Espionage
Moscow Rules: A Cold War Survival Guide
Hammered in to the brain of every espionage operative of all sides in the last 75 years, this code still rules today and has saved countless lives
Still applicable today, the code known as Moscow Rules was first brought to explicit public notice by John le Carré in his classic 1974 thriller ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’. John le Carré’s real name was David Cornwell and he had a background in MI6, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service.
The basic operational rules were probably formally codified during the Second World War and used to train agents being inserted into Europe — principally France and the Low countries. The memorable name ‘Moscow Rules’ likely became attached in the middle 1950s as the Cold War evolved. Moscow was considered to be a particularly harsh operational environment for covert activities though surely no harsher than Occupied France.
Little mention can be found of the rules in any public official literature of any government.
During my teenage years I was an avid reader of the espionage genre, as far back as 1965, when I devoured novels such as ‘The Ipcress File’ (Len Deighton, 1962), ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ (John le Carré, 1963)…
