Yuri Modin
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Yuri Ivanovich Modin (8 November 1922 in Suzdal – 2007 in Moscow) was the
KGB The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...
controller for the "
Cambridge Five The Cambridge Spy Ring was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and was active from the 1930s until at least into the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted ...
" from 1948 to 1951, during which
Donald Duart Maclean Donald Duart Maclean (; 25 May 1913 – 6 March 1983) was a British diplomat who conveyed government secrets to the Soviet Union. As an undergraduate, Maclean openly proclaimed his left-wing views, and was recruited into the Soviet intelligenc ...
was said to have passed atomic secrets to the
Soviets Soviet people ( rus, сове́тский наро́д, r=sovyétsky naród), or citizens of the USSR ( rus, гра́ждане СССР, grázhdanye SSSR), was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union. Nationality policy in ...
. In 1951, Modin arranged the defections of Maclean and
Guy Burgess Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess (16 April 1911 – 30 August 1963) was a British diplomat and Soviet agent, and a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring that operated from the mid-1930s to the early years of the Cold War era. His defection in 1951 ...
. Modin's predecessors in control of the damaging Cambridge spy ring were executed during
Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...
's
Great Purge The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secret ...
. Modin said of
Kim Philby Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 191211 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963 he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring which had divulged British secr ...
in February 1994:
He never revealed his true self. Neither the British, nor the women he lived with, nor ourselves he KGBever managed to pierce the armour of mystery that clad him. His great achievement in espionage was his life's work, and it fully occupied him until the day he died. But in the end I suspect that Philby made a mockery of everyone, particularly ourselves.
In his 1994 book, Modin (their controller, starting in 1948) revealed that in the early days Moscow did not really trust the
Cambridge Five The Cambridge Spy Ring was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and was active from the 1930s until at least into the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted ...
, British agents who were passing secret information to the Soviet Union. The KGB had difficulty believing that the men would have access to top secret documents; they were particularly suspicious of Philby, wondering how he could have become an agent given his Communist past. According to a review of Modin's book, "the center concluded that all five must really be British intelligence officers trying to penetrate the KGB".


"The Fifth Man"

Modin published his book, ''Mes Camarades de Cambridge'', in France in 1994. The book identified
Baron Rothschild Baron Rothschild, of Tring in the County of Hertfordshire, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1885 for Sir Nathan Rothschild, 2nd Baronet, a member of the Rothschild banking family. He was the first Jewish mem ...
as an important member of the Cambridge Spy Ring. For the British translation, the British publisher Headline Book Publishing, made some changes, first to the title, making it ''My Five Cambridge Friends'' with the sub-heading: "For the first time, their KGB controller reveals the secrets of the world's most famous spy ring—Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt and Cairncross." Second, Headline changed lines on page 104, now saying that
John Cairncross John Cairncross (25 July 1913 – 8 October 1995) was a British civil servant who became an intelligence officer and spy during the Second World War. As a Soviet double agent, he passed to the Soviet Union the raw Tunny decryptions that influ ...
was the Fifth Man: 'At the close of 1944, the name of John Cairncross, code-named the Carelian, was added to the four agents to whose cases I had been assigned. He was the "Fifth Man". Cairncross had at one time or another been in contact with the others, but he was hardly a member of the group.' The words changed and inserted by Headline were a fabrication, according to Modin, who pointed out that Cairncross, to his knowledge, had never been in contact with any member of the group. ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' journalist
Richard Norton-Taylor Richard Norton-Taylor (born 6 June 1944) is a British editor, journalist, and playwright. He wrote for ''The Guardian'' on defence and security matters from 1975 to 2016, and was the newspaper's security editor. He now works for the investigat ...
rang Modin to check on this and found him angry that the false claims, changes and fraud on the British (and later US) public, had been made without his being consulted.
Alan Rusbridger Alan Charles Rusbridger (born 29 December 1953) is a British journalist, who was formerly editor-in-chief of ''The Guardian'' and then principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Rusbridger became editor-in-chief of ''The Guardian'' in 1995, havi ...
, who agreed with Roland Perry's assessment that
Rothschild Rothschild () is a name derived from the German ''zum rothen Schild'' (with the old spelling "th"), meaning "with the red sign", in reference to the houses where these family members lived or had lived. At the time, houses were designated by sign ...
was the fifth man, also wrote in ''The Guardian'': "Yuri Modin ... says in the English edition of his recent book that Cairncross was "the fifth man." Modin says he never used the term, which is not contained in the French edition of his book.' In an interview after publication of the book, Yuri Modin denied ever having named Rothschild as "any kind of Soviet agent". "Because he was in MI5 they learned things from him. This doesn't make him the fifth man, and he wasn't". Modin's own book's title clarifies the name of all five of the Cambridge spy group: ''My Five Cambridge Friends: Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, and Cairncross by Their KGB Controller''. Yuri Modin died in 2007 in Moscow.


References


Books

* Modin, Yuri, ''My Five Cambridge Friends'', . Soviet spies KGB officers 1922 births 2007 deaths Spymasters {{russia-bio-stub