Book excerpt: During the decade that preceded Mr Gorbachev's era of glasnost and perestroika, the KGB headquarters in Moscow was putting out a constant stream of instructions to its Residencies abroad. Unknown to the KGB, however, many of these highly classified documents were being secretly copied by Oleg Gordievsky, at that time not only a high-ranking KGB officer based in London but also a long-serving undercover agent for the British. The selected documents in this volume, translated and analysed by the editors with a commentary by Christopher Andrew to set them in context, offer a revealing insight into the attitudes, prejudices and fears of the KGB during what were to prove its declining years.