When The Cardinal of the Kremlin was written and published, the new broom of Mikhail Gorbachev had not yet swept vigorously. The Cardinal’s role is set out early on and, although there is a separate and minor ‘hunt the mole’ plotline within the novel’s 600+ pages, The Cardinal of the Kremlin is really the first of Clancy’s wide ranging, state-and-military, international relations thrillers. And this is no plot-spoiler, since The Cardinal of the Kremlin is not really an espionage thriller in the traditional sense. The ‘Cardinal’ of the title refers to the codename of a senior Russian military figure who has served for decades as a spy for the United States. It is the third of the Jack Ryan novels to be published, and the future President Ryan is a relatively junior CIA analyst, albeit with a strong reputation and excellent access for someone of his age and level. The Cardinal of the Kremlin is a typical Clancy blockbuster multiple plot strands, a strong military element, relatively nuanced characters, and Jack Ryan at the centre.

That’s the Russia-in-fiction recommended way to enjoy this book … Working in the Central State Archives during the day, I would get back to my apartment, eat dinner, read a few chapters, then enjoy my evening stroll, 10 minutes down the gently sloping central boulevard of Tverskaya Street to the titular Kremlin. The Soviet Union had collapsed only a year before. Very central -right next to Pushkin Square, almost opposite the Yeliseyevsky grocery store. I was living in an apartment in central Moscow. When I first read The Cardinal of the Kremlin, it was 1992, four years after its publication. Was he the real thing? Or was all subtle pretence? Clancy’s portrayal of him, and of the Soviet Union over which he presided, reflects that mixture of optimism and caution with which the West met this young reformer. In The Cardinal of the Kremlin the Soviet leader is clearly a Gorbachev figure. Gorbachev followed on from three sick old men, who had died in rapid succession.

In a world with two superpowers, you could say that the General Secretary was one of the two most powerful men in the world. Gorbachev had come to power in 1985, the fourth General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in less than two and half years. At the time that the book was being written, Western analysts and politicians could not quite get their heads around what Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was doing. Published in 1988, The Cardinal of the Kremlin portrays a mid-Gorbachev era Soviet Union.

The cardinal of the kremlin book