Fleming reproduced the genre dominant of the spy novel: in order to accomplish the incumbent mission, the agent is sent into the enemy territory to discover the plans of the enemy and neutralize it, which, in our opinion, are drawn in the spirit of science fiction. Thrilling narration is constructed as a series of victories and defeats, capture and an unexpected salvation. In the person of James Bond, Fleming created a man of action devoid of doubt, perceived by the mass consciousness as a superhero, while he was just a “wonderful machine” in the hands of his omnipresent chief.

A. Sarukhanyan refers the works of J. Fleming about James Bond to the genre of “romance”. Many elements go back to the famous literary and mythological sources (the Knight fighting the dragon, brave and loving Eros, bringing the death Thanatos). From our point of view, the main character of James Bond didn’t set himself a goal of becoming a noble knight for the only dearly and platonic beloved beauty, but he fulfilled the mission entrusted to him by the state, and women, in his case, were only an auxiliary tool for achieving this goal. Or, as a rule, on the contrary they prevented him from achieving the set object by their betrayals.

As A. Sarukhanyan noted, during the “cold” war spy novel genre experienced its golden age. “The cult of Bond was not that long. In the 60s, it transformed into the world of the film industry, meanwhile in the literature the anti-James Bond mood highlighted. The golden age of a spy novel occurred in the decades of the “cold war” [4].

It appears that the interest in him was stirred up by the exposure of the real spies, the famous British intellectuals (Guy Burgess, D. Maclean, Kim Philby, George Blake), who had been working on the Soviet Union for ideological reasons. Then the potential of the genre was discovered,the tradition of J. Conrad, who portrayed the world distorted by the atmosphere of secrecy, duplicity and treachery, and introduced the theme of a double agent (“Secret Agent”, 1907, “Under Western Eyes”, 1911), actualized. But from our point of view, the greatest impact was made by Graham Greene, which was recognized by the most famous authors of spy novels. Novels and the anthology of Green’s “Spy’s Bedside Book” (1957) testify his understanding of the genre as a way of modeling extreme situations for the determination of the essential problems. After Conrad, he expressed his idea of the twentieth century, as the era of universal conspiracy, in which networks anyone can be.

Yury Uvarov in the preface to his book “The French spy novel”, which was published in Moscow in 1992 in the “Politizdat”, states that the spy novel genre acquired extraordinary popularity in the 50-80s on the West, and particularly in France.“Millions of readers are attracted to this genre because it retains a number of important functions, mostly lost in the so-called “serious literature”. It develops the images of the “positive characters” in the face of detectives – counterintelligence fighting against the dark forces that are ready to disturb the peace, security and break the habitual way of life of law-abiding citizens. The books of this genre have a lot of captivating and interesting information about the modern world, which in the blink of an eye carries the reader into various points of the globe. Finally, these books are popular because they meet the fervid needs of the exotics, something an unusual, bright, substantial, unlike the gray, mundane everyday life “[1].

We shall disagree with the opinion of Y. Uvarov, in the context, where he opposes the “detectives – counterintelligence” to the “dark forces”.  From our point of view, the distinct genre dominant of spy novel is the opposition of special services of one state to the Intelligence or Counterintelligence authority of the enemy state.

Next Y. Uvarov represents his vision of the genre code of the spy novel – “the spy novel” can not be reduced to a single type. It is very heterogeneous and has many varieties. We offer our readers the variants specific to the different stages of the development of the genre, which has grown in detective fiction, and at first it distinguished only by the fact that in comparison with the traditional “criminal” detective story, here at the center of attention is the crime which prejudices the state, but not the individual” [1]. From our point of view, the idea of ​​Y. Uvarov is essentially true, as the spy novel is rooted in one of the types of the detective fiction, which has later acquired a number of its characteristic features and “gemmated” in a separate genre.

Next, Uvarov accurately defines “the ancestor” of the spy novel in France: “In France, the books of this genre haven’t appeared for a long time. The novel by Pierre Nord “Double Crime on the Maginot Line” (1936), which was included in our collection, was the first French “spy novel” [1].

From our point of view, in the Western literary criticism, the similar to the USSR during the “cold war” tendency is being observed − the arrival of retired officers in the literature and, as a consequence, the particularization of the working methods of the security services.

Y. Uvarov in his preface confirms our assumption. “The author has been prepared for the role of the founder of the” spy “genre by his biography. When the novel “Double Crime on the Maginot Line” was first published, its creator was the counterintelligence officer with solid experience. His real name was André Brouillard” [1].

Same as in the USSR, in this period of time, the author has no right to disclose the secrets of his official work. So he inserts in the text a significant proportion of fiction and talks not about what he was doing there, but creates a fascinating story. But above all, he hides his own name, and instead of André Brouillard appears Pierre Nord (it is easy to notice that he took as the nickname the name of the province where he was born).

For all his commitment to an almost documentary accuracy the author retained, however, the loyalty to the purely literary tradition in the creation of a detective story. Although it is clear that the events take place in the mid 30s of XX century, under specific conditions, the narrative and the manner of presentation seem much like antiquity. Such kind of detective investigation, which is presented in the first French “spy novel “, could be simply conducted by the characters of the authors of XIX – early XX century like Emile Gaboriau, Conan Doyle, or by Gaston Leroux. Pierre Nord retains the atmosphere of the mystery, which is peculiar to classics of the genre. His works are characterized by an abundance of details and particulars that complicate the search, which had to testify the special sophistication of the criminal and to set off the wisdom of the detective-investigator, who skillfully untangles the Gordian knot, and reveals a secret of the crime.

Y. Uvarov assesses the development of the genre of the spy novel after World War II: “After World War II and up to the 80s in the French detective novel, including the first of its “spy” branches, there have been dramatic changes. The classic examples of the genre have almost become a thing of the past. So they have become an anachronism. Even before the Second World War in the U.S., a new type of detective fiction has emerged − the so-called “thriller” (causing tremors). It is also called a “cool” detective story. In such kind of novels, a detective, “fighting against evil”, relies not so much on the intellect and scientific knowledge, but rather on his agility, resourcefulness, responsiveness, as well as on his physical strength and accuracy. There is no place here for the logical calculations and psychological analysis. Descriptions of murders, car chases, fights and intimate scenes in the novel take up much more space than the story of the gradual thoughtful disclosure of the secrets of crime” [1].

From our point of view, in another type of novels, on the contrary, the intellectual and spiritual qualities of the main character are emphasized. He is the defender of the “free world”. “At the same time he must have iron muscles, shoot well and to be a real womanizer when it is necessary for the business” [3].

Y. Uvarov claims that the first type of “spy novel” has acquired the especially huge popularity. But the “spy novels” with “romantic” trend have also won the hearts of many readers. Their heroes, although most of them work for the CIA (that corresponds to their “ideological problem”), actually are not such defenders of America as of common to all mankind values, which are ​​under threat. It is obvious that such a noble mission must be carried out by heroes, endowed with only positive qualities” [3].

Thus, this genre has turned out to be the most suitable for the expression of the ideology of the “cold war”, which, as it is well known, lasted from the late 40′s till almost the second half of the 80s, experiencing over the years rises and falls. Both in the western and Soviet press and in the literature of these decades there was created and cultivated the image of an enemy who was exposed and defeated by the defenders of the system. The detective fiction, which emerged in the last century, in the era of Romanticism, with its division of the characters on the bad criminals and white perfect noble heroes, has retained this contrast up to the present day. But the role of the former criminal − a robber or a murderer – was taken by an agent of a foreign state. In the context of the “cold war”, this agent was almost always a spy from the socialist countries with his assistants, and its antipode − the noble hero – was played by the representative of the secret service − the defender of the social and political system, who expressed its ideology.

