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Kim Philby

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Kim Philby
Born1 January 1912
Ambala, Punjab, British Raj
Died11 May 1988
Moscow, RSFSR, Soviet Union
Cause of deathHeart failure


Kim Philby was a British spy and double agent. He was born in a bourgeois family but spied for the Soviet Union, making him a class traitor. Philby said that the fight against imperialism and the fight against fascism are fundamentally the same fight.[1]

Early life[edit | edit source]

Kim Philby was born in an affluent family in British India. His father was an advisor to Saudi King Ibn Sa'ud. Philby studied at Cambridge, where he became a socialist.[1]

Spying activities[edit | edit source]

In 1933, Philby was recruited by Soviet agent Arnold Deutsch in Vienna, Austria. During the Second World War, he shared decrypted communications with the Soviets. After being exposed, he defected to the Soviet Union.[1] He is considered to be the most successful Soviet double agent of the Cold War period,[2] eventually becoming the head of R5, the British secret service's chief anti-Soviet group. He used his disinformation skills to discredit his rivals to win the post and was able to constantly redirect confidential information to the Soviet Union and withhold important revelations from the British secret service.

As a journalist in the Spanish Civil War, he produced pro-Franco reports for The Times in an effort to gain the trust of the establishment, and was later awarded a medal by nationalist leader Francisco Franco himself after narrowing avoiding death from a Soviet explosive device. He became known as "the-English-decorated-by-Franco".[3]

References[edit | edit source]