from 1987 to 1990.

In February 1990, Vassiliev resigned from the KGB for political and moral reasons. He resigned from the Communist Party in that same year. He returned to the editorial staff of Komsomolskaya Pravda, where he worked as a reporter and then columnist, writing mostly about international issues and espionage from 1990 to 1996. He also worked as an author and presenter of several political shows on the First Channel of the Russian TV ("Ostankino") from 1991 to 1993.

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