The spy thriller stands in an ambiguous, shifting relation to historical reality, on which it draws selectively, with sometimes more, sometimes less regard for verisimilitude. It is basically a form of fiction which might properly be called escapist, were it not for the pejorative, simplistic implications that term has acquired; and it is best illuminated by those theorists who have acknowledged and explored non-ethical, irrational dimensions in their own experience of literature.

‘The slightest novels’, Stevenson maintained in 1881, ‘are a blessing to those in distress, not chloroform itself a greater’; and the implications of that view had been elaborated in a letter to Professor Meiklejohn, written from California in the previous year in what was for Stevenson a period of illness, penury and depression.

This is disconcertingly true to experience, but it is a truth on which the moralistic critic does not care to dwell, impatient as he tends to be with all forms of literary experience which elude his categories. Stevenson, however, goes boldly on to extend his argument to states of health as well as sickness. The love of incident, of fit and striking incident, is, he maintains, a natural human appetite from the schoolboy to the sage; it is the basis of our delight in epic; but in his own day it was best catered for by novels of adventure, of the kind he enjoyed so much and wrote so well—novels which appealed, as he puts it, ‘to certain almost sensual and quite illogical tendencies in man’. The limitations in his own experience did not, he thought, disqualify him as a story-teller in this vein: . . it will be found true,’ he contended, ‘. . . in a majority of cases, that the artist writes with more gusto and effect of those things which he has only wished to do, than of those which he has done. Desire is a wonderful telescope, and Pisgah the best observatory.’ For him such fiction constituted an escape not only from his life of chronic ill-health and sickbeds to an imaginary life of action and adventure, but also from the humdrum, law-abiding ethic of real life to one of imaginary ruthlessness and slaughter.

Wish-fulfilment, in this view, is not an unacknowledged aberration on an author’s part, but an essential constituent of his creation, and an essential constituent also of the reader’s pleasure, since the great creative writer, according to Stevenson, ‘shows us the realisation and the apotheosis of the day-dreams of common men. His stories may be nourished with the realities of life, but their true mark is to satisfy the nameless longings of the reader, and to obey the ideal laws of the day­dream.’ [2, p. 23]. Such satisfaction, such obedience, are seen not as corrupting or disabling, but as beneficial, indeed medicinal, providing the relief of drugs or opium in time of affliction, while acting as tonics or restoratives in time of health.

The medical analogy is used by Fielding in his Preface to Joseph Andrews, in a justification of the irrational, non-satiric pleasure which burlesque affords. In the comic the author confines himself strictly to Nature and imitates life as it really is, bringing out the ridiculous errors which spring from affectation, in a satiric exposure of vanity and hypocrisy; whereas in burlesque—one thinks of modern equiva­lents like Monty Python’s Flying Circus—the author displays things monstrous and unnatural, rousing our delight by the ‘surprising Absurdity’ of what he presents to us. Fielding argues that the comic provides ‘a more rational and useful.

This emphasis on the psychologically therapeutic (as opposed to morally illuminating) function of some forms of literature leads on to Lamb’s defence of Restoration Comedy, which Stevenson referred to in his playful description of an Antinomian Heaven. Lamb offers an analysis of his own delight in such comedy, in spite of its debased morality which he would find wholly unacceptable in real life.

Man has, this argument implies, anarchic, Dionysiac impulses which in ordinary life are subject to the control of Apollonian conscience. This involves an element of repression, as these impulses are restrained or channelled into more acceptable activities, so that they are integrated into an approved conception of the good life. This conception is governed by religion and the moral law—hence Lamb’s allusion to the diocese and law-courts in connection with strict conscience. There are moods however, when these latent impulses to anarchy are activated, and tend to open Dionysiac rebellion. In such moods the Apollonian restrictions normally accepted gladly as conditions of fully human life seem merely meddlesome: they are thought of now in terms of a cage or of restraining shackles; while the loving God who would have been appealed to as the ultimate sanction for codes of morality is metamorphosed into a hunter, to be escaped from if possible, or an Olympian tyrant from whose tyranny men shrink, yearning for an idyllic freedom imagined as existing before he exercised his baneful sway. Once conscious of this tension between Apollonian and Dionysiac within himself, a man may react like Lamb’s contemporary William Blake, who rebelled against the mind-forged manacles which fettered man’s delight, and against what he saw as a false god, the authoritarian Jehovah of the Old Testament with his negative morality of ‘Thou shalt not’—the god whose priests in black gowns could be seen walking their rounds, binding with briars our joys and desires. Lamb’s own reaction was, however, very different. He was not a moral revolutionary; and it may be that the dreadful episode in which his sister Mary murdered their mother in a fit of lunacy had given him a deeper insight than most men into the abyss of horror which can reveal itself in the human personality released from moral or from rational control. However this may be, he accepted an orthodox morality as self- evidently true, and clearly recognised that the characters of Congreve and Wycherley, translated into real life, would be ‘profligates and strumpets’, living on ‘principles which, universally acted upon, must reduce this frame of things to a chaos’. Yet he delights in entering imaginatively into their dramatic world—a world carefully circum­scribed by the boundaries of art—a world in which his orthodox morality does not apply, and in which therefore it can be abandoned without any evil consequence in life—a world from which he can return refreshed, exhilarated, gayer and healthier, happy to resume his normal standards, but happy also to have exercised thus harmlessly elements in his personality which would normally be under restraint.

‘The novel,’ writes Gillian Beer, ‘is more preoccupied with representing and interpreting a known world, the romance with making apparent the dreams of that world.’ The spy thriller, a contemporary version of romance, articulates dreams of adventure and to some extent of love—the traditional romance ingredients transposed into a modern idiom. Man’s aggressive and erotic impulses are both brought into play, and so too are his dreams of heroism—of the individual as master of his fate, confronting evil and destroying it. But the thriller also draws on nightmares—not least those based on aspects of reality which we prefer to banish from our daily consciousness. The division of the world into antagonistic power blocs, the continuing possibility of nuclear war, the East’s ideological hostility to Western society, Russia’s overwhelming military strength (and her use of it in Hungary and Czechoslovakia), the barbarism of her forced labour camps and psychiatric prisons, the continual probing of our institutions and defences even in periods of detente, the existence of communist sympathisers and supporters in our own society—very different from the largely mythical Fifth Column of the Fascists—all of these are such familiar facts that we have learned to live with them and virtually ignore them, unless they are forced on our unwilling attention by international crises. This suppressed awareness is tapped and exploited by spy thrillers, in which menace and treachery are two of the most frequently recurring themes; but our anxieties, once roused, are then assuaged by the frustration of the villains’ knavish tricks and the triumph of the hero. Nevertheless, the popularity of the genre suggests that this unease is endemic though suppressed in our society, and that the need for re­assurance as well as the thirst for vicarious adventure is continually present. Trilling, moreover, speaks of the mithridatic function, by which tragedy is used as the homeopathic administration of pain to inure ourselves to the greater pain which life will force upon us’ [3, p. 60]; and it may well be that our fantasy encounters with the secret brutalities of international conflict have a similar effect on us.

