Filip Kovacevic is an intelligence historian, an adjunct professor in the Departments of Politics and Global Studies at the University of San Francisco, and the author of KGB Literati: Spy Fiction and State Security in the Soviet Union.

In this interview, Kovacevic discusses the emergence in the USSR of heroic espionage stories written by people with backgrounds in Soviet intelligence. Their aims included promoting Soviet views of international relations, encouraging public vigilance against foreign spies, and establishing a heroic myth that would help recruit future generations of intelligence agents.