Russian Roulette

I seem to be encountering Russians at every step at the moment!

Living near the beautiful city of Salisbury as I do, one can't fail to notice the increased police presence, the still roped-off areas and the heightened security at Porton Down and surrounding areas. The sheer blatancy and stupidity of the Russian 'spies' is a far cry from the characters portrayed in John le Carre's cold war spy novels, whose devious and complicated plots require much concentration. My bookgroup in the village chooses a theme for its monthly meeting, rather than all reading the same book, so on that theme I recently read le Carre's follow-up to The Spy who came in from the Cold, entitled A Legacy of Spies.

Written nearly 40 years after its predecessor, the plot centres on a former disciple of George Smiley in the British Secret Service, who has long retired when a letter arrives summoning him to London. Cold War ghosts have come back to haunt him. For anyone who loved le Carre's early novels, this is a real treat. That world seems closer than ever. In her speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet on Monday, Theresa May, the Prime Minister reflected on the need for global co-operation in the face of these threats:

"Together with our allies, in response to the attack in Salisbury, we coordinated the largest ever collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers, fundamentally degrading Russian intelligence capability for years to come. And our law enforcement agencies, through painstaking investigations and cooperation with our allies, produced the irrefutable evidence that enabled our Crown Prosecution Service to bring charges against those responsible."

Quite unintentionally, the previous theme was to read a Russian novel and there are quite a few to choose from! Although not strictly Russian I took the opportunity of reading Animal Farm by George Orwell, which I'd always meant to, not least because 11 year olds at school read this. I found it compelling and, having lived through the Cold War and the Communist era, extremely fascinating.

However, it didn't really count as a Russian novel so I read another I had meant to for some time: One day in the life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Recounting the fate of one man in a Siberian prison camp, this is a brutal, shattering glimpse of the fate of millions of Russians under Stalin.

The Sunday Times called it "a blow struck for human freedom all over the world ..." and its author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. At only 143 pages it is probably the most powerful and shocking book I have ever read.

And then, quite by coincidence, I was delighted to get a ticket to see Dr. Lucy Worsley give one of the Mercers' Lectures held at Dauntsey's, our local independent school. Her topic was: 'Empire of the Tsars: Russia, from Romanov to Revolution' and covered the 300 year rule of the Romanov dynasy. This was also the subject of a BBC Four documentary in 2015 and is still available : https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06vmlcg/episodes/guide.

What became shockingly obvious as she spoke was the ruthless character of the ruling classes in Russia, the acceptance in every generation of murdering your enemies and the use of any means to achieve the desired end of the Tsar. One can't help but think that this characteristic of the Russian rulers is unchanged today. Britain has many faults and, indeed, has committed some dreadful acts but even Elizabeth I balked at murdering her rival Mary, Queen of Scots 430 years ago, only executing her after many years of plotting against the throne.

When I was growing up at the height of the Cold War, the Russians were much feared. I remember my father talking about it when JFK was assassinated, fearing their involvement and the start of another war. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 we have all got used to better relations and looked elsewhere for our enemies. But, as recent events show, this was a false sense of security. Involvement in both US and UK elections and even the European Referendum, seems almost certain. Big Brother is still watching us.