The Kremlin's Confidant:
How a British Naval Officer Suspended the Cold War
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Reviews
‘This stimulating monograph, well written, sensibly organised ... should be of considerable interest to at least three kinds of readers:
1. Those who are intrigued by officials and officers... who also engage from time to time in unofficial activities for the benefit of their personal cause(s).
2. Those who want to be... told more about the political situation in the 1960s and later, especially in/on and around Malta, Cyprus, Greece and Turkey [and] Soviet hopes that Malta could prove the Cuba of the Mediterranean.
3. Those still unclear about the various motives of those in the Lubyanka and the Kremlin who were behind the anti-Gorbachev coup and the counter-coup in Moscow in August 1991. Who, if any, were the ‘goodies’ among them, or were they all ‘baddies’ of one sort of another, including, of course, Yeltsin and the wretched Gaidar, with his dreadful economic strategy.
Martin Dewhirst, former lecturer, University of Glasgow, author of The Soviet censorship
‘A hero none the less.’
‘I am most impressed by an outstanding piece of journalism based on a formidable volume of research. It is indeed a monumental effort on your part, and evidently a remarkable journey for you.’
Michael Welsh, former MEP, founder of the Action Centre for Europe Ltd, a pro-European Union think tank for Conservatives.
COMMENTS
Martin Packard is an extraordinary man who has led an extraordinary life. An idealist and a man of liberal instincts, his enthusiasms resulted in him having an inside track in several major events of recent decades, including the coup and bloody dictatorship in Greece and the unravelling of the Soviet Union. Easy going, warm and generous with his friendship, his life story is a ripping read.
– Peter Murtagh, journalist and author of The Rape of Greece (Simon & Schuster, London, 1994)
His story needed telling
– Peter Preston, editor of The Guardian 1975-1995
This gripping biography is a classic tale of fact being stranger than fiction. Martin Packard was an incurable romantic who thought he could do ethical business in the chaos of Gorbachev's perestroika Russia, but was constantly thwarted by more ruthless rivals or incompetent partners. He was a Don Quixote of the Cold War. His story is a fascinating, alternative and very personal view on the confrontations of his times, from the cynical US and UK policies towards Greece and Cyprus, to the chaotic collapse of the USSR. His tale suggests that cock-up, not conspiracy, is usually the most plausible explanation of history.
– Quentin Peel, former Moscow Correspondent and Foreign Editor of the Financial Times.
Wonderful. They don’t make men like that anymore.
– Helena Smith, Correspondent of The Guardian for Greece and Cyprus.
Description
The gripping life of an idealistic officer in the Royal Navy as he mingled with the mighty in an imploding Kremlin.
This biography describes how a British naval officer became a Kremlin favourite and CIA target as Gorbachev’s Kremlin decided to open the Soviet economy to the west. In 1985, Moscow reached out to Martin Packard, a retired British naval commander. He was promised unrivalled access to the hidden riches of the Soviet Empire with a cornucopia spread before him as he travelled this long closed land from the Baltic to the Bering Sea.
A harbinger of the technology and foreign exchange needed to halt the Soviet decline, to some Russians he was the most important foreign businessman in the Soviet Union. But, as the Communist Party imploded, this previously-undescribed offer turned into a Faustian bargain, and his life became a captivating saga of rags-to-riches-to-rags.
This book describes his rise, the details of his freelancing for Gorbachev – and his fall.
A former intelligence analyst at the British Mediterranean command in Malta, Packard’s role as Scarlet Pimpernel of the Greek Colonels saw him forced out of the Royal Navy. He then became one of the largest jeans manufacturers in Europe. In this capacity, the insiders of Gorbachev’s perestroika identified him to help them lift the life of the Soviet peoples, an unlikely partnership of the Kremlin and a quintessential Briton, a scion of Empire, Church and Navy, but a non-conformist in every sense.
It is a political tale, where Packard clashes with the British Foreign Office and the CIA in Cyprus and the Colonels’ Greece. Forced out of the Navy, he heads the English Cell of the Greek resistance, shipping printing presses, passports and petards across Europe to Athens. He then becomes an intimate of the wayward but brilliant Dom Mintoff and survives a mysterious poison attempt by ‘Erica’ at a Moscow airport.
It is also a deeply human tale, of a charismatic figure who rose so high, mingled with the mighty of East and West, and then lost it all.