This publication presents a collection of essays about people whose destinies were most dramatically intertwined with the activities of the intelligence services during the Second World War. All the characters in this book: Richard Sorge, his wife Ekaterina Maksimova, the traitor Penkovsky, Shilo-Tavrin, who was tasked with killing Stalin, were charged with espionage. The book is written on the basis of archival materials of the former Soviet KGB. The documents in the Appendix, which are entitled “Captive Japanese documents relating to the activities of Richard Sorge and his group” and “German documents about the activities of Richard Sorge in Japan,” are published in full in Russia for the first time.