Book Review: From Russia, with Love (1957) by Ian Fleming

“Life is full death, my friend… And sometimes one is made the instrument of death.”

Famously listed as one of President John F. Kennedy’s ten favorite books in an interview for LIFE Magazine in 1961, Ian Fleming’s fifth James Bond novel, From Russia, with Love, might have been called “A Tale of Two Spy Agencies.” It cleverly shows us both sides of the chessboard as the Soviet agency SMERSH and the British Secret Service attempt to outmaneuver one another in a world of secrets, seduction, murder, and a mysterious MacGuffin called a “Spektor” device. This is the last of Fleming’s books which is still grounded firmly in the tradition of Cold War realism. Going forward, the James Bond books tend to turn toward larger-than-life megalomaniacal villains the likes of which we are accustomed to seeing in the movies. To buttress this sense of realism in From Russia, with Love, at the start of the novel Fleming gives a brief author’s note:

“Not that it matters, but a great deal of the background to this story is accurate. … SMERSH, a contraction of Smiert Spionam—Death to Spies—exists and remains today the most secret department of the Soviet government.”  

Fleming begins From Russia, with Love by lifting the veil over the Iron Curtain and allowing us to finally see the inner workings of Soviet Russia, particularly the fearsome agency called “Smiert Spionam” (meaning “Death to Spies” or simply shortened to SMERSH) –a name spoken only among Soviet staff and officials because no sane member of the public would utter these words. We are introduced to SMERSH’s chief executioner, a blond, muscular, cold-blooded killer: “His real name was Donovan Grant or ‘Red’ Grant. But for the past ten years, it had been Krassno Granitski, with the code-name of ‘Granit.’ He was the Chief Executioner of SMERSH, the murder apparat of the M.G.B…” (8). For much of his life, murder has served as a kind of therapy. He is also known as the “Moon Killer” owing to an odd sub-plot in the novel which concerns Grant’s desire to kill during a full moon (it is mentioned several times, but the novel never fully veers into supernatural horror). Still, the werewolf analogy is apt for this psychopathic killer. He is the product of a one-night stand between a German weight-lifter and an Irish waitress behind a circus tent. Abandoned from infancy after his mother died, Grant grew up to become a prized boxer and a secret killer (as well as a narcissistic, a-sexual, sadist with an unbearably high pain tolerance). In time, he eventually defected to the Russians because: “He liked all he heard about the Russians, their brutality, their carelessness of human life, and their guile, and decided to go over to them” (15). We first meet him through the eyes of a young masseuse who strips down and massages his back beside a glistening pool at his villa located on the southeastern coast of Crimea. But this scene does not last long as Grant is quickly summoned to Moscow for a special mission.

In Moscow, SMERSH is headquartered in a large, ugly, modern building on the Sretenka Ulitsa –its business is carried out from no. 13 on the 2^nd floor which boasts rows of light painted olive-green government offices adorned with portraits of Stalin, Lenin, Bulganin, and Berian among other communist leaders. Here, Fleming offers the essential image of Soviet communist bureaucracy –a sterile, joyless, aesthetic. Here, there are endless meetings and committees which file inane mountains of paperwork for the Presidium which makes tedious recommendations that eventually become swallowed up into the labyrinth of byzantine rules and regulations. Everyone refers to each other as “comrade” and lives in a quiet state of paranoia –even the waste paper baskets are recorded and monitored! In 1955, SMERSH employs some 40,000 people all working under one man named Colonel General Grubozaboyschikov, known in the building simply as “G” (he is the head of SMERSH). At present, SMERSH is changing from its former “Hard Policy,” which runs the risk of sparking a nuclear war, into a “Hard-Soft Policy” which takes the carrot-and-stick approach. In response to many recent intelligence failures, a SMERSH committee recommends a subtle act of terrorism upon a western intelligence service, particularly the intelligence agency that is considered the most dangerous in order to demoralize and denigrate its efforts. The committee dismisses smaller scandal-ridden countries, like Italy or Spain, and they brush off René Mathis of France (we previously met him in the first Bond novel, Casino Royale). This leaves just two major Western countries –the United States and Britain. And never missing an opportunity to knock the United States, SMERSH acknowledge the U.S. as the bigger country with more money and the best technology, but populated by a pack of fanatical, “dangerous,” “unpredictable,” and “hysterical” imbeciles who have essentially no idea what they are doing. In contrast, SMERSH admits that the British Secret Service is revered the world over for its competence and ingenuity (Fleming holds back very little when it comes to praise of his former employment). Thus, in order to shatter the myth of heroism within the Secret Service, SMERSH seeks to publicly destroy its top agent James Bond –the man at the center of the Le Chiffre affair in France (as portrayed in Casino Royale), Mr. Big’s criminal ring in the Caribbean (as portrayed in Live and Let Die), Hugo Drax’s rocket scandal “which caused quite a bit of reputational damage within SMERSH” (as portrayed in Moonraker), and also a diamond smuggling racket in the U.S. “last year” which was unaffiliated with SMERSH (as portrayed in Diamonds Are Forever).

