Special Tasks

Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—A Soviet Spymaster is the autobiography of Pavel Sudoplatov, who was a member of the intelligence services of the Soviet Union who rose to the rank of lieutenant general. When it was published in 1994, it caused a considerable uproar for a number of reasons. It also made him well-known outside Russia, and provided a detailed look at Soviet intelligence and Soviet internal politics during his years at the top.

It is a somewhat problematic work for several reasons. For one, it was based in large part on Sudoplatov's memory, 40 years or more after the events which form the bulk of the book. For another, it was written with the help of his son Anatoli and two American writers, Jerrold and Leona Schecter, with Sudoplatov's contributions being a series of interviews, which the others turned into a book. Finally, the Schecters have produced other works on this topic which are problematic.

The book contains a number of incorrect statements. One example is the misidentification of the source codenamed "MLAD" as Bruno Pontecorvo, instead of Theodore Hall. Various reasons for this are possible; for one, as the book was written over 40 years later, Sudoplatov's memory may have been in error. (The transcript of the interview where he made the error records him responding to a question as to whether MLAD was Pontecorvo by saying "I think so; Yes.") Also, Hall was at the time unknown in the West, and Sudoplatov may have wished to protect him. Other mis-statements have been attributed to a desire on the part of Sudoplatov (who never changed his allegiance) to cause trouble in the West.

Still, the book contains a great deal of material that is of value, and even critics who note problems with it feel that it has considerable value. For instance, Alexei Kojevnikov wrote that "Sudoplatov is quite reliable when he writes about his own unit, subordinates and, probably, agents directly connected to it and their assignments." Overall, it is important as a rare, detailed, inside view of the Soviet intelligence agencies during their golden era, and of the power struggles at the top of the Soviet system during and just after the death of Stalin.

The principal source of controversy it engendered was that it stated that a number of Western scientists, including Niels Bohr, Robert Oppenheimer and others, while not agents for the Soviets, had provided (in some cases unwittingly) information that was useful to the Soviet atomic bomb program; this has been deeply disputed.

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