Table of Contents

Part 1: child and soldier; student and revolutionary; Moscow, 1924-29; Shanghai days; "Tokyo wouldn't be bad". Part 2: "a man of consequence"; the ring takes shape; Moscow, summer 1935; "It's hard here, really hard". Part 3: winter and spring 1941; May 1941; June 1941; July 1941; August 1941; September 1941; October 1941. Part 4: paying the price.

Reviews

Richard Sorge, the quintessential Soviet master espionage agent, assembled a spy ring in Japan from 1933 to 1941. The Tokyo Espionage Ring had access to the highest levels of the German and Japanese governments and was able to transmit invaluable information about Axis military and diplomatic initiatives around the world, especially those perceived as having an impact on the Soviet Union. Sorge's brilliant information-gathering expertise was not always appreciated by his Moscow handlers, including Stalin himself. Whymant captures Sorge's human side: his weaknesses for women and alcohol and his pervasive loneliness. Sorge's stubborn hope that Moscow would intervene to save him from execution by the Japanese because of his loyalty to the Soviet cause is both poignant and pathetic, given the Soviet policy of refusing to acknowledge its spy networks. This may be compared with Gordon W. Prange's Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring (LJ 9/1/84), which has a more authoritative historian's style, albeit a lively one. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.‘Stephen W. Green, Auraria Lib., Denver