The ethics of the genre are far from constant. Espionage in Kim was still the Great Game which had been played by British officers throughout much of the nineteenth century to forestall Russian encroachments on India and to establish our hegemony in Central Asia [4, p. 93]. Sometimes these agents came to thoroughly unpleasant ends, but the sporting metaphor they favoured speaks for itself; and the same spirit was often carried over into fiction. The traditional spy story of the early twentieth century was set in a world full of hazards but free from moral ambiguities—apart from the fundamental ambiguity, rarely perceived by the authors or the reading public, of a double standard applied to espionage and counterespionage activities, depending on whether these were carried on by ‘us’ or ‘them’. In Buchan’s Richard Hannay stories, the most popular and influential of their kind, the hero may admire a brave enemy (in the spirit of those who honour while they cut him down the foe who comes with fear­less eyes), but he has a total confidence, shared by the author, in the rightness of his own cause and the wrongness of the enemy’s. This goes beyond a simple patriotism. Buchan had an acute sense of the vulnerability of civilised life: ‘You think,’ exclaims the sinister Mr Lumsley in The Power-House (1913), ‘that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you that the division is a thread, a sheet of glass.’ This prophetic insight, later praised by Graham Greene, was accompanied by what has been described (a shade portentously) as Buchan’s ‘Gothic, almost apocalyptic vision of the dark, destructive forces contained in human beings and in society’ [5, p. 71]. It is against these, as well as against Germany the nation state, that Hannay is contending; yet he adheres determinedly, quixotically, to decent methods and fair play, whatever devil’s work the other side may contemplate. The locus classicus occurs in MrStandfast (1919), when Hannay balks at shooting the arch-spy who is planning to destroy the British Army by releasing anthrax germs on its main lines of communication. The discovery of the plot fills him with horror: ‘I was fairly well used to Boche filthiness, but this seemed too grim a piece of the utterly damnable. I wanted to have Ivery by the throat and force the stuff into his body, and watch him decay slowly into the horror he had contrived for honest men.’ Yet when ‘Ivery’ appears a few minutes later, Hannay cannot bring himself to act with the appropriate ruthlessness.

I had my hand on my pistol, as I motioned Mary farther back into the shadows. For a second I was about to shoot. I had a perfect mark and could have put a bullet through his brain with utter certitude. I think if I had been alone I might have fired. Perhaps not. Anyhow now I could not do it. It seemed like potting a sitting rabbit. … [5, p. 105].

It is easy to make fun of such passages, though they stem from an honourable belief that if one must fight, one should fight as cleanly as possible—that if one must touch pitch, one should try to remain undefiled instead of plunging into it and wallowing. The same attitude, which underlies the Geneva Convention itself, survives today in popular fiction and reality, but in a much attenuated form. It has been eroded partly by the sinister appeal of violence in literature and life, but more by the perception that even ‘clean’ fighting necessarily involves considerable ruthlessness. This is even more true of clandestine operations, as the Second World War made manifest.

The secret agents of Cold War fiction move through an even harsher and more brutal world than this; and (unlike Ashenden, in Maugham’s pallidly realistic anecdotes of spy-work in the First World War) they are themselves directly involved in its harshness and brutality. The fact that James Bond, their crude prototype, was a professional assassin, licensed officially to kill in cold blood, typifies the moral ambiguity of their proceedings. They share Hannay’s sense of being on the side of good against some kind of evil: this is the political and ethical assumption on which their activities and our delight in them are based, though one of the conventions of the genre as it has developed is to allow doubts to arise from time to time in their minds and our own. (There is, for example, a recurrent contrast between the heroic code they live by and the decadence or selfishness of the Western society they are defending.) The main enemy for most of them is not so much Communism as Russian tyranny—cruel, oppressive and expansionist, as it revealed itself to be in the post-war years, with its evil nature fully manifested by the methods it employed. Yet their own methods are less scrupulous than Hannay’s, and their consciences less tender. They are professionals, not gentleman amateurs, and though they do retain some scruples which help to engage our sympathies, they realise that ruthless enemies have sometimes to be fought by ruthless means. There is therefore a casual tolerance of violence and dirty tricks, so long as they are used in a good cause. ‘Our kind of work,’ declares the Master in The Us or Them War ‘comes with a kind of built-in absolution. All-purpose remission for every imaginable kind of sin on the grounds of higher national interest’; and we relish, with a frisson of delighted horror, the ruthlessness and double-dealing characteristic of the genre. Yet we also go on thinking in terms of good guys versus bad, the inherent contradiction being obscured by the plot-mechanism, which usually allows us to have our moral cake and eat it.

Le Carre offers a more complex pleasure, by combining psychological release with radical moral concern, as distinct from the show of morality which serves in many thrillers as a spice to sin or justification for violence. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) insists upon the inhumanity of actions undertaken nominally on humanity’s behalf.

Control’s cynicism and self-satisfaction do not necessarily invalidate his argument, but its more disturbing implications are explored in the action which follows. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold combines the excellences of the thriller and the moral fable. It transcends the limitations of the former, but accepts (reluctantly perhaps) those of the latter. The ingenious plot, with its multiple deceptions and double double-crosses, dramatises a cold Machiavellian real-politik in which human sympathies have no place. It presents us with a metaphysically bleak world of action, in which for the Christian as much as for the Communist the end is seen as justifying the means, and individuals are deliberately sacrificed for the general good. There is a frightening void where one might have expected to find fundamental values: ‘That is the price they pay,’ says Leamas of his masters—‘to despise God and Karl Marx in the same sentence.’ [6, p. 41].

The epigrammatic indictment is a telling one; yet it seems out of character for the uncomprehending Leamas of the earlier dialogue. The thematic intention is no doubt to show his growing awareness of the issues, but this is rendered, in the manner of a moral fable, too schematically to be psychologically convincing. On the other hand, the book eschews moral simplicity. Our Man in Havana stated in a mode of comic fantasy the claims of individual human beings against those of secret services, nation states, or international power blocs. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold presents the same claims as constituents of a tragic dilemma. The sinister power of Russia and her satellites, and their threat to ‘ordinary people here and elsewhere’ are self-evident within the novel. Kipling’s Wall was an impressive barrier against Rome’s enemies, for the protection of her citizens and subjects. The Wall against which Leamas and Liz are shot is a barrier to prevent East Germany’s own citizens from escaping to the West, and it is described significantly as ‘a dirty, ugly thing of breeze blocks and strands of barbed wire, lit with cheap yellow light, like the backdrop for a concentration camp’. The need for secret services as one line of defence in such a world is real—not illusory as it was shown to be in Greene’s Havana. Leamas, even in his revulsion from his calling, sees it as necessary ‘for the safety of ordinary, crummy people like you and me’, and the fact that it condemns them both to death does not dispose of his contention. Certainly the final note is one of protest. Leamas himself turns out to be a pawn in the game in which we thought he was a knight; and Liz, for all her half-baked Communism, is an innocent victim whose death evokes the image of a child in a small car smashed between great lorries. The pathos of the end is modified only by Leamas’s own final act of affirmation. His climbing down the Wall to die with her instead of jumping to safety, his refusal to go on living on the terms he would be left with, is in its way a triumph of the spirit. Yet the dilemma the book poses remains unresolved. As in Kim, where the claims of contemplation are weighed against those of action—the world of the Lama against that of Mahbub Ali—our satisfaction comes not from being presented with a neat solution, but from seeing the incompatible alternatives so powerfully presented.

We are left with the question whether it is possible to be a secret agent and a fully human being—or rather, since the agent in this formula is merely an exemplar, whether personal integrity can ever be preserved in the corrupting world of action. The true Le Carre hero, Smiley, is the test case. He had already figured as protagonist in Callfor the Dead (1961) and A Murder of Quality (1962). Neither book aspired to be more than a good thriller, but they established him as a more fully apprehended character than Leamas—an unfashionable secret agent fully aware of the psychological and moral hazards of his calling.

He reappears in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold in a minor but ambiguous role. (Each of Le Carre’s works is self-contained and self- sufficient, but cumulatively they reinforce each other, as the same characters or themes recur in different contexts.) We gather that he was opposed to the whole operation, but once it is launched he takes an active part, providing the incriminating evidence to be seized on by the East German tribunal.

