Activities Incompatible: Memoirs of a Kremlinologist and a Family Man 1963-1971

Book excerpt: Activities Incompatible, the third volume of Martin Nicholson's memoirs, covers the years 1963 to 1971, when the author started his career as an analyst of Soviet political affairs in the Research Department of the Foreign Office in London and continued in the Russian Secretariat of the British Embassy, Moscow. In 1971 he took his wife and two children to Moscow for his second tour of duty, as Head of the Russian Secretariat. By this time he had also been appointed one of two official Russian interpreters for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. But the Cold War was still at its height, and the knives were out between London and Moscow over the Soviet Union's espionage activities in the UK. Martin was engulfed in the gathering storm of expulsions and counter-expulsions of diplomats and its dramatic climax. Here he tells the story from the inside.