A Train to Potevka

When I was ten years old, my family moved to Germany. This was less than a year after the Berlin wall had been torn down and shortly before the Soviet Union was dissolved. I remember hearing about the coup in Russia where Mikael Gorbachev was almost over thrown, and even at that young of an age I felt the importance when Gorbachev abdicated and Boris Yeltsin was elected president of Russia. A couple of years later I was able to visit Russia and stay with a family just outside of Moscow. I was able to visit with these people and learn first hand some of their history. Because of these experiences, I have always had a strong interest in Russian history. The previous book took place before the Bolshevik Revolution replace the Czars with the communist government. A Train the Potevka takes place in the month leading up to the demise of that communist government.

Mike Ramsdell was a Military Intelligence Office who also worked for the State Department on many undercover counterintelligence operation within the USSR and Russia after the demise of the Soviet Union. This book, though classified as fiction, serves more as a memoir for his life. The outline for this story is Mike's final mission in the USSR before the change in government. He and his team are charged with extracting a Russian politician who embezzled millions of dollars from the United States so that he can be tried in an international court of law. When their cover is compromised his team is extracted and Mike is left to make his way from the far eastern end of Russia to Moscow on the Tran Siberian Railroad. This journey serves as a time for the author to reflect on his life and he uses this novel to share brief stories from his life.

I found this novel to be very interesting. The story itself, though is has some exciting elements, was not the action thriller novel the I expected. It served as a backdrop in which the author could relate many stories about his life and history. I really enjoyed the stories about his military experiences and wished he would have expounded more on some of those. Many of these stories were however more about personal family experiences, his divorce, his relationship with his son, the romance with his second wife and other things of that nature. This does seem appropriate since that is what I hope I would be thinking about when I am faced with death.

What I found most valuable within this book was the realistic view that we are given of the United State Intelligence programs. These are not the heartless killers or the debonair spys that we are used to seeing in the movies. These are real people that the author describes as "middle aged" and balding." In this book we are presented with real information about what goes on within an undercover operation and the mistakes at so many levels that can cause things to go wrong. Most of all within this book you will find someone who faced some very difficult circumstances and his story of faith and survival.