The Haunted Wood

出版者:Random House

作者:Alexander Vassiliev

页数:402

出版时间:1998-12-22

价格:USD 30.00

装帧:Hardcover

isbn号码:9780679457244

具体描述

Based upon previously secret KGB records, The Haunted Wood reveals for the first time the riveting story of Soviet espionage's "golden age" in the United States throughout the 1930s, World War II, and the early Cold War. Historian Allen Weinstein, author of Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, and Alexander Vassiliev, a former KGB agent-turned-journalist, were provided unique access to thousands of classified Soviet intelligence dispatches that documented the KGB's success in acquiring America's most valuable atomic, military, and diplomatic secrets. The Haunted Wood narrates the triumphs and failures of Soviet operatives and their American agents during the 1930s and 1940s, describing as well the compelling human dramas involved.

        

Reconstructed from Moscow's messages to its operatives and reports from Soviet recruits in America, The Haunted Wood describes many previously unknown personal tales: struggles for control among contending Soviet operatives and American agents, love affairs, business ventures, defections, and plotted or actual murders. The authors also detail the remarkable range of classified government documents and information stolen for Soviet intelligence during the 1930s and the war years.

        

Complementing its use of the KGB archives, The Haunted Wood incorporates, also for the first time, a number of the previously classified VENONA cables released in 1995-96 by the CIA and NSA. Among these thousands of translated intercepts sent by Soviet agents in the United States to the USSR during World War II were dozens that matched those found in the Moscow records.

        

The highly placed Americans who assisted Soviet intelligence operatives during this period included:

  the passionate daughter of the U.S. Ambassador to Nazi Germany

  an influential member of the U.S. Congress

  one of President Roosevelt's personal assistants

  key officials of the OSS, America's wartime spy agency

  a flamboyant Hollywood producer-director

  the head of the American Communist Party

Several chapters provide major new accounts from Moscow's own record of its relations with Alger Hiss and atomic spies Klaus Fuchs, Harry Gold, David Greenglass, Theodore Hall, and Julius Rosenberg, among others, along with fresh information on Soviet espionage in the United States by British agents for the Kremlin--Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, and Harold "Kim" Philby.

The Haunted Wood's pages are filled with extraordinary and previously untold stories, including those of one war-time American spy ring whose head lived in a domestic ménage à trois with other agents, of Soviet involvement in a Hollywood music publishing company and possible major film investments, and of a station chief who proposed (with Moscow's agreement) funding U.S. journalists and congressional political campaigns.

        

The authors show how defection at war's end by a single emotionally depressed agent, despondent since the death of her Soviet station-chief lover, provoked the swift and virtually complete shutdown of Moscow's intelligence operations in the United States--ironically, years before the FBI and congressional investigations began their decade-long pursuit of "Soviet agents," who, by then, had either returned to Moscow or left the U.S. government!

        

With its new and uniquely documented information, The Haunted Wood offers the first fresh, realistic, and non-judgmental understanding of Soviet espionage in the United States during the Stalin era.

用户评价

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这本书的叙事结构简直是一个精巧的万花筒，每一次旋转都展现出不同的色彩和角度，让人目不暇接却又必须全神贯注。作者采用了多重叙事线索，穿插了日记片段、口述历史以及主角的现代视角，这种碎片化的信息组合，迫使读者像侦探一样去拼凑整个事件的真相。我尤其喜欢其中穿插的那几段关于当地民间传说的描述，它们不仅仅是背景故事，更是某种预言或者暗喻，为后来的恐怖事件提供了某种“合理性”的解释框架，尽管这种合理性本身就是建立在迷信之上的。文笔上，它呈现出一种近乎古典的优雅，句式复杂但用词精准，带着一丝维多利亚时代哥特小说的遗风，但在主题上却又非常现代——探讨了集体记忆、历史创伤以及环境对人类心智的腐蚀作用。阅读过程中，我常常需要停下来，回溯前面读过的内容，比对细节，这种主动参与的阅读体验是很少有小说能提供的。虽然初读时可能会觉得有些烧脑，需要耐心去适应这种跳跃的叙事节奏，但一旦进入状态，那种抽丝剥茧的快感是无与伦比的。它更像是一部文学作品，而非纯粹的通俗惊悚读物，值得反复品味。

这本书的对话和人物互动是我认为最精彩的部分之一，它们极具张力，充满了未说出口的暗流。角色之间的交流往往是双重的——表面上他们在讨论天气、庄园的维修或者当地的八卦，但字里行间，隐藏着对彼此隐藏秘密的试探和怀疑。主角与他那位沉默寡言的邻居之间的互动，简直是教科书级别的心理博弈。你会感觉到，每一次握手、每一次眼神的交错，都充满了试探和潜在的威胁。作者非常擅长运用环境的静默来反衬人物内心的波涛汹涌。当外界一片寂静时，人物之间的每一句台词都会被无限放大，其背后的含义也随之加重。这种对“潜台词”的精妙捕捉，让整个故事充满了戏剧张力。而且，角色都不是脸谱化的好人或坏人，他们都有着清晰的道德灰色地带，他们的恐惧、贪婪和求生欲，都源于他们真实的人性弱点。因此，当他们最终被卷入超自然事件时，读者的代入感极强，因为你理解他们为何会做出那些看似愚蠢但情有可原的选择。这是一部真正关注“人”在极端压力下行为模式的作品。

我必须承认，在阅读这本书的早期章节时，我曾感到一丝挫败，因为它似乎故意在回避直接的冲突，将大量的篇幅用于对“地方”本身的刻画。起初，我以为这只是老套的风景描写，但随着情节的深入，我才恍然大悟，那片“木林”本身就是故事的核心角色。它拥有自己的“脾气”、“记忆”和“意志”。作者对生态系统和地质构造的了解，巧妙地融入了超自然现象的解释中，使得那些原本应该完全荒谬的情节，有了一种冰冷而坚硬的逻辑支撑。例如，书中对某种特定真菌的描写，如何影响了生物的感官，如何成为某种“媒介”，这种科学与迷信的结合处理得非常高明。我特别欣赏这种“非人类视角”的叙事尝试，它拓宽了传统恐怖故事的边界。这本书没有提供一个简单的“打败邪恶”的结局，而是留下了一个更具哲学性的问题：当我们面对一个比我们古老、比我们强大得多的存在时，我们的反抗是否仅仅是一种徒劳的、可笑的挣扎？这种后劲十足的思考，让它远远超出了普通惊悚小说的范畴。