He figures comparably in The Looking-Glass War (1965), that study in futility, self-deception and betrayal. The mission which we follow with excited apprehension is misconceived and badly executed, but it is also deliberately aborted by Control to discredit finally the remnant of the rival service which had mounted it. Smiley, high now in the counsels of ‘the Circus’, indicates revulsion when he realises what Control has done, what he himself has been involved in, though it falls to him to close the operation down, leaving the agent to his fate. As well as dissecting the ruthlessness of inter-service rivalries, the novel exposes a corrupt nostalgia for wartime experience, and the desire this breeds in the young as well as in the middle-aged to relive or replay a supposedly heroic past; but from this spiritual temptation Smiley seems immune. In contrast with the febrile enthusiasm, the pathetic aspirations of Leclerc’s organisation, he figures, in the glimpses which we have of him, as highly professional, enigmatic, yet humane.

In both these novels he is more a function than a character; in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974) he holds the centre of the stage. Le Carre here allows himself the amplitude and the complexity of treatment of the novel proper, though his conventions remain those of the spy thriller. These are in no way disabling. Greene had already proved their value in his entertainments and more serious fiction as images or paradigms of normal experience. And in Le Carre’s A Small Town in Germany (1968), a considerable novel in its own right, the security investigation had revealed not the suspected flight of a defector, but a tangled web of professional and personal relationships, of loyalties and betrayals, in the British Embassy at Bonn. The investigating agent there became the novelist’s device for uncovering the truths of character and ultimate belief concealed by the facade which constitutes daily reality. A similar device is now employed in Smiley’s struggle to identify a traitor high in the security service itself. As he threads his way through the labyrinth of evidence, each character whom he encounters, each interview that he conducts, helps to throw light on the central problem of disloyalty, but also provides insights into a wide spectrum of personalities and values. It is through the process of investigation that the novel creates its own fully authenticated human world. The main structural motif of a quest, difficult and perilous in the extreme, culminating in a confrontation with the powers of evil—a quest undertaken by a solitary hero with (in this case) a few trusted followers—gives unity and tension to the narrative. (The Naive and Sentimental Lover, the one work in which Le Carre totally rejects the thriller framework, is curiously flabby by comparison.) We relish, as we do in works by Adam Hall, Len Deighton, William Haggard, all the technicalities of secret service work—the arcane tradecraft: realism of presentation is common form in the spy thriller, even when the content is plainly fantasy. The extent to which Le Carre’s realism extends here to content could, however, be a matter for debate. Kim Philby complained of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold that ‘the whole plot, from beginning to end, is basically implausible—at any rate to anyone who has any real knowledge of the business’; but few of us can claim such knowledge, and Philby’s own career outdid spy fiction in its bizarre actuality, forcing us to reconsider our criteria of probability. Perhaps it will suffice that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy carries enough conviction for us to suspend our lingering disbelief; and its significance, in any case, is not confined to the esoteric world of secret agents which provides its subject matter: it is to be read analogically as well as literally.

“Duke of Bassano, encipher the letter to Baron Mignon that in case the war starts, I will assign him to the headquarters and put in the control of the secret police, that means the espionage in the enemy army, translation of the captured letters and documents, testimony of prisoners and so on; it is necessary that he should form immediately the secret police and to find two well-speaking Russian Poles, military with combat experience, intelligent and trustworthy. The first should know Lithuania, the second − Volhynia, Podolia and Ukraine, and the third should be German speaking and well-knowing Livonia and Courland. These three officers will have to interrogate prisoners. They need to have at their command about twenty well-selected agents, who will be paid depending on the information they delivered. It is desirable for them to be able to report about the points, through which our army will be passing.

I wish Mr. Bignon were immediately engaged in this great organization. To begin with, these three agents must mislay their agents on the way from St. Petersburg to Vilna, from St. Petersburg to Riga and from Riga to Memel, on the way from Kiev and three roads leading from Bucharest to St. Petersburg, Moscow and Grodno, and report daily on the state of fortifications.

If the reports are satisfactory, I won’t spare 12,000 francs a month. During the war, the rewards to individuals, who can provide with some useful information, can’t be limited. Among Poles there are some people who know the fortifications and can report on their state from different locations”.

In May 1812, Baron Bignon was replaced in Warsaw by the Archbishop de Malines, and the management of all intelligence organizations was given to him.

Napoleon personally dictated to Duke of Bassano very detailed instructions to the new representative in Warsaw, and it provides instructions on the conduction of policy in Poland, the creation of public opinion and stimulation of a guerrilla war against the Russian. Concerning the intelligence issues, in this letter the following is written:

“Baron Bignon, a resident of the emperor, created the service on extraction of information about the organization, state, location and movements of the troop. Due to this information, as well as the reports of the ministries, we have managed to find out the general situation, which is reported to you in the attached copy. You are to continue this work and to consider it as the most important among all of the trusted ones to you. The direct process of work is entrusted to the First Secretary. Mr. Bignon will explain the methods of his work and tools. Mr Envoy should give this matter the more extensive development.

Necessary funds will be provided at his disposal. It is necessary for you to have a dozen of agents-Poles at various points on the border, on the tracts, in the countries neighboring with Russia, and even, if possible, in a hostile country. Warsaw is the great central point where everything will flock; from there the quick correspondence with the Bureau should be carried out, which is located at the headquarters and is in charge of these matters under my leadership.

The locals, who are artfully used and skillfully interrogated, will also provide the envoy with useful and extensive information.

It is also necessary to enter into relations with the prefects and sousprefects of the border areas, with the Austrian authorities in Lviv, the French ambassadors in Vienna and Constantinople and with the consuls in Iasi and Bucharest. We should offer them to have the correspondence with the envoy and inform him about everything that could give information about the projects and the movements of the enemy in the various countries where there might be military actions.

Mr. Bignon will receive the order to remain in Warsaw as long as it will be necessary to obtain the guidance from him in the local environment, which he perfectly knows. Mr. Envoy should select two translators, the Polish and the Russian ones, at that choice of great value, he can help Mr. Bignon”.

Marshals followed the example of their leader. “It is as much important to the military leader to hide his intentions as to delve into the enemy’s intentions, − says Marmont. − In this regard, he should not miss anything. He should keep spies; pay them well, although not to trust their testimony blindly. It is particularly advantageous to establish relations with employees at headquarters”. The general Belliard wrote to Lassalle in October 1805: “Dear Lassalle, obtain various information about the enemy, if it’s possible, send a spy in Naumburg, promise him a large sum of money, 3000, even 6000 francs, if he delivers valuable information”.

“Bugeaud tells among other things the following fact: “In 1812 there was a moment when the French army lost contact with the Russian one and had no information about it, despite all attempts to learn at least something. Then this problem was taken by some Captain Lafontaine, who was brought up in Russia and spoke Russian perfectly well. Disguised as a Russian officer, he got into the area occupied by our army, rode around on post-horses, having required them by the imaginary commandment of the emperor, and returned a few days later with a rich resource of valuable information”.

Marbot says in his memoirs that before going to Russia all the French generals got the maps of Russia, they were printed from the copper engraving boards, which despite their unhandiness were stolen from Russian archives by the French spies, and then sent out to France.

In 1811 Lord Wellington kept many spies and often sent plainclothes officers to the French. From the first French corps, he received information from the working in the Spanish embassy counselor, and from Madrid − from the famous guitarist Fuentes. Some Stewart, who led the maritime trade of bread with France, kept the fisherman under this pretext on the shore of the Bay of Biscay and got a lot of information about the enemy army. Finally, Wellington had a spy who was a shoemaker, who lived in a hut on the tip of the bridge near the Bidasoa. He was to watch every French soldier who entered the Spanish territory, and deliver all the information to Lisbon.

