Kontraspionage och rekonstruktionen av fallet Vassilij Sidorenko 1942

Abstract

This article approaches the case with the Soviet spy in Sweden Vassilii Sidorenko who was arrested in September 1942 and later (in January 1943) sentenced to 12 years of forced labour, through three “lenses” – the first through the Soviet cipher cables sent between Moscow and Stockholm in 1942 (and decrypted through Venona), the second through the narratives provided by his Swedish collaborators during interrogations with the police, and the third through a study of the process whereby the Swedish counterespionage reconstructed the history and width of the case. The article concludes that each of the three lenses provide us with markedly different and sometimes outright contradictory “truths” of Sidorenko and his intelligence activities.