Richard Sorge and the Cambridge Five: The History of the Soviet Union’s Most Important Foreign Spies during World War II

Soviet Russia followed a philosophy demanding international, global revolution – which, in practice, often resembled conquest by any means available, direct or indirect. While the Soviets never hesitated to use naked force when it seemed advisable, or when compelled to it by outside attack, they made intensive use of covert operations – spying, assassination, bribery, infiltration of governments and educational systems, the deployment of agents provocateur and “agitprop” – in an effort to weaken other nations from within or possibly cause takeover by a friendly revolutionary regime.

Soviet agents operated in all European countries and others, but their main efforts naturally focused on the strongest potential rivals – Germany, the United States, and Great Britain. Intelligent, persistent, and ruthless, the Soviets succeeded in recruiting a considerable number of agents, including men from the British ruling class.

Their activities enabled the Soviets to capture and execute hundreds, if not thousands, of the opponents of their regime along with numbers of British agents. The men responsible for this unprecedented leaking of life-or-death information would enter history as the Cambridge Five – though in fact, they may have been only the core of a much larger group.

Occasionally, a spy will be so successful that they are able to place themselves in a position where they have access to information at the highest levels, secrets that really can change the course of world events. Sometimes, these spies may even be as handsome, charming, charismatic, and bold as their fictional counterparts. One such spy was a man named Richard Sorge. Experiencing the horrors of World War I at first-hand turned Sorge into an ardent communist, after which he worked as a spy for the USSR in Germany, China, and Japan before and during World War II. He obtained vital military and political secrets and maintained his cover for over nine years.

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Audiobook: 6 November 2025