The Soviet dossier on Bond describes a man who is 183 centimeters tall, weighs 76 kilograms, has blue eyes, black hair, and a scar down his right cheek as well as another scar on his left shoulder. He has had signs of plastic surgery on right hand (resulting from his brutal branding in Casino Royale), and he is athletic, an expert pistol shot, a capable boxer and knife-thrower, but he curiously is not prone to using disguises. In addition to English, he speaks French and German, and he smokes heavily (primarily special cigarettes with three gold bands). Bond’s vices include drinking (but rarely to excess) and women. He is not known to accept bribes, and he is usually armed with a .25 Beretta automatic. He has used steel-capped shoes, knows basic judo, fights with tenacity, and has a high pain tolerance. He has earned the rare 00-status within the service –SMERSH believes there are only two other agents who have achieved 00-status. “Conclusion. This man is a dangerous professional terrorist and spy. He has worked for the British Secret Service since 1938…”           

From here, SMERSH hatches a “bait-and-trap” plot (a plan to destroy Bond’s character in addition to killing him). It involves a beautiful and naïve 24-year-old woman named Tatiana “Tania” Romanova (she pronounces the second “A” of Tatiana and the first “A” of Romanova “very long”), a corporal of state security who has blue eyes and brown hair –her allure is compared to that of Greta Garbo. She also happens to be a former figure skater and ballet dancer whose grandparents are distantly related to the Romanovs. Her mission is to seduce James Bond. Upon being summoned to SMERSH for debriefing, Tania is recruited by two fearsome colonels. One of whom is Colonel Kronsteen, a chess master known as “The Wizard of Ice” (he is SMERSH’s head of planning). He is also a sociopath who views life as a chess-game of sorts, and he holds little regard for other people, including his own children. The other colonel is Rosa Klebb, head of Otdyel II (the SMERSH department in charge of operations and executions). Klebb is described as small, ugly, and toadlike with a hoarse, flat voice, and rim-cut spectacles –she is utterly cold and remorseless. Klebb began her time in SMERSH as an agent in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and essentially murdered her way to the top of the agency. She delights in pain and suffering, and often insists on participating in acts of torture on enemy agents. As we wrap-up this tour through the grey world of SMERSH, Fleming gives us a bizarre scene of Klebb attempting to seduce Tania while wearing heavy make-up and a see-through dress (it is an alarming and unexpected moment intended to portray Klebb as a deviant), and Red Grant is dispatched undercover as an English gentleman, foreshadowing a forthcoming conflict with James Bond…     

Meanwhile in England, it has been a year since the events of the previous novel Diamonds Are Forever, and James Bond has grown bored of the drudgery of his job since then. We are treated to scenes of Bond’s ordinary life in London, such as his flat on King’s Road, breakfast (his favorite meal), The Times (the only paper Bond reads), and the introduction of his “treasured Scottish housekeeper” named May (this is her first appearance in a Bond novel). We also learn that Bond’s love-interest from the previous book, Tiffany Case —“his love for so many happy months”—has recently left him in July (currently it is August) and she sailed back to America with a major in the Marine Corps she met at the embassy. Filled with ennui (like a “surly caged tiger”), Bond contemplates a philosophic phrase: “Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make bored.”

