When Russian Villains Haunted Our Imagination

When the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, espionage fiction lost its most reliable villains. No other society was so invested with espionage (a long, dark history stretching back to the czars) and no other intelligence agency as feared (and successful) as the KGB. With their passing, the Cold War novel had seemingly lost its raison d’etre. Writers moved on to other trouble spots. Even John le Carré, who virtually invented the Cold War spy novel, looked for stories in Africa, Panama, the Caucasus. But no ground was as fertile for espionage fiction as Russia, no adversary as worthy as the KGB. And now they were gone.