Agent Sonya

Loved this book! It was very enlightening about how spies actually work. And the subject was the perfect spy, I think because she was a young mother and was not suspected. The book follows her career around the world during the critical years of WWII. Very interesting and engaging story!!

Well told, and easy to follow biography of Ursula Kuckynski, “Sonja” a lucky, effective and female Soviet spy. Many of the names of WWII espionage are mentioned and daring stories of espionage beginning in Shanghai. Many countries, multiple lovers and children and hundreds of secrets. Escaped Stalin’s purges, maintained the love of friends and family and “came in from the cold” to become a prolific successful writer. Many pictures of main characters.

I have read most of Macintyre’s books and they are all gripping. I found Agent Sonya a little more difficult to get into but once I did it did not disappoint. I have read reviews that have criticized the book for its subject matter. How can we relate to a Soviet spy? How can we feel anything for someone who worked for Stalin against the West? I think that is an over simplification. I tried to put myself in the shoes of Ursula Maria Kuczynski, a young German Jew horrified at the rise of fascism in Europe in the 20’s and 30’s. Like Ursula I would like to think that I would do all I could to resist and to fight. The natural vehicle for Ursula to travel in to conduct that fight was the communist party and she joined in 1926, just as Hitler was rising to prominence. European communists fought fascism in Spain, Germany, the Far East and Eastern Europe and were a major part of the French resistance. Ursula becomes a committed communist (and anti fascist) and an accomplished asset as we follow her from Germany to China and thereafter to Switzerland and finally to the UK. This is where the story becomes a little muddy for many. Yes, Ursula spied for Stalin, a man as despotic and evil as Hitler. But at that time Churchill and Roosevelt were working with the Soviet leader and we were allies. Ursula spied against the Nazi’s for the Soviets while in the UK but she also helped to infiltrate communist spies into the US atomic weapons program. In doing so she helped the Soviets to develop their own atomic bomb. Obviously this puts her beyond the pale for many people but the world was a different place 60 and 70 years ago. Who knows, without Ursula maybe we would not have had a world where both sides of the Cold War had the means to totally annihilate the other? Maybe in that scenario, without the promise of “mutually assured destruction”, a Nixon or a Reagan or, heaven forbid, a Trump may have been tempted to wipe out half the planet. We’ll never know. A great read, chock full of exceptionally interesting characters like Agnes Smedley, Richard Sorge and Sandro Rado and another triumph for Mr Macintyre.

When I see Ben Macintyre's name on a new book I buy it and start reading it right away, certain in the knowledge that I will be enjoying a well written, well researched, fascinating chronicle of modern espionage. Agent Sonya is a worthy successor to such brilliant Macintyre works as The Spy and the Traitor and A Spy Among Friends, with a critical difference: the major protagonist is female. Ursula Kuczynski was a member of a prominent and wealthy German Jewish family active in Berlin's intellectual and artistic circles. In her childhood she lived through Germany's defeat in World War I, and as a teenager she witnessed the mounting tensions and rising anti-Semitism that led to the fall of the Weimar Republic and its replacement with Hitler's Third Reich. Like many in her generation Ursula became a Communist, not so much for ideological reasons as because she saw the Soviet Union as the strongest enemy of Fascism. Helped by her family's left-wing connections, Ursula journeyed to the Soviet Union, was recruited as a spy by Stalin's many-tentacled intelligence services, and spent years in Shanghai, Mukden, Moscow, Switzerland, and eventually rural England on various espionage assignments using the code name Sonya. Along the way she had a passionate affair with another Soviet spy, Richard Sorge, married or lived with three different men by whom she had three children, and jumped from one hair raising adventure to another. Her sex was an asset, since the Soviet and other intelligence services with whom she dealt were all highly male chauvinistic, and she was able to fly under the radar for many years, seeming to be nothing more than a nice normal wife and mother. Her most important contribution to the Soviet espionage effort was her connection with the physicist Klaus Fuchs, who passed an enormous amount of information on British and American efforts to build an atomic bomb through her to the Kremlin. Eventually, after Fuchs was exposed and arrested, Ursula and her family escaped to East Germany, where she lived for most of the rest of her life. Ursula's story seems too incredible even for the pages of a Fleming or Deighton spy thriller, but it all really happened, making Macintyre's extensively documented tale just as riveting as any James Bond adventure. If after reading Agent Sonya you are hungry for more such tales, I can recommend any of Macintyre's books, most especially A Spy Among Friends, which is about Kim Philby, another Soviet spy with whom Ursula had an indirect connection.

Ben Macintyre has done it, again! Agent Sonya - lover, mother, soldier, spy - is an extremely good biography. Macintyre has written several biographies about famous spies. And Agent Sonya fits well into this series. This is the story of the female spy Ursula Kuczynski. And what a story! Like the writer’s other books about espionage and spies, it is thrilling - and can be read like a thriller. This is biography writing at its best. The writer paints the big canvas: Here is drama, passion, fear, paranoia, deception, danger. We are presented to a large numbers of individuals, one more intriguing and fascinating than the other. The book contains accurately written history, in depth descriptions of people’s psychology, all put together in a most readable way. My best compliment: A good read! I highly recommend this book.

