It was not just the British establishment the Soviets managed to penetrate; there were agents in the German economics ministry, air ministry and foreign ministry, not to mention the American Embassy in Moscow.
And maybe most stunning and alarming in the Cold War context — the Soviets managed to manipulate time and the officials to steal the gold medal from the American basketball team.
In October 1957 the Soviets managed to hoist a 184-pound hunk of metal with a radio transmitter into orbit around the Earth.
Although the Soviets managed to get a man in orbit first in 1961, Glenn holds that honor for the US and made it around the planet three times in 1962.
It was largely because of Lenin's inspired leadership that the Soviet government managed to survive against such military odds.
In fact, though, only a few thousand Soviet citizens managed to obtain and read the copies of Doctor Zhivago smuggled in from the west.
But, Mr. Kovalevsky, who in Soviet times managed a network of cafeterias and now owns 17 restaurants, two health clubs and two beauty salons and is dabbling in real estate, did not consider the victory an achievement.
There is Russia, its nuclear-armed bombers buzzing the airspace of the west, its soft power invading the very heartlands of British decency – Mayfair and Knightsbridge – in a way no Soviet operation managed.
During the Cold War, as part of an espionage effort known as Project GUNMAN, Soviet agents managed to tamper with the comb-support bars in sixteen I.B.M. Selectric typewriters at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and the U.S. Mission in Leningrad.
Despite huge losses in the first months of the war, despite mass dislocations of population and the German occupation of many of the country's key manufacturing centers, Soviet industry managed to build tanks, artillery, and aircraft that were technologically a match for Germany's weapons, and to do so at a rate that consistently exceeded anything their opponents thought was possible.
Although the region has not won recognition as an independent state, it was one of the few instances in which the crumbling Soviet empire managed to retain a toehold among satellite states that usually wanted nothing more than their own freedom.