In 1812 we used the spies many times, and this role sometimes was taken by our famous partisans. Suffice it to recall the searches of Figner in the outskirts of Moscow. Speaking French perfectly, he easily went to the French bivouacs disguised as a trader, a tramp, and sometimes even as a French officer. Our army is obliged to its glorious partisan Figner due to the considerable amount of important information.

Austrians also did not neglect the services of the spies. According to de Braque, in the day of the battle of Esslingen on the French bivouacs Austrian spies were found, who got into there under the pretext of buying leather of the cattle slaughtered for provisions for troops.

France and Germany after Napoleon

After the fall of Napoleon in France everyone starts to neglect the collection of information with the help of spies, which lasts till 1871, whereas in Prussia, this industry of reconnaissance is gradually being expanded”.

“Having achieved the brilliant flowering under Frederick the Great, the secret service of reconnoitering in Prussia after a period of decline again acquired the immense importance under Bismarck and Moltke, who both understood profoundly a broad public importance of intelligence and who could choose the employees not regretting for this purpose its main engine – the money.

Before the planned war with Austria in 1866, the intelligence service in Bohemia was organized by the famous chief of the Prussian secret police Stieber – who was according to Bismarck, “The King of Spies”.  Stieber’s work lasted for two years (from April 1864 to May 1866), and during this time he was subjected to constant risk. He personally studied the upcoming theater of war, and also put in Bohemia a number of “milestones” – the agents, aptly described by Stieber. Most of the agents were quite trustees, mainly Prussian nationals, retired militaries, businessmen, etc.

The information provided by Stieber to Bismarck, was so valuable and definite that at the beginning of hostilities Stieber was appointed as a chief of the Field Police.

Well thought-out, planned and systematically carried out into life the organization of intelligence service gave excellent results and in the huge extent contributed to the rapid and victorious end of the campaign.

Even stingy with praise Moltke could not keep himself from telling Bismarck: “Greenhorn Stieber or someone else organized this important service, but it runs good, so everything is great”.

After the Austro-Prussian campaign Stieber offered Bismarck a plan of a new organization of intelligence service in France, which had to be built “on the basis of bohemian approach, but with greater prudence and methodicalness and on the larger scale”.

For organizational success Stieber asks Bismarck only for two things – the money and carte blanche for his actions, based, of course, on the general guidelines above.

An energetic, tireless, systematic work on the organization of intelligence service in France began.

Since that time we can see not just a training of intelligence service before this war, but the methodical, deeply thoughtful spreading of intelligence service in the country of the possible enemy in case of war.

What was the purpose of the organization of intelligence service in France? Stieber personally spread intelligence service in the departments of the Upper and Lower Rhine, Moselle, Murtha, Vosges, Jura, Ardennes, Marne, Haute-Marne, Haute-Savoie , Doubs , North , Seine and Oise,  the distribution of the network was built in accordance with the planned operational directions, the entire network was given a slim hierarchical organization, with central intelligence agency, to which there were two subordinate trustees  − police lieutenants, who had four subordinate regional inspectors that had residences in Berlin, Brussels, Lausanne and Geneva. The areas of inspectors were divided into brigades.

Stieber took measures and for the continuity of the intelligence after the declaration of war, − for this purpose a significant portion of agents under various pretexts, had to remain at their locations even after the declaration of war.

During the trips, Stieber controlled by his personal visit 1850 people of already spread agents in the listed departments, gave them new instructions and increased the salary. Besides the already existing agents there were thirteen thousand more secret agents added to their list, among whom there were from four to nine thousand German women servants for coffee houses, restaurants, pubs and hotels, from seven to nine hundred retired non-commissioned officers with a primary school education, settled in various retail companies, forty six young and pretty Prussian girls to work in military buffets, and finally two hundred of female servants to work at lawyers, doctors, officials, officers. The French hired the German servants willingly, because besides their direct work, they were children’s first teachers of German. Besides all these agents mentioned above, Stieber wanted to spread about 20,000 more spies, so all in all there were about 35 thousand of agents to be implemented and who had to cover all operating ways from Belgium and Berlin to Paris.

Besides the spreading of intelligence service in the period before the war of 1870 for a detailed and competent study of the future theater of war and secret reconnaissance by the German General Staff was sent a number of plainclothes officers, who executed their important and responsible work under various pretexts.

By the summer of 1870 apparently all the plans of Stieber were carried out into life, a network of intelligence service in France was organized, the war began. The systematic work of secret intelligence service continued during the war. “The third intelligence bureau” was headed by Major Krause, who concentrated all the information.  In the close connection with this bureau worked the Field Police headed by Stieber headed, which was in charge of specific issues of the intelligence service and the fight against espionage.

The Field Police was responsible for: in the intelligence to assist the military authorities on the delivery of the information:

a) about the placement, strength and movements of each of the enemy troop;

b) about the age, character and reputation of each of the heads of units;

c) about what happens, the mood of the minds; the means of the areas through which the German army had to pass;

d) to deliver people in each of these areas who may report useful information, to intelligence;

e) to use already existing permanent spies, hire new ones and finally to corrupt traitors.

As for the counterintelligence:

a) to watch foreigners inside and outside the main location of the headquarters;

b) to view letters and journals by special instructions;

c) to control and monitor the activities of the newspaper reporters, who have access to the headquarters, the content of their correspondence and dispatches in the specific edition, which was established by the army headquarters;

d) to watch the various people by the instructions of the army headquarters;

e) to protect the individuals of the senior officers.

After the war, Stieber, who remained at the head of the secret service, continued his work against France, by expansion and capture of the new areas.

The intelligence service already began to haunt not only purely military purposes, i.e. information acquisition which is necessary for the successful prosecution of war, but also enhanced the activities in the sense of conducting propaganda.

Since 1880, Stieber began to spread the special railway secret service, so at the moment of the mobilization and transportation of troops to begin the destruction of railways; the tremendous importance for the systematic implementing of the army concentration and its deployment is trouble-free work of railways, needs no proof, and it is clear what kind of hopes Stieber had about the successful execution of his grand plan. In 1883, already a very large number of German spies managed to be employed on the French railways, and in February 1884 the French Military Department managed to track down a German spy railway organization − and it was ordered to inform all foreign nationals, who worked on the railways, of the need to “immediately take French citizenship under penalty of immediate dismissal and expulsion from the service”.

Among 1641 of foreign nationals, who served on the railways, only 182 of them refused to be naturalized and came back to Germany.

In the early nineties a serious propaganda started on the French railways, which had the purpose of a general railway strike, besides the verbal propaganda waged by the German money, there was also the printed propaganda, for which there was opened a special loan from the secret fund to the sum of 80 thousand thalers in order “to pay for the foreign publications useful for the imperial policy”.

“The campaign of 1870-1871 also proved that the Germans in general, and the Prussians in particular, with regard to espionage have not forgotten the lessons of the past and the instructions of “Old Fritz”. It is true that the French people, irritated by the failures, were ready to recognize a spy in every foreigner, which has led to many unfortunate misunderstandings. However, according to the unanimous testimony of many French writers and officials, who are to be trusted, both civilian and military ones, long before the war, the eastern France was overflowed by the legion of the Prussian spies and undercover officers. Some of them measured the depth of rivers under the pretext of fishing, others, disguised as the artists, took pictures of the neighborhood of Langres, Belfort and other fortresses.