MacIntyre never disappoints & Agent Sonya is another one of his well researched biographies. Written like a spy novel, it's hard to believe how a relatively innocuous wife & mother was one of the most effective Communist Spies who did so much damage to the West's military security from her activities in China, Switzerland and the UK. A real eye opener & a very enjoyable read.

Sonya a été formée en partie par Sorge, et a échappé aussi aux purges stalinienne, c'est toute l'histoire de la guerre froide!

great book; well written, indicates how people are blinded by communism, highly recommend to read

I downloaded the book in a hurry as I was short of time but relied on my taste for biography.and initially thought I had made a mistake. I thought I was going to be bored with a rather tiresome account of someone of little historical importance. How wrong could I be. It was not long before I was gripped by a deeply interesting biography of someone who's views were very different from my own. The book allows one to consider the person in some depth and what motivated her to keep faith with her beliefs even by exposing her nearest and dearest to danger. Having finished the book I still do not fully understand her. The book is extremely well written and researched and my next read will have to be pretty good to match this one.

I am on record of being a great admirer of Mr Macintyre; he has made something of a speciality out of writing about spies, and brings a clarity of expression, detail (but not too much) a touch of humour, and above all, a journalistic desire to speak to people who actually knew the subject. I heard extracts of this on Radio 4 and wondered if I would get anything more from the book. I duly waited until the price went down on Kindle (sorry – again!) and if anything enjoyed it even more than the broadcast. I found it highly informative – I had heard of Sun Yat Sen, General Kiang Kai Shek and the Kuomintang, but really they were little more than names. The extent of the so-called White Terror was quite illuminating, not to mention the whirling soup of spies that appeared to inhabit Shanghai. One began to see why the Chinese embraced Communism so ardently, given the brutality of the repressions, but as Macintyre wryly observes, little can rival the sheer ferocity of retribution visited by one branch of Communists on another. There is the usual cast of weird misfits that are drawn to the secret world of spying – of the kind you really couldn’t make up. Ursula (Sonya’s) seeming bourgeois normality made excellent cover amongst this ragbag of raging eccentrics. Her wealthy, privileged background is well recorded. A large family of girls, with one favoured son, Ursula seemed partly motivated by anger at her parents’ refusal to send her to university, despite her obvious intelligence. Of course, Sonya herself wrote her own autobiography, and although the author is clearly dependent on this to a fair amount, he employs rigorous research to ensure it is not too one-sided. In my opinion, one of Macintyre’s strengths are his strenuous efforts at remaining neutral about his subjects. Most biographers cannot help themselves becoming partial to them. He discusses her probable motivation and tries to unravel her desire to be a better mother than her own, while treating her children as deeply subservient to the needs of the Party to which she swore dedication as a very young woman. One of the more sympathetic people in this tale is her pleasant, sensible, first husband Rudi. One cannot help thinking that the fact that he was the ideal suitor from her family’s point of view – from a similar wealthy, intellectual Jewish background – sounded the death knell for their relationship. Always supportive of his wife’s messianic adherence to Communism, and the sacrifices she put him and their son through, his gradual conversion and emergence as the world’s worst spy makes him even more sympathetic. Especially when his optimistic belief that the Soviets would warmly welcome him back was proved deeply unfounded, with many years in the Gulags ensuing. Sonya herself still seemed to me an enigma; she was quite unapologetic about her adultery, lovers, and children by different men, although at the time she was seemingly fond enough of them. Her devotion to her children went hand in hand with what one can only consider to be breathtaking brutality - especially towards her eldest son, who was shunted from pillar to post, country to country, picking up languages as he went, and always lamenting his father’s absence. She was clearly capable and intelligent, and seemed to possess a cast-iron assurance that everything she did was for the greater good. Friendly and seemingly open, she must have had charm, or more likely was seen as deeply unthreatening, as almost uniquely she was not denounced by anyone, other of course (twice) by the family nanny. Because every good Communist needs a family nanny when childcare is so tricky and you have to spend all night broadcasting…. Her time in the UK was particularly interesting – especially since her entire family had refugee status while at the same time having their cards marked by MI5 for being well known communists. As ever, MI5 appears to be breathtakingly incompetent, with the exception of the formidable Milicent Bagot; I have to say I still couldn’t make up my mind about Roger Hollis. Macintyre opines that he was just dim, but I’m not convinced. Interesting that the only people who ever clocked her were women - Miss Bagot, her nanny and latterly her tenant in the cottage. As ever, I am left wondering how on earth intelligent adherents to the Communist cause could have managed to reconcile Stalin’s atrocities, once known, with the paradise on earth they were so earnestly trying to achieve. Sonya herself admits at one point that she “lost so many friends”. The saddest reflection of the selfishness of the spy is when Macintyre records that in interviews with her children, one of them said that he didn’t THINK that she had had them purely as cover for her spying activities. You are left with a slight doubt in your mind, as possibly in theirs, however.