History Extra Podcast: "The Spy Next Door: Moscow's Century-Long Plot to Infiltrate the West"

Date: August 26, 2025
Host: Danny Byrd
Guest: Shaun Walker (journalist, The Guardian; author of The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West)

Episode Overview

This gripping episode explores Russia’s “illegals” – deep-cover spies dispatched to blend into Western societies, live ordinary lives for decades, and gather intelligence for Moscow. Shaun Walker, drawing on his investigative reporting and new book, traces the origins, evolution, unique psychology, and ongoing reality of this espionage program, from its roots in Bolshevik conspiratorial culture to the 2010 unmasking of Russian sleeper agents in America and the celebrated status these operatives now hold in Putin's Russia.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What is a Russian “Illegal”?

[01:33]

• Definition: Illegals are Russian spies who live under “deep cover” with false, non-Russian identities. Unlike traditional operatives using diplomatic cover, illegals integrate fully into foreign societies with no obvious connection to Russia.
• Training: The program is uniquely intense:
  • Recruits are scouted as linguistically talented, adaptable university students, then undergo 4–5 years of solo training in Moscow safe houses (no group classes).
  • They master foreign languages, absorb cultural knowledge (“You’ll have to read every school textbook from the first grade to the final grade for what you would have studied in school in Austria.” — Shaun Walker, [03:58]), and receive technical spycraft instruction (e.g., surveillance detection, encrypted communication).

2. Origins: Pre-Revolution to Stalin’s Soviet Union

[06:44]

• Bolshevik Roots: Lenin, familiar with disguise and clandestinity, formalized the split between "legal" and "illegal" operations to protect his underground movement against the czarist regime.
• After 1917: Early Soviet foreign policy demands covert intelligence—lack of diplomatic relations means no official covers. Skilled revolutionary exiles repurpose their talents for the first Soviet intelligence service.
• Cultural Legacy: This culture of paranoia and subterfuge becomes self-reinforcing inside the USSR during Stalin’s Great Terror (1930s), where even loyal spies ("illegals") become suspected enemy agents.
  • “When you start to look at it through the mindset of a regime that grew out of this conspiratorial underground movement... it becomes more natural to assume that... your enemies must be doing this too.” — Shaun Walker, [12:15]

3. Anecdotes: The Wild Lives of Illegals

[13:16 – 20:24]

• Josef Grigulevich: Posed as Costa Rican ambassador in Rome, nearly tasked with assassinating Tito (Yugoslavia) via "plague powder" before plot was abandoned at Stalin’s death ([16:04]).
• Dmitry Bystralotov: Operative with multiple covers (Hungarian count), who brilliantly penetrated British security but was later tortured as a suspected triple agent in Stalin's purges and spent 20 years in the Gulag.

4. The Illegals Program Under Shifting Soviet-Western Relations

[21:40 – 24:25]

• WWII: Many skilled illegals were lost to Stalin’s paranoia, but those who remained carried out bold espionage—sometimes even against the Allies, despite the wartime alliance.
• Postwar: Early Cold War saw resurgent use of illegals, with the Soviets often outpacing Western intelligence efforts.

5. Spying on Allies: Infiltration of the Soviet Bloc

[24:39]

• Prague Spring (1968): KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov sent illegals to Czechoslovakia, disguised as Western tourists, to monitor and subvert reformist Communists—demonstrating Moscow’s mistrust of even nominal allies.
• Operation Progress: Illegals continued to work in Eastern Bloc countries through the 70s and 80s, often with no knowledge by the client state’s leadership. "This form of spying... designed as a brilliant way to infiltrate the West, turns out to be put to the biggest use to stifle dissent at home." — Shaun Walker, [27:49]

6. Decline, Revival, and Putin’s Celebration of Illegals

[28:20 – 31:19]

• 1991 Collapse: Funding and support for illegals abroad abruptly vanished, leaving some abandoned in place.
• Putin Era: A former KGB illegals support officer himself, Putin lionizes illegals as national heroes. Their myth is fostered through media, statues, and curated histories.
  • “Putin says... that they’re Russia’s most impressive and most dangerous weapon when it comes to espionage.” — Shaun Walker, [31:25]

