The Man with the Poison Gun

The riveting story of a KGB assassin whose defection and trial at the height of the Cold War shocked the world.  

“Gripping.” —GQ

In the fall of 1961, KGB assassin Bogdan Stashinsky defected to West Germany. After spilling his secrets to the CIA, Stashinsky was put on trial in what would be the most publicized assassination case of the entire Cold War. The publicity stirred up by the Stashinsky case forced the KGB to change its modus operandi abroad and helped end the career of Aleksandr Shelepin, one of the most ambitious and dangerous Soviet leaders. Stashinsky’s testimony, implicating the Kremlin rulers in political assassinations carried out abroad, shook the world of international politics. Stashinsky’s story would inspire films, plays, and books-including Ian Fleming’s last James Bond novel, The Man with the Golden Gun.

A thrilling tale of Soviet spy craft, complete with exploding parcels, elaborately staged coverups, double agents, and double crosses, The Man with the Poison Gun offers unparalleled insight into the shadowy world of Cold War espionage.

• “Gripping.”
  GQ
• “A gripping work by Serhii Plokhy that is rich in the tradecraft with which Stalin’s killers stalked opponents - as a matter of state policy.”
  Washington Times
• “Evoking classic spy thrillers, Serhii Plokhy – one of the foremost experts on Russian and Cold War history alive today – masterfully tells the stranger than fiction tale of soviet spy Bogdan Stashinsky and the most publicized assassination case of the Cold War.”
  Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag
• “Imaginative…insightful…alarmingly resonant.”
  New Statesman (UK)
• “Brims with skulduggery…balances its cloak-and-dagger element with historical insight.”
  Telegraph (UK)
• “Plokhy’s gripping, well-researched account of Stashinsky’s life illuminates a pivotal juncture of the Cold War.”
  Publishers Weekly
• “With gusto and verve, Plokhy details Stashinsky’s intelligence work.... A thrilling, well-researched tale of espionage that has all the spycraft hallmarks of a blockbuster movie.”
  Kirkus Reviews
• “The Man with the Poison Gun is the classic old-school Cold War spy tale. It’s all here—the trench coats, the cigarette smoke, the high stakes, the special weapons—deeply documented and smoothly told by Professor Plokhy. In the literature on 20th-century espionage, this book belongs on the top shelf.”
  Mark Riebling, author of Church of Spies
• “A gripping portrait of an assassin and his journey from recruitment to mission to defection, The Man with the Poison Gun exhumes one of the Cold War’s stranger episodes - the KGB’s murder of Ukrainian man with a spray gun that squirted poison. Author Serhii Plokhy tells an evocative and informative tale, based on original archival research, that immerses us in the tradecraft of Soviet spies operating in Western Europe.” 
  Peter Finn, co-author of The Zhivago Affair
• “This is a remarkable story about one Soviet agent’s attempt to free himself from the overweening and terrifying grip of the KGB at the height of the Cold War. Serhii Plokhy superbly captures the tense mood of the late 1950s and early 1960s in the USSR...thrilling.”
  Roger Hermiston, author of The Greatest Traitor
• “This book often reads like an Ian Fleming spy novel, but it is actually about real events that occurred during the tensest phase of the Cold War in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Serhii Plokhy provides a riveting account of the exploits of a Soviet assassin who used poison gas to kill exiled opponents of the Soviet regime amid East-West preparations for all-out war. Plokhy’s meticulously researched book sheds valuable light on the Soviet regime’s continued use of political assassinations in foreign countries long after the death of Joseph Stalin. A wonderful read for scholars and spy novel fans alike.”
  Mark Kramer, director of Cold War Studies, Harvard University
• “Serhii Plokhy has alighted upon a fascinating episode in the history of Soviet intelligence…Plokhy, a leading Harvard professor, details the story in startling clarity and pinpoint accuracy from an impressive array of sources, German, Russian, Ukrainian and American. Yet he carries his learning lightly, which makes for a very readable story that could as well have emerged from the pen of a spy thriller writer.”
  Jonathan Haslam, Princeton University
• “One of the greatest espionage stories of all time. Plokhy’s riveting tale of how a KGB assassin came in from the cold reads like a thriller because it is a thriller and all the more powerful because every word is true.”
  Michael Smith, author of Foley
• “Serhii Plokhy, one of the most brilliant historians of our era, has retraced the steps of a murderer and this gripping book is the result. The Man with the Poison Gun will appeal equally to students of history and lovers of spy thrillers.”
  Mary Elise Sarotte, author of The Collapse
• “An extraordinary story told with verve and scholarship.”
  Andrew Lownie, author of Stalin’s Englishman