Journey to the End of the Night

This book is the memoirs of a Soviet illegal intelligence officer, D.A. Bystróletov (Толстой) (1901–1975). By his own definition, these are notes about a cruel, difficult, and magnificent time. Dmitry Bystróletov was a unique person. A sailor and traveler, an artist and writer, fluent in twenty foreign languages, and a doctor of law and medicine—he was one of the best employees of the Foreign Intelligence Directorate of the OGPU/State Political Directorate?—the GUGB of the NKVD of the USSR—who worked on economic, military, and political intelligence. A master of impersonation, D.A. Bystróletov managed to penetrate the secrets of the British Foreign Office (the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs), obtain codes and ciphers of Austria, Germany, Italy, France, and other states of the pre-war world.
In 1938 he was repressed at home. In 1954 he was released as an invalid. He was fully rehabilitated in 1956. For a wide circle of readers, the name D.A. Bystróletov became known thanks to the USSR foreign intelligence service in 1990.