
The Illegals
Russia's Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West
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Narrated by:
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Paul Thornley
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By:
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Shaun Walker
About this listen
The definitive history of Russia’s most secret spy program, from the earliest days of the Soviet Union to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and a revelatory examination of how that hidden history shaped both Russia and the West.
More than a century ago, the new Bolshevik government began sending Soviet citizens abroad as deep-cover spies, training them to pose as foreign aristocrats, merchants, and students. Over time, this grew into the most ambitious espionage program in history. Many intelligence agencies use undercover operatives, but the KGB was the only one to go to such lengths, spending years training its spies in language and etiquette, and sending them abroad on missions that could last for decades. These spies were known as “illegals.” During the Second World War, illegals were dispatched behind enemy lines to assassinate high-ranking Nazis. Later, in the Cold War, they were sent to assimilate and lie low as sleepers in the West. The greatest among them performed remarkable feats, while many others failed in their missions or cracked under the strain of living a double life.
Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews, as well as archival research in more than a dozen countries, Shaun Walker brings this history to life in a thrilling tour de force that takes us into the heart of the KGB’s most secretive program. A riveting spy drama peopled with richly drawn characters, The Illegals also uncovers a hidden thread in the story of Russia itself. As Putin extols Soviet achievements and the KGB’s espionage prowess, and Moscow continues to infiltrate illegals across the globe, this timely narrative shines new light on the long arc of the Soviet experiment, its messy aftermath, and its influence on our world at large.
©2025 Shaun Walker (P)2025 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“One of the best books on intelligence to be published in the last several years. An excellent and sweeping history of the Russian Illegals program, based on a great deal of original reporting and interviews with former Illegals & their families.”
—Shashank Joshi, editor for The Economist
“Drawing on archival materials and hundreds of interviews, including with former spies, Walker crafts a fascinating account of Soviet and Russian agents planted in various countries under false names and identities.”
—Maria Lipman, Foreign Affairs
“An incredibly moving history of the Soviet Union’s boldest and most secretive spy program. Walker shows how a nation torn between survival and nostalgia invented a form of espionage that was both inspired and fanatical, delving into the deepest levels of espionage where even spies fear to tread.”
—Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields, Executive Producers of The Americans
“Sinister, clandestine, and deadly—this is essential history, and it is happening now. A fascinating study of the Russian use of illegal deep undercover agents against the West.”
—Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin
“This gripping account takes you into a world of shadows and mystery, the long and checkered history of the Kremlin sleeper agents. In the annals of espionage, they were Russia’s great gamble. Shaun Walker has written a spying classic.”
—David E. Hoffman, author of The Billion Dollar Spy
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New York Times bestselling author Mark Synnott has climbed with Alex Honnold. He’s scaled Mount Everest. He's pioneered big-wall first ascents, including the north-west face of the mile-high Great Trango Tower, and skied monster first descents. But in 2022, he realized there was a dream he’d yet to achieve: to sail the Northwest Passage in his own boat—a feat only four hundred or so sailors have ever accomplished—and in doing so, try to solve the mystery of what happened to legendary nineteenth-century explorer Sir John Franklin and his ships, HMS Erebus and Terror.
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Excellent listen!!!
- By Anonymous User on 04-18-25
By: Mark Synnott
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The Determined Spy
- The Turbulent Life and Times of CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner
- By: Douglas Waller
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 19 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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An intimate and expertly researched biography of little-known early CIA leader Frank Wisner, whose behind-the-scenes influence on Cold War policy—and hundreds of highly secret anti-Soviet missions—resonates with the international crises we see today.
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Essential For Understanding The Cold War
- By Demetrius Walker on 05-13-25
By: Douglas Waller
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Sorrowful Mysteries
- The Shepherd Children of Fatima and the Fate of the Twentieth Century
- By: Stephen Harrigan
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Sorrowful Mysteries is a detailed and extraordinarily compassionate examination of the appearance of Our Lady of Fátima, an attempt to unravel and put into perspective the lives of the three children, how this life-altering event changed them and the world they knew, and how it intersected with so many of the signal moments of the twentieth century—pandemics, revolutions, world wars, assassinations, and even skyjackings.
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Our Lady of the Fatima
- By PD-68 on 05-13-25
By: Stephen Harrigan
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The Fate of the Generals
- MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines
- By: Jonathan Horn
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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For the doomed stand American forces made in the Philippines at the start of World War II, two generals received their country’s highest military award, the Medal of Honor. One was the charismatic and controversial Douglas MacArthur, whose orders forced him to leave his soldiers on the islands to starvation and surrender but whose vow to return echoed around the globe. The other was the gritty Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, who became a hero to the troops whose fate he insisted on sharing even when it meant becoming the highest-ranking American prisoner of the Japanese.