At the beginning of the war in Strasbourg a man appeared, who pretended to be an authorized of the U.S. company on the delivery of weapons and ammunition to the army. His presence in Strasbourg, where there was no emperor nor the army headquarters, evoked the suspicion. He was watched and he was about to be arrested, but he suddenly disappeared. The military police was reported of his distinguishing features, which detained him at the exit from the wagon in Metz. Then he confessed that he was one of the chiefs of German spies and told about the organization of this business. After he was committed to trial, he was shot.

The German spies were also found among the personnel of military medical institutions. The greatest number of them was discovered during the siege of Paris, two of them, for example, disguised as nurses, one was the begging, and at the bottom of his cap he made ​​the drawings of the Paris fortifications. There was even found a brave heart, who managed to inspect the Fort of Mont-Valerysh disguised as the marine lieutenant with a fake pass signed by the Minister of War. He was accessed to the examination, but by the telegram it was reported that the Military Department ordered to arrest him immediately, but the answer was too late, so the spy had escaped.

September 30, 1870 someone Cruzem was sent from Metz to discover if the Germans got reinforcements from Strasbourg, which had surrendered to the enemy. Cruzem had walked around almost the entire German blockade line on the left bank of the Moselle, and on the way back to Metz he had to go crawling about three miles. On his return he had delivered information on the approximate number of the enemy, on the location of its warehouses and brought them the discovered Prussian newspaper. All in all he had got about 40 francs.

The police agent Flahaut was sent in Aug. 20 from Thionville to Metz with two important dispatches from Mag-Nagon to Bazin. After arriving safely in Metz and passing dispatches, on the next day he went back to Thionville with five important dispatches; the Prussian patrol spotted him and pursued for four miles. To avoid capture Flahaut had to leave the wagon, in which he traveled, and jump into the Moselle. After swimming for about four miles away, he went ashore and without further adventures reached Thionville. For the execution of the order Flahaut got 50 francs.

August 20, the forest guard Dechou delivered seventeen official dispatches from Thionville to Metz, and on the way back, he got under the fire of the French, who were shooting at the Prussian Lancers. Dechou was given 20 francs.

The sailor Donzella for the delivery of dispatches first from Tours to the  blockaded Thionville, literally with the same difficulties as those of Flahaut, and then back to Brussels got 200 francs.

In the campaign of 1870-1871 the French authorities, generous on promises proved to be mean, when they had to pay for the execution of the order: the rewards for the transfer of dispatches through the enemy lines ranged between 50 and 200 francs, but they repeatedly paid only 520 francs.

With the regard to the cash costs of the Germans on spying in 1870-1871 there is no data.

“September 1, 1871 in Sedan, the French army surrendered, which listed in its army in the last day of the battle 124 000 of people (among whom 17,000 of people were killed and wounded, 21,000 − taken to prison, 83,000 − surrendered by capitulation, 3000 − disarmed on the Belgian territory) . What are the causes of such a catastrophe? There are many of them, but the reader deigns to realize at least the essence of data presented below. Long time before the Franco-Prussian war, France based its foreign policy on the weakness of Germany, looked down at the union of the German states, ignoring them as something unnatural.  Before the war the French believed that Germany could use only 350,000 of troops, while Germany already in the war in 1866 exposed so many troops that afterwards its armed forces had grown on three corps and 50 battalions of Landwehr, not including Saxon corps and Hessian divisions, which had, of course, to join Germany in case of war. Overall in the beginning of the war of 1870-1871 Germany actually exposed 531,000 of active troops. The full and robust report of the great French agent in Berlin Lieutenant Colonel Stoffel of Prussia’s preparations for war, its armed forces and the command wasn’t believed by the minister of war, nor Napoleon III, who was so much confident in the friendly attitude of Prussia to France, that he withdrew Stoffel, but in 1868 reappointed him in Berlin. After the Sedan’s defeat in Paris there were even rumors that Stoffel’s reports were found unopened, although partly. Finally there is an eloquent excerpt from a military order of Napoleon III from August 4, 1870: “You always have to expect from the enemy the most reasonable actions. In English journals there is written, that General Steinmetz occupies the central position between Saarbrücken and Saarlouis; he is supported behind by the corps of Prince Frederick Charles, and from the left he is joint with the army of prince who is in Rhenish Bavaria. Their purpose is to go straight to Laney. In fact: the 1st Army of Steinmetz was the right wing of the Prussian Army , the 2nd army of Prince Frederick Charles – the center, and not the support of Steinmetz , third army of the Crown Prince of Prussia – the left wing, not the left neighbor of Steinmetz, but of the 2nd Army. The goal is “to find the main forces of the enemy (the French) and to beat them”, but not “to go straight to Nancy”.

It seems to us that already these brief details about the neglect of the French intelligence, especially the secret one, forejudged the fate of the French army.

The great politic changes, that occurred in Europe after the Second World War, engaging society and art, not only involved art systems changes, but promoted the appearance of their new forms. The necessity of historic events reconstruction and understanding of what happened led to the joining of belles-lettres and documentary styles of reflecting the reality, the creation of voluminous epic series and the distribution of satirics, novels where the recent past became the source of thinking about the present.

The interest to deep “roots” and national foundations causes the process of a nation’s self-identity and finding its place in the global community. Just in the 60s, a problem of “Englishness” is raised in English literature, when the belles-lettres research of concepts of British consciousness and life style helps to discover and  put off everything obsolete but at the same time to save democratic forms of society and inherent foundations for the British.

Realias of the “Сold” war were fitting in with their plot vector in several ways: portrait types of the eastern opponent, themes of nuclear and bacteriological war, and descriptions of politic regimes on the periphery of global world.

First of all, portrait images of spy novel protagonists were called up to serve the reinforcement of negative perception of the ideological opponent. Anthony Burgess brightly describes his heroes in the novel ‘Tremor of Intent’ [2] in 1966, devoted to his trip to USSR. According to the historical note, Anthony Burgess visited USSR not only to learn about the life behind the “iron curtain”, but to accomplish a secret mission of Britain’s Military Intelligence MI6. On return Anthony Burgess was so disappointed and bewildered because he saw nothing horrible there, that he wrote a spy novel nothing like as he planned. Instead of a pure spy novel he wrote a parody. Opposed to A. Burgess, Michael Gilbert didn’t write parodies, but he created a spy novel called ‘Death Has Deep Roots’[3], in which a whole set of genre dominant is. As his teachers he names two English writers Margery Allingham and Graham Greene [4] – two of the best writers of this century. According to him their novels became the role models on the early stages of his work. In his interviews he also mentions many masters of the genre, whom he had a chance to learn from – Eric Ambler [11], Francis Iles, Edmund Crispin, Anthony Boucher, Jullian Simmons and Amanda Krost, and all of them evoked his true admiration. Also, one may observe a thematic similarity in the novel of the English writer Robert Tronson, in the narrative “Afternoon of a counterspy” [8], which reflected a wide-scale and meaningless fuss of numerous English intelligence agencies in the invisible battle with the Soviet intelligence service.

Norman Lewis [6] (1908-2003) once said that he is the only one among people known to him, who can enter a crowded room and leave it after a while, staying entirely unnoticed.  This points not only to modesty, but to a preferred position of the famous writer – the attitude of an onlooker, who cannot be overseen. The same quality characterizes his style – which is simple, obvious, very dynamic and precise – clear.

