Two Russians in Canada

Here are two books with provenance issues—volumes whose very existence is surrounded by an aura of the unexpected, both with a whiff of unreality. One, The Soviet Ambassador: The Making of the Radical Behind Perestroika, is an account by Canadian journalist Christopher Shulgan of the life and times of a Soviet apparatchik who may or may not have been the invisible pilot of the good ship Gorbachev. Soviet apparatchiks, even ones of such legendary stature as Aleksandr Yakolev, are not natural subjects for biographies. They were quintessential grey men of the Soviet upper bureaucracy, usually with a penchant for career building, nest feathering, well-honed sloganeering and survival. The other, Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia’s Master Spy in America after the Cold War, is an account by Pete Earley of the supposed triumphs of a former spy who began his career with the KGB, carried on with the KGB’s successor agency, the SVR, and ended up...