7. From Decades-Long Covers to Digital Deception

[33:52]

• Long Horizons: Russian illegals are planted for the “long game” — decades, not months.
  • Recent example: In 2023, a spy couple arrested after 12 years under Argentinian covers.
• Digital Age Parallels: The principle of false identity is now leveraged in online disinformation. Modern Russian operatives can create dozens of American Facebook personas in minutes to influence elections—an adaptation of the old “illegals” method for the internet era.
  • “To create a fake American previously, that would take years of training... now you create a Facebook page, if somebody gets suspicious, you set up another one. It takes 10 minutes.” — Shaun Walker, [35:55]

8. 2010: The Big Western Bust & Families Living a Lie

[36:53]

• Anna Chapman Ring Exposure: Shocked the public—these “ordinary” suburbanites had been deep-cover agents for up to 30 years, even their own children were unaware.
  • Inside Story: The FBI knew for a decade due to a mole in the Russian SVR; the scale and duration highlighted both the program's patience and its vulnerabilities.
  • “If all you need is one person in Moscow to give you away... all these years of training and... deception turn out to be fruitless.” — Shaun Walker, [38:52]

9. Psychological Toll & Adoption of a New Identity

[39:31]

• Some illegals become so immersed in their cover that their original Russian identity fades.
• Examples:
  • Mikhail Vasinkov/Juan Lazaro: After 35 years as a Uruguayan-Peruvian photographer in New York, “he couldn’t really remember how to speak Russian properly, and spoke it with a sort of crazy accent.” — Shaun Walker, [41:50]
  • In the former Soviet bloc, states sometimes discovered lost illegals decades later who refused to return, having built new lives and families as Westerners.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the culture of secrecy:
  “These are operatives that, you know, you’re training them to lie to absolutely everybody around them, including often their own children and families. But they have to stay loyal to you, to the KGB in Moscow all these years...”
  — Shaun Walker, [04:26]

• On Stalin’s logic:
  “It becomes more natural to assume that, well, your enemies must be doing this too. So among all of these supposedly patriotic Soviet citizens, clearly there are enemy illegals who are doing exactly the same thing...”
  — Shaun Walker, [12:15]

• On the long game and psychological price:
  “I think one of the most mind bending things about the illegals program was the long horizons, the thinking not about the intelligence you might get next week or next month, but thinking really in decades.”
  — Shaun Walker, [33:52]

• On the digital shift:
  “To create a fake American previously, that would take years of training... now you create a Facebook page... It takes 10 minutes.”
  — Shaun Walker, [35:55]

• Anecdote:
  “One guy... said, ‘I’m married to somebody who doesn’t know my background. I’ve got kids. They don’t know my background. This is my life now. I’m not coming back. I don’t spy anymore. Leave me alone.’”
  — Shaun Walker, [43:10]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• What is an illegal? – [01:33 – 06:23]
• Bolshevik origins & Lenin – [06:44 – 09:57]
• Paranoia and Stalin's purges – [10:55 – 13:13]
• Cunning lives of Grigulevich & Bystralotov – [13:16 – 20:24]
• WWII and the Cold War – [21:40 – 24:25]
• Spying on the Soviet Bloc – [24:39 – 28:00]
• The Gorbachev years & collapse – [28:20 – 31:19]
• Putin’s embrace of the myth – [31:19 – 33:33]
• Digital age adaptation – [33:33 – 36:53]
• 2010 bust & sleeper families – [36:53 – 39:31]
• Illegals losing themselves in their identities – [39:31 – 43:40]

Overall Takeaway

This episode reveals how Russia’s illegals program is intertwined with the nation’s revolutionary history, culture of suspicion, and self-image as a beleaguered fortress surrounded by enemies. Its agents are both celebrated and sometimes destroyed by the system they serve, and their techniques have evolved seamlessly into the digital age. The story of these spies is as much about psychology, loyalty, and identity as it is about geopolitics—offering a window into the hidden currents shaping modern espionage and Russian myth-making.

Recommended for listeners fascinated by espionage, Cold War history, and the psychological drama lurking behind everyday lives.