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  • Published: 1 January 2012
  • ISBN: 9781742747439
  • Imprint: Random House Australia
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 312
Categories:

Secrets and Spies

The Harbin Files





From secret police files retrieved from the archives in post-Soviet Russia to the horror of Stalin's purges, Secrets and Spies unravels the complex historical forces which shaped a family's destiny.

From secret police files retrieved from the archives in post-Soviet Russia to the horror of Stalin's purges, Secrets and Spies unravels the complex historical forces which shaped a family's destiny.

Harbin in north China was once the heart of a vibrant Russian community of diverse cultural and political origins. But by the mid-1930s, the Japanese occupation of Manchuria drove many Russians to seek refuge elsewhere. For the thousands who returned to their motherland in the Soviet Union, it was a bitter homecoming. At the height of Stalin's purges, they were arrested as Japanese spies. Some were shot, others sent to labour camp, few survived. Among them were members of the author's family.

Driven by curiosity and armed with chutzpah, Mara Moustafine fronted up at the headquarters of the former KGB in post-Soviet Moscow and asked for help to discover what had happened. She got more than she bargained for. The family's secret police files, retrieved from archives at opposite ends of Russia, revealed the horror of the purges as well as startling secrets about their lives in turbulent years in China and the Soviet Union. What was fact? What was fiction?

Written with sensitivity and humour, Secrets and Spies skilfully weaves personal and political, past and present to give an insider's perspective on the life of ordinary people in extraordinary times.

  • Published: 1 January 2012
  • ISBN: 9781742747439
  • Imprint: Random House Australia
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 312
Categories:

About the author

Mara Moustafine

Mara Moustafine was born in Harbin, China into a family with Jewish, Russian and Tatar roots and came to Sydney as a child in 1959. Bilingual in Russian and English, Mara completed a Masters in International Relations at the Australian National University. She has worked as a diplomat and intelligence analyst for the Australian government, a foreign affairs journalist, a senior business executive in Asia and national director of a global human rights organisation. She is currently working in refugee assessment review. Secrets and Spies: The Harbin Files is her first book. It was awarded a NSW Premier's Literary Award.

Praise for Secrets and Spies

"I've read many family histories but none of them have the maturity and depth of this one..." - The Hon Kim Beazley, (former deputy prime minister and leader of the Labor Party)

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