However, when he arrives at work this time, Bond is quickly summoned to M’s office (Miss Moneypenny is only briefly mentioned in passing). He is informed that Darko Kerim, the head of “Station T” (Turkey), was recently contacted by a woman named Tania Romanova, who claims to be a lower-level Soviet cipher officer who wants to defect to the West. Why? Because she is apparently in love with James Bond. In reviewing a variety of Soviet files, she claims to have fallen in love with photographs of James Bond. In exchange for her defection, she will offer a valuable “Spektor” cipher device, but the caveat is that James Bond must personally escort her from Istanbul to the West (in the film version, the Spektor device is called a “Lektor”). Therefore, if he is up to the task, Bond’s mission is to seduce Tania Romanova and secure the Spektor. He is then outfitted for his mission by Q Branch with a variety of specialty gadgets, including a trick briefcase with hidden compartments containing ammo and throwing knives, as well as an emergency cyanide pill (which Bond quickly flushes), and a tube of shaving cream which is concealing hard cash and a Beretta silencer.

Notably, this is Fleming’s second use of the word “spectre” in his books (the first being the name “Spectreville” in Diamonds Are Forever) –he was apparently fascinated by the word. It later famously became the name of the notorious terrorist organization in a later Bond novel, Thunderball (while in the EON films, the name SPECTRE replaces SMERSH as a nationless gang of criminals in order to play better to a Russian audience). In From Russia, with Love, this particular Spektor device was inspired by the “Enigma,” an infamous Nazi decoding machine used during World War II.   

At any rate, from this point onward From Russia, with Love becomes a travelogue of sorts (inspired by a professional trip made by Fleming, himself, to Istanbul in 1955 while reporting for The Sunday Times). Bond flies from London to Istanbul, in order to “pimp for England” –in these moments, the sights and sounds of his trip are vividly conveyed (he travels on Friday the 13^th –an ill omen which is concerning to his secretary Loelia Ponsonby). After flying through a turbulent storm, he arrives safely at his hotel in Turkey, the Kristal Palas, which is described as a sub-par accommodation filled with vermin. Upon initial impressions of Istanbul –the historic gateway between East and West– Fleming seems to be at once enchanted by the culture and history of Istanbul, while also slightly disgusted with the people and smells of the city. Consider the following passages which offer some color:

“The car sped through deserted streets, past shadowy mosques from which dazzling minarets lanced up towards the three-quarter moo, under the ruined Aqueduct and across the Ataturk Boulevard and north of the barred entrances to the Grand Bazaar. At the Column of Constantine the car turned right, through mean twisting streets that smelled of garbage, and finally debouched into a long ornamental square in which three stone columns fired themselves like a battery of space-rockets into the spangled sky” (173).

“From the first, Istanbul had given him the impression of a town where, with the night, horror creeps out of the stones. It seemed to him a town the centuries had so drenched in blood and violence that, when daylight went out, the ghosts of its dead were its only population. His instinct told him, as it has told other travellers, that Istanbul was a town he would be glad to get out alive” (174).

Soon, Bond meets his contact in Istanbul, Darko Kerim, a large warm-hearted man who is suspicious of many recent events in the city, including an explosion which was apparently intended to kill him (it is later revealed that a Bulgarian assassin named Krilencu set a limpet mine in the hopes of killing Darko). Bond is then led into the catacombs beneath the city where Darko’s men can easily spy on the Russians via a clever periscope device equipped in a secret location, and they also head to a gypsy camp where they incidentally witness two women a fight to the death (a most strange and unsettlingly sexualized scene) before Bond and Darko assassinate Krilencu (a “Faceless One”) who has been following them on a motor scooter –they snipe him as he escapes his flat through a giant billboard advertisement of Marilyn Monroe. When Bond returns to his hotel, he finds none other than Tania Romanova lying naked in his bed (wearing only a black velvet ribbon around her neck and knee-high stockings). As Bond joins Tania in bed, unbeknownst to either of them, a creepy voyeuristic double mirror sits above them as a pair of SMERSH photographers are secretly recording their romance.  

The following evening, Bond, Tania, and Darko all board the Orient Express for a multi-day train ride westward (at Tania’s insistence), even though Bond worries that being enclosed inside a claustrophobic train leaves their voyage exposed and vulnerable. Can Tania be trusted? Is this all a ploy lure Bond into a dangerous situation? Either way it is too late to turn back now, Bond and Tania decide to assume the cover of a married couple –David and Caroline Somerset. In spite of significant cultural differences, such as Tania not understanding Darko’s joke about the queen, somehow, Bond and Tania fall heed-over-heels for one another while the train speeds away from Turkey toward Greece then onto Yugoslavia, Slovenia, Italy, and France. To me, their romance feels sudden and contrived by this point in the novel –Bond barely even knows Tania and has hardly even spoken with her. Why would he let his guard down for her?   