In 1959 Ian Fleming [9], the future creator of “James Bond”, who was working for both “The Sunday Times” and MI6 at that moment, sends Lewis to Cuba to discover what were Castro’s chances of victory over the Batista regime. In his essay, “Mission to Havana”, Lewis recounted two memorable meetings: the first one was with Ed Scott, the Bond’s prototype itself, the man who preferred to have the office service of naked black secretaries and wore shells instead of cuff links. The second meeting was with Hemingway. “He told me nothing, – wrote Lewis, – but taught me more than I wanted to know”. The Scott and Lewis’ meeting was observed by another intruder, Graham Greene [4], who used this scene in his famous novel “Our Man in Havana”. Later, when Greene was reviewing “Missionaries” where Lewis described those destructions which American fundamentalists brought on pagan tribes of the Pacific and Latin America, he will call Lewis one of the best writers of the 20^th century.

Another writer, who succeeded to overcome the scope of typological limitation of a classic spy novel, was Peter O’Donnell [7]. He was born on April 11, 1920 in London. At the age of 16 he already worked as a journalist in various newspapers and magazines. He created several comic strip heroes – Tiger Tim, Chips and Captain Moonlight.

Since 1938 and during the Second World War he served as a noncommissioned officer (NCO) in the mobile radio detachment (3 Corps) of Royal Corps of Signals, which came under command of MI6 Foreign Intelligence Service, as well as he served in the 8th Army in Persia, then in Syria, Egypt, Italy, and since October 1944 in Greece. In 1965 Peter published his first novel “Modesty Blaise” [7, 3]. The book had a great success and as a result O’Donnell continued the publication of series, interchanging the publication of novels and comic strips for over 30 years.

Keeping the tradition of authors who served in intelligence agencies, Peter O’Donnell created an occasional spy novel heroine of the Modesty Blaise series. The Modesty Blaise character became widely known due to the book itself and the adapted screenplay, where Monika Vitti played the role of the almighty spy. One needs to look for a reason of such success not so much in belles-lettres values of the novel as in the originality of plot discovery. At last, after a variety of spy-men, created for over two decades, O’Donnell realized to make up a character who served in Britain’s Intelligence service and who’s dangerous and successful in spying not less than men.

In the given context one cannot fail to mention Adam Hall [10] (the real name – Elleston Trevor) – who was a writer of spy novels. During the War he served in Special Branch of Britain’s Intelligence Service in Royal Air Force. His most famous character is Quiller. The novels about Quiller are represented as a synthesis of two concepts of the English spy novel. In his skills, education and equipment Quiller can be referred to super-agents such as James Bond. With respect to the atmosphere of secrecy, treachery and danger, the novel series about Quiller is closer to the detective style of John le Carré [5]. For the first time ever the protagonist appeared in the novel “The Berlin Memorandum” in 1965 (“The Quiller Memorandum” in USA and Russia).

The real adversity was the distribution of pseudo literature. The richest owners of publishing firms advertize, finance and distribute that kind of “fiction” or lionize murderers, violators, racists. Cheap “paperbacks” – sensational fiction and detectives in clamorous, “suspenseful” covers – are mostly designed for a reader, lacking any literature taste; usually, they are written by people, who don’t have a direct relationship to literature. These books attract by a criminal story line and, which is usually more unlikely, the accumulation of horrors, promotion of violence, sex, crimes, the morale of commercialism and bring up the idolism of moneybags and the pursuit of wealth at any price.

Although that kind of “literature” is way beyond artwork, it would be a mistake to underestimate its influence on an average customer. Being published in multimillion editions and supported by advertising, it is widely spread and read among all levels of English people.

But novels by crime fiction “veterans”, such as Agatha Christie [3] and other similar authors, are still popular. In the beginning of the 40th and 50th detective stories about crimes and criminals were replaced with novels that were involving political problems, problematics of relations between countries during the World War and right after its end, the so-called spy novel genre. During the course of its development, this genre transforms, taking new forms of the plot vector and modified protagonist realization. The general tendency for the mentioned period can be pointed out as the ethical and moral deformation of the protagonist image, due to the war time, from “romantic” to “prosaic”. The protagonist of an English spy novel of the World War II period is already clear from the ties of moral duties in fulfillment of the spy activity. The successful realization of the mission, imposed on him by the country, becomes the first coming target for him as far as the whole course of the country’s further military operations depends on its results. So, one may say that the motivation of intelligence activity realization was deeply changed. The moral perception of responsibility was intensified, a clear practical task and ways of its accomplishment from the moral basis of personality got detached. Both the morality and the task are each on their own. Talking about Spy novels of the World War II period it is necessary to underline their structural and typological particularity of plot organization. Novels, written during the period of the Second World War, as a rule, reflected either the Big Game of Intelligence services of rival countries or singular commando-type reconnaissance operations. In our opinion it is necessary to mention that authors of Spy novels in direct or indirect ways had an attitude to the Great Britain’s State Intelligence service, which was brightly reflected in details of novels. The spy novel genre of the WWII period is characterized by burst of novels, the plot of which aimed at covering events which took place on the world stage of
military relations. Among writers, whose works fell at the World War II period, it is important to mention the creative work of Graham Greene [2], who was a professional soldier of the Great Britain’s Intelligence service. He joined the Intelligence Service in 1941, where he was successfully serving, particularly, in Sierra Leone, and resigned at the rank of colonel. In his novels G. Greene presented his experience gained during the service. Every his novel reflects a specific military-intelligence operation with a description of work approaches and methods of British Intelligence Agencies.

We may call another bright representative of the spy novel genre during the period of WWII – Ted Allbeury [8], who was an intelligence officer. He was serving in the British Intelligence service during the whole course of World War II (1939-1947), having resigned at the rank of lieutenant colonel. He fulfilled himself as a master of the spy novel genre in the world of letters.

In the history of the spy novel genre development one can certainly call the first ever woman writer – Helen MacInnes. Helen Clark MacInnes was born on October 7, 1907 in Glasgow (Scotland). She was brought up by her parents in the frames of traditional strict Protestantism. She earned a degree in the University of Glasgow, then in University College London, where she became a specialist in librarianship.

As Helen had a good command of several European languages, she was helping her husband Gilbert to do German translations, which he was doing by order of the secret service, where he was a regular officer at that moment. Helen was a mastermind of ideas and solutions of politic problems, which her husband was responsible for.

Due to practically unlimited access to secret files of her husband she could learn in full measure the real situation in the given period and realize the nature of Nazi tyranny, methods and principles of German Intelligence Services activity.

To our opinion, we should mention another author of spy novels – Dennis Yates Wheatley [1]. Wheatley was born on January 8, 1897, in London. His creative work is defined by his biography. He received his education in Dulwich College, but was expelled from it because of academic failure. During World War I he was serving in Royal Artillery regiment, but was gassed and then dismissed from the army.

His politic novels promoted an invitation from MI5, where with the help of his imagination he was composing analytical notes with different propositions, which helped on a possible intrusion prevention to England. The success of his analysis leads to the fact that in 1945 Wheatley headed the team of Winston Churchill’s counselors. After the war he was awarded Bronze Star for his services.

From our point of view, spy novels by Robert Chatham [10] deserve attention because they are written in a very realistic manner. The plot line in them is alike to the one in Ted Allbeury’s novels. [8]. Robert Chatham (5 June, 1911 – 1 January, 1985) – the pseudonym of Ronald Sydney Seth, was a British writer, who in the period of WWII was a secret servant of English Intelligence Service. After the war he wrote several novels about the Intelligence service. Due attention should be given to the novel “Secret Servants” [10] as it was written by Seth based on Japanese archival materials, a thing that nobody had ever done before. The author briefly recites the history of Japanese spying, mentions a lot of interesting facts about the activity of Japanese spies in various countries.

