About the book: 2005 / The book contains portraits of 23 famous intelligence officers. One dry list of names will honor any intelligence service in the world. All those whose destinies are presented in the book - from adjutant Chernyshev to Colonel Abel - are part of that narrow circle, which the professionals themselves call the short word “elite”. Not everyone I would like to talk about made it onto the pages of the collection. Their time has not yet come, and if it comes, it will not be very soon. Two hundred years of the existence of intelligence (in today's understanding) is a long time. The compilers and authors hope that they were able to show how Soviet intelligence absorbed the experience of pre-revolutionary intelligence, and the current generation of intelligence officers continues the glorious traditions of their predecessors, defending our Motherland on its farthest borders.