“The Americans” (2013–2018)

The work

The series was broadcast by the US network FX. Its writers and executive producers were Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields; Elizabeth and Philip Jennings were played by Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys. According to the US Television Academy the series won four Emmy Awards, including in 2018 for Rhys’s lead performance and for writing.¹

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesThe show’s creator, Joe Weisberg, had previously worked at the CIA – as he told NPR, for about four years. Many of the spy gadgets in the series are real Cold War devices, supplied by the collector Keith Melton, the production’s technical adviser.^2,5

The real case

On 27 June 2010 the FBI arrested ten people in the United States charged with acting for Russia’s SVR intelligence service. According to the criminal complaint they were illegals: they lived for years under false identities and concealed all ties to Russia. After pleading guilty they were removed to Russia in exchange for four people.^4,6,7

The FBI describes them as agents who married, bought homes and raised children. They obtained no classified documents, but they gathered information and sought out potential sources.⁸

Soviet intelligence also sent illegals to the United States; one of them was Colonel Rudolf Abel, arrested in New York in 1957.⁹

What is accurate

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesWeisberg told NPR in 2013 that the show is “inspired by the real history”: the KGB did run networks of spies in the United States, and illegals lived among Americans.⁵

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesIn a 2015 interview he stressed that the show’s timeline follows real events of the 1980s, such as Gorbachev’s reforms.³

What was added or changed

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesWeisberg acknowledged that the characters speak English without a foreign accent, whereas the real KGB illegals in America had accents from whatever countries they claimed to come from – which in a country of immigrants did not stop them blending in.⁵

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesAn NPR journalist remarked in 2015 that the real spies of 2010 did remarkably little. Weisberg replied that his characters are busier than any spies in history, because fictional spies have to stay very busy to keep viewers entertained.³

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesAccording to NPR the series was inspired by the arrest of Russian illegals, but it is set in the 1980s, so its characters serve the KGB. The illegals arrested in 2010 were sent by the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service.^3,6