John Cairncross, RASCLS and a Reassessment of His Motives

Christopher Smith

doi:10.1080/02684527.2022.2065613

John Cairncross, RASCLS and a Reassessment of His Motives

Christopher Smith

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3 Citations (Scopus)

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Abstract

In 1990, John Cairncross was identified as the ‘fifth man’ of the Cambridge Ring of Five. Historians have provided various motivations for Cairncross’ decision to spy for the Soviet Union. Yet, after three decades, he remains poorly understood. Proposed espionage motives have ranged from ideological Communism, an impoverished upbringing in Lanarkshire, and proto-Popular Frontism. Generally, however, it has been assumed that the former, ideological Communism, best explain Cairncross’ actions. This article uses Cialdini’s model of psychological influence to demonstrate the significance of Cairncross’ attitude to British socio-cultural-political norms in rendering him susceptible to NKVD recruitment.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	526-540
Number of pages	15
Journal	Intelligence and National Security
Volume	37
Issue number	4
Early online date	25 Apr 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2022.2065613
Publication status	Published - 7 Jun 2022

Bibliographical note

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Keywords

History
Political Science and International Relations

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10.1080/02684527.2022.2065613Licence: CC BY

PublishedFinal published version, 1.02 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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John Cairncross, RASCLS and a Reassessment of His Motives

Abstract

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