This book should be called Cold War Secret Police and Spy Stories from Eastern Europe because the majority of the excellent chapters focus on secret police officers or informers rather than the classic Cold War spy stories indicated in the title. Even though the secret police and classic espionage activity sometimes overlapped in the state security ministries of Soviet-bloc countries, the goals and actions were different. Usually informants worked internally to denounce someone in society who allegedly had committed a transgression, agitated as a dissident, or broken a law. Spies, on the other hand, usually spied abroad to gather intelligence beneficial to the home country.
The ten chapters in this edited volume are divided into four parts: the first part covers an officer in Romania, a spy chief in East Germany, and an informant in East Germany. The second part focuses on two targets for denunciation, one in Romania and...