By: Jonathan Horn
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American Raiders
- The Race to Capture the Luftwaffe's Secrets
- By: Colonel Wolfgang W. E. Samuel
- Narrated by: Basil Sands
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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The last battle of World War II was not for military victory but for the technology of the Third Reich. In American Raiders, Wolfgang Samuel assembles from official Air Force records and survivors' interviews the largely untold stories of the disarmament of the Luftwaffe and of Operation Lusty—the hunt for Nazi technologies.
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Hitman
- The Untold Story of Canada’s Deadliest Assassin
- By: Julian Sher, Lisa Fitterman
- Narrated by: Jean Brassard
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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For Yves Trudeau, the blood was all business. An assassin for the Hells Angels in the ’70s and ’80s, Trudeau was known as Apache, the Mad Bumper and the Mad Bomber. As a contract killer, he did his job so well that the bikers sometimes lent him out to other organized-crime empires in Montreal, including the east-end French gangs led by the deadly Dubois brothers and the upstart Irish Mafia in the west end. Yves Trudeau remains one of Canada’s most prolific serial killers.
By: Julian Sher, and others
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Russians Among Us
- Sleeper Cells, Ghost Stories, and the Hunt for Putin’s Spies
- By: Gordon Corera
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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With intrigue that rivals the best le Carre novels, Russians Among Us tells the urgent story of Russia’s espionage efforts against the United States and the West from the end of the Cold War to the present.
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Should be required reading for every citizen
- By Amazon Customer on 02-27-20
By: Gordon Corera
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The Invisible Spy
- Churchill's Rockefeller Center Spy Ring and America’s First Secret Agent of World War II
- By: Thomas Maier
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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As a tough but smart Italian American kid, Ernest Cuneo played Ivy League football at Columbia University and was in the old Brooklyn Dodgers NFL franchise before becoming a city hall lawyer and “Brain Trust'' aide to President Roosevelt. He was on the payroll of national radio columnist Walter Winchell and mingled with the famous and powerful. But his status as a spy remained a secret, hiding in plain sight. During this time, Cuneo began a close friendship with British spy Ian Fleming and helped inspire Fleming's James Bond novels.
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N excellent isten. sorry to see it end
- By "Old" but Good Reader on 04-10-25
By: Thomas Maier
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Spetsnaz
- A History of the Soviet and Russian Special Forces
- By: Tor Bukkvoll
- Narrated by: Daniel Henning
- Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In January 1951, Lieutenant Evgeniy Borisov was sent to the headquarters of the Soviet 5th Army in Spassk-Dalnii, a small city in the Russian Far East. Borisov was there on a secret mission. Together with his superior, Major Rusinov, his job was to establish the 91st Special Forces Company. The 91st was to be one of forty-six similar units spread out across the Soviet Union. The new forces were called "spetsnaz"—short for spetsnialnoe naznachenie, which translates to "special purpose."
By: Tor Bukkvoll
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Gaza in Crisis
- Reflections on the US-Israeli War Against the Palestinians
- By: Ilan Pappe, Noam Chomsky, Frank Barat - editor
- Narrated by: Shawn K. Jain
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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While numerous books address Israel-Palestine conflict, Gaza in Crisis brings together two renowned thinkers—American activist Noam Chomsky and Israeli historian Ilan Pappé—to examine why this conflict has lasted so long, who can stop it, and how. Israel's Operation Cast Lead, a 2008 military assault on the Gaza Strip, thrust the region to the center of the discussion. With expert knowledge and deep insight, Chomsky and Pappé survey the fallout from Israel's conduct in Gaza and place it in historical context.
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Excellent
- By Waleed Y. A. Sarhan on 04-29-25
By: Ilan Pappe, and others
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The Woketopus
- The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government
- By: Tyler O'Neil
- Narrated by: Tyler O'Neil
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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America's bureaucrats appear to live on a different planet from the working class in this country, and that's no accident. The Woketopus explains how America's elites are pulling the strings in Washington to prioritize their pet projects over the needs of the American people. O'Neil's prose reveals how the left's NGO apparatus pursues its woke agenda, maneuvering like an octopus by circumventing Congress and entrenching its interests in the federal government.
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The well researched data
- By Colette on 04-26-25
By: Tyler O'Neil
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The Scientist and the Serial Killer
- The Search for Houston's Lost Boys
- By: Lise Olsen
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Houston, Texas, in the early 1970s was an exciting place—the home of NASA, the city of the future. But a string of more than two dozen missing teenage boys hinted at a dark undercurrent that would go ignored for too long. While their siblings and friends wondered where they had gone, the Houston police department dismissed them as runaways, fleeing the Vietnam draft or conservative parents, likely looking to get high and join the counterculture.
By: Lise Olsen
very intricate stories
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Thrilling history
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