Last Of The Cold War Spies: The Life Of Michael Straight (2005) - Plot & Excerpts
While this is a well-written biography of Michael Whitney Straight, (9/1/16–1/4/04) its central thesis that he was a K.G.B. spy until the collapse of the USSR is unconvincing. The evidence seems perfectly clear through WWII and clear enough through the Henry Wallace campaign, but by the fifties it no longer seems certain that Straight was an intentional K.G.B. asset. He did certainly remain openly left-wing, at least until obtaining a political appointment from the Nixon administration, but there is nothing particularly remarkable about that given his upbringing, education and the character of his mother.Reading Perry's book casually, I noted how surmise gradually overcame evidence as regards the espionage thesis. The main claim in the end was based on what the author reports as having been told by a handful of individuals, Russian and Western, who had known Straight. All-in-all, placing the book in the broader context of the Cambridge spy ring, the story told is much like many of the (necessarily) speculative books about the JFK assassination.My major critique of this book is its lack of any sympathy for its subject. There is no attempt to get into or represent Michael Straight's mind as it seems assumed from the beginning that he, a prolific writer, was ever and always a liar. What would have interested me more was some intelligent effort to represent how it was that so many well-educated Westerners, Americans in particular, became captivated by Soviet "communism" in the thirties and forties. Additionally, I'd be interested in learning more as regards the responses of persons like Straight to post-war Soviet foreign policy, the Kruschev revelations about Stalin's regime, the incursions into Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. It is incredible to me that someone like Straight, knowing of these things, could serve such masters.
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