We ought to mention the creative work of another author, who wrote a series of spy novels, describing real events of WWII – Alistair Stuart MacLean [4-6]. He was born on April 28, 1922 in Glasgow (Scotland). His mother, Mary Lament MacLean was a very religious woman, keen on singing, and his father, who was also Alistair Maclean – was a clergy of the Church of Scotland, as well as an author of a few religious books.

During the early of World War II Alistair MacLean joined the Royal Navy as a volunteer, where he was serving in naval intelligence and performing covert operations for British Intelligence Service in different parts of the world, particularly in Russia. The real danger, which he was facing during the activity, gave him rich material for his works. MacLean served on HMS Royalist, the basic function of which was escorting American convoys with humanitarian cargo on their way to Murmansk. He reflected his experience in his first novel – “H.M.S. Ulysses”, 1955 [5]. With the opening of the second front, the convoys finished their activity, and HMS Royalist was redeployed to the  Mediterranean Sea. In September, 1944 Maclean took part in organization and realization of a commando-type reconnaissance operation which was planned to seize seacoast defenses on Greek islands occupied by the Germans. The operation became a plot basis for the second novel “The Guns of Navarone” 1957, but also for its sequel. In 1945 Royalist was redeployed to the Far East, where he took direct part in the liberation of Singapore, – he pursued the intelligence training of territorial planning, and military activities became the material for the plot of his third novel  “South by Java Head”, 1958 [4].

The real adversity was the distribution of pseudo literature. The richest owners of publishing firms advertize, finance and distribute that kind of “fiction” or lionize murderers, violators, racists. Cheap “paperbacks” – sensational fiction and detectives in clamorous, “suspenseful” covers – are mostly designed for a reader, lacking any literature taste; usually, they are written by people, who don’t have a direct relationship to literature. These books attract by a criminal story line and, which is usually more unlikely, the accumulation of horrors, promotion of violence, sex, crimes, the morale of commercialism and bring up the idolism of moneybags and the pursuit of wealth at any price.

Although that kind of “literature” is way beyond artwork, it would be a mistake to underestimate its influence on an average customer. Being published in multimillion editions and supported by advertising, it is widely spread and read among all levels of English people.

But novels by crime fiction “veterans”, such as Agatha Christie [3] and other similar authors, are still popular. In the beginning of the 40th and 50th detective stories about crimes and criminals were replaced with novels that were involving political problems, problematics of relations between countries during the World War and right after its end, the so-called spy novel genre. During the course of its development, this genre transforms, taking new forms of the plot vector and modified protagonist realization. The general tendency for the mentioned period can be pointed out as the ethical and moral deformation of the protagonist image, due to the war time, from “romantic” to “prosaic”. The protagonist of an English spy novel of the World War II period is already clear from the ties of moral duties in fulfillment of the spy activity. The successful realization of the mission, imposed on him by the country, becomes the first coming target for him as far as the whole course of the country’s further military operations depends on its results. So, one may say that the motivation of intelligence activity realization was deeply changed. The moral perception of responsibility was intensified, a clear practical task and ways of its accomplishment from the moral basis of personality got detached. Both the morality and the task are each on their own. Talking about Spy novels of the World War II period it is necessary to underline their structural and typological particularity of plot organization. Novels, written during the period of the Second World War, as a rule, reflected either the Big Game of Intelligence services of rival countries or singular commando-type reconnaissance operations. In our opinion it is necessary to mention that authors of Spy novels in direct or indirect ways had an attitude to the Great Britain’s State Intelligence service, which was brightly reflected in details of novels. The spy novel genre of the WWII period is characterized by burst of novels, the plot of which aimed at covering events which took place on the world stage of military relations. Among writers, whose works fell at the World War II period, it is important to mention the creative work of Graham Greene [2], who was a professional soldier of the Great Britain’s Intelligence service. He joined the Intelligence Service in 1941, where he was successfully serving, particularly, in Sierra Leone, and resigned at the rank of colonel. In his novels G. Greene presented his experience gained during the service. Every his novel reflects a specific military-intelligence operation with a description of work approaches and methods of British Intelligence Agencies.

We may call another bright representative of the spy novel genre during the period of WWII – Ted Allbeury [8], who was an intelligence officer. He was serving in the British Intelligence service during the whole course of World War II (1939-1947), having resigned at the rank of lieutenant colonel. He fulfilled himself as a master of the spy novel genre in the world of letters.

In the history of the spy novel genre development one can certainly call the first ever woman writer – Helen MacInnes. Helen Clark MacInnes was born on October 7, 1907 in Glasgow (Scotland). She was brought up by her parents in the frames of traditional strict Protestantism. She earned a degree in the University of Glasgow, then in University College London, where she became a specialist in librarianship.

As Helen had a good command of several European languages, she was helping her husband Gilbert to do German translations, which he was doing by order of the secret service, where he was a regular officer at that moment. Helen was a mastermind of ideas and solutions of politic problems, which her husband was responsible for.

Due to practically unlimited access to secret files of her husband she could learn in full measure the real situation in the given period and realize the nature of Nazi tyranny, methods and principles of German Intelligence Services activity.

To our opinion, we should mention another author of spy novels – Dennis Yates Wheatley [1]. Wheatley was born on January 8, 1897, in London. His creative work is defined by his biography. He received his education in Dulwich College, but was expelled from it because of academic failure. During World War I he was serving in Royal Artillery regiment, but was gassed and then dismissed from the army.

His politic novels promoted an invitation from MI5, where with the help of his imagination he was composing analytical notes with different propositions, which helped on a possible intrusion prevention to England. The success of his analysis leads to the fact that in 1945 Wheatley headed the team of Winston Churchill’s counselors. After the war he was awarded Bronze Star for his services.

From our point of view, spy novels by Robert Chatham [10] deserve attention because they are written in a very realistic manner. The plot line in them is alike to the one in Ted Allbeury’s novels. [8]. Robert Chatham (5 June, 1911 – 1 January, 1985) – the pseudonym of Ronald Sydney Seth, was a British writer, who in the period of WWII was a secret servant of English Intelligence Service. After the war he wrote several novels about the Intelligence service. Due attention should be given to the novel “Secret Servants” [10] as it was written by Seth based on Japanese archival materials, a thing that nobody had ever done before. The author briefly recites the history of Japanese spying, mentions a lot of interesting facts about the activity of Japanese spies in various countries.

We ought to mention the creative work of another author, who wrote a series of spy novels, describing real events of WWII – Alistair Stuart MacLean [4-6]. He was born on April 28, 1922 in Glasgow (Scotland). His mother, Mary Lament MacLean was a very religious woman, keen on singing, and his father, who was also Alistair Maclean – was a clergy of the Church of Scotland, as well as an author of a few religious books.

During the early of World War II Alistair MacLean joined the Royal Navy as a volunteer, where he was serving in naval intelligence and performing covert operations for British Intelligence Service in different parts of the world, particularly in Russia. The real danger, which he was facing during the activity, gave him rich material for his works. MacLean served on HMS Royalist, the basic function of which was escorting American convoys with humanitarian cargo on their way to Murmansk. He reflected his experience in his first novel – “H.M.S. Ulysses”, 1955 [5]. With the opening of the second front, the convoys finished their activity, and HMS Royalist was redeployed to the  Mediterranean Sea. In September, 1944 Maclean took part in organization and realization of a commando-type reconnaissance operation which was planned to seize seacoast defenses on Greek islands occupied by the Germans. The operation became a plot basis for the second novel “The Guns of Navarone” 1957, but also for its sequel. In 1945 Royalist was redeployed to the Far East, where he took direct part in the liberation of Singapore, – he pursued the intelligence training of territorial planning, and military activities became the material for the plot of his third novel  “South by Java Head”, 1958 [4].