Early Life and The KGB Career
Born in Leningrad and son of an officer in the NKVD, Kalugin attended Leningrad State University and, subsequently, was recruited by the KGB under the aegis of the First Chief Directorate (Foreign Intelligence). After training he was sent to the United States, where he enrolled as a journalism student at Columbia University on a Fulbright scholarship in 1958, along with Aleksandr Yakovlev. He continued to pose as a journalist for a number of years, eventually serving as the Radio Moscow correspondent at the United Nations. In 1965 — after five years in New York — he returned to Moscow to serve under the cover of press officer in the Soviet Foreign Ministry.
Kalugin was then assigned to Washington, D.C., with the cover of deputy press officer for the Soviet Embassy. In reality he was deputy resident and acting chief of the Residency at the Soviet Embassy. Rising in the ranks he became one of the KGB's top officers operating out of the Soviet embassy in Washington: it led to his being promoted to general in 1974, the youngest in its history. He then returned to KGB headquarters to become head of the foreign counterintelligence or K branch of the First Chief Directorate. During this time he received high honors for the assassination of Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov, which had been accomplished on a request from Todor Zhivkov and ordered by the KGB chief Yuri Andropov.
Read more about this topic: Oleg Kalugin
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, kgb and/or career:
“The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is no calm philosophy of life here, such as you might put at the end of the Almanac, to hang over the farmer’s hearth,—how men shall live in these winter, in these summer days. No philosophy, properly speaking, of love, or friendship, or religion, or politics, or education, or nature, or spirit; perhaps a nearer approach to a philosophy of kingship, and of the place of the literary man, than of anything else.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The childless experts on child raising also bring tears of laughter to my eyes when they say, “I love children because they’re so honest.” There is not an agent in the CIA or the KGB who knows how to conceal the theft of food, how to fake being asleep, or how to forge a parent’s signature like a child.”
—Bill Cosby (20th century)
“They want to play at being mothers. So let them. Expressing tenderness in their own way will not prevent girls from enjoying a successful career in the future; indeed, the ability to nurture is as valuable a skill in the workplace as the ability to lead.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)