“The flame that had suddenly lit between them – between the two secret agents, thrown together from enemy camps a whole world apart, each involved in his plot against the country of the other, antagonists by profession, yet turned, and by the orders off their governments, into lovers” (195).

In these scenes, Tania is portrayed as entirely one-dimensional, flippant, slightly erratic, childish, and a mostly helpless object of Bond’s affections. Their love remains simply befuddling –how exactly did they both manage to fall in love almost immediately? Their romance plays right into the whims of both opposing intelligence agencies, SMERSH and the Secret Service, who want to lure the other agent away. Likened to an elaborate chess game or a billiard table, Kerim advises Bond to simply slip off the train at Salonica and fly from Athens to London in order to avoid further danger: “’Listen my friend,’ he put a huge hand on Bond’s shoulder. ‘This is a billiard table. An easy, flat, green billiard table. And you have hit your white ball and it is travelling easily and quietly towards the red. The pocket is alongside. Fatally, inevitably, you are going to hit the red and the red is going into that pocket. It is the law of the billiard table, the law of the billiard room. But, outside the orbit of these things, a jet pilot has fainted and his plane is diving straight at the billiard room, or a gas main is about to explode, or lightning is about to strike. And the building collapses on top of you and on top of the billboard table…’” (216).

However, Bond recklessly decides to remain on the Orient Express, and as the train passes cities and towns, the novel’s tension continues to grow. Three MGB agents are spotted aboard the train –two are quickly arrested and booted off (thanks to a stolen ticket and a bribe made to the conductor), but the other Soviet agent, Benz, is soon found dead alongside Darko in a grisly demise (Darko has been stabbed in the neck while strangling Benz to death). Bond soberly reflects on the death of Darko Kerim: “This wonderful man who had carried the sun with him. Now he was extinguished, totally dead” (219). But at least all three enemy agents have been eliminated. Should Bond relax for the rest of the trip?   

Just as things begin to feel safe and familiar again, following a brief stop in Belgrade where they meet Stefan Trempo (or “Tempo,” one of Darko’s sons), danger seems to lurk right around the corner. A mysterious blond-haired man arrives and speaks with Bond, claiming he is an Englishman –Bond assumes he has been sent by M, but he still distrusts this man especially for wearing a Windsor knot in his tie because it shows “too much vanity.” Claiming to be Captain Norman Nash, he keeps calling Bond “old man” and Tania notes that the word nash means “ours” in Russian as opposed to svoi which means “theirs” (a reference to the enemy). Nevertheless, despite these worrisome signs, Bond is stil too trusting of Nash and even hands over his Beretta (“danger, like a third man, was standing in the room”)only to discover what we as readers knew all along –Nash is actually a vicious mercenary, the man we met at the beginning of the novel, Red Grant, chief executioner of SMERSH. He awakens Bond in the night, but Tania has been put to sleep with chloral hydrate. Grant explains the situation to Bond and shoots him in the wrist via a hidden gun inside his copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace –notably, a similar hidden gun gadget was used by a real KGB agent, Captain Nikolai Khokhlov. He had ddefected to the West when he refused to carry out an assassination order, which made him the victim of an attempted poisoning later known as the “Khokhlov affair” (an incident that looms large over From Russia, with Love).

“It’ll give me an extra kick telling the famous Mr. Bond of the Secret Service what a bloody fool he is. You see, old man, you’re not as good as you think. You’re just a stuffed dummy and I’ve been given the job of letting the sawdust out of you” (243).

As the train enters the Simplon Tunnel, Bond is granted one last cigarette while Grant reveals his intent is to stage a murder-suicide of both Bond and Tania, with fake love letters, including a threat by Tania to reveal videos of their sexual escapades to blackmail Bond. Bond is then shot in the heart and falls down lifeless upon the floor —“Sweet dreams, you English bastard”– but what Red Grant does not understand is that Bond has actually slipped the cigarette case into his pocket alongside his book, The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler, which manages to block the bullet. Bond feigns death on the ground, slowly and quietly slipping a throwing knife out of his trick briefcase. Then in one “violent corkscrew of motion,” Bond twists upward and stabs Grant in the femoral artery, causing a gushing bloodbath on the floor of the train-cabin. He then snatches Grant’s trick copy of War and Peace and shoots him multiple times while he bleeds out on the floor.

Bond awakens Tania and they exit the Orient Express together at Dijon while Bond contacts the Deuxième Bereau, the French intelligence agency which is now led by his old friend René Mathis (whom we last saw in Casino Royale). The French bomb squad handles the Spektor device (which Grant had revealed to Bond was actually a bomb all along) and using other details gleaned from Grant, Bond heads to Room 204 at the Ritz Hotel in Paris where he confronts none other than Rosa Klebb (she has been waiting for Grant). During a brief confrontation, she releases a trick telephone which fires a bullet and attempts to use poison-tipped knitting needles against Bond, but with Bond’s gun stuck on his waistbelt, he physically pins Klebb against a wall. During the struggle, in one final ploy, she kicks a button on her shoe which unleashes a poison-laced blade –she then kicks Bond in the ankle, which poisons him. As Mathis’s men flood into the room to capture Klebb (the fate of Kronsteen remains unknown in the book), Bond stumbles and crashes “head-long to the wine-red floor” –here the novel abruptly ends on a cliffhanger –apparently, Ian Fleming considered killing James Bond at this point in the series.

In spite of being another farcical 007 story wherein MI6 sends its top agent on an absurdly risky mission, forgoing every reason to be cautious and wary, From Russia, with Love is still a Cold War classic –an espionage thriller that uniquely tells the story from both sides, East and West. Here we see a more trusting, hopeful, and fallible Bond –his nearly fatal flaw is in trusting both Tania Romanova and Captain Norman Nash (Red Grant), and at another point, Bond feels remorseful and even resentful at the idea of murdering someone in cold blood. This is a different side of Bond than we have seen before.

While undergoing re-writes for the novel, Fleming wrote to his friend and fellow novelist Raymond Chandler, reflecting on the status of James Bond: “My muse is in a very bad way. I am getting fed up with Bond and it has been very difficult to make him go through his tawdry tricks.” With five books under his belt, Fleming was unsure of the future of his spy thriller series.  

The big looming question over the novel is: why doesn’t Bond smell a trap? Is it really worth risking his life and reputation for a Spektor cipher device? Perhaps having had some distance from SMERSH, as well as a year of boredom working at headquarters, Bond has become a more easily error-prone spy rather than a blunt instrument. Bond lets his guard down and it very nearly destroys him. Bond and Romanova are both called upon to seduce each other for reasons of state, and their union serves as the centrifugal force for the novel which leads us on a wild ride from the shores of Crimea, to the streets of Istanbul (not Constantinople), and finally to a dramatic finale aboard the Orient Express (note: Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express was published some two decades prior to Ian Fleming’s From Russia, with Love). And while Ian Fleming’s fifth Bond novel is a tour de force across Europe, he nevertheless makes his distaste for other countries aside from his homeland abundantly clear –in Russia, people are portrayed as ruthless and deviant, “among the cruelest people in the world”; in Istanbul, people are portrayed as dirty, simplistic, and backwards; and in America, people are portrayed as foolish, fanatical, and avaricious –for example, in the scene wherein Tania calls Bond handsome like a Hollywood movie star, he responds with “For God’s sake! That’s the worst insult you can give a man!”).

Lastly, the act of defection plays a key role in the book. Tania’s defection to the West is contrasted with Red Grant’s defection to the East. Whereas Tania is an innocent young woman who absconds to England and is rescued by a hero in search of a better life, Red Grant is a violent sociopath who defects to Russia in search of a more vicious, malevolent, and crooked lifestyle fully sanctioned by the communist state. In this respect, From Russia, with Love, a postcard as the title suggests, borrows the idea of A Tale of Two Cities and incorporates it into a memorable Cold War spy adventure. From Russia, with Love is a narrative of heroism and villainy, and with this in mind, it stands out as among Ian Fleming’s best in my view.      

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Fleming, Ian. From Russia, with Love. Thomas & Mercer in Las Vegas, NV c/o Ian Fleming Publications Ltd. 1957 (republished in 2012). Paperback edition.

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Click here to visit my review of the 1963 movie version of From Russia with Love.