Vladimir Volkoff: “The Set-Up” (“Le Montage”, 1982)

The work

On 4 November 1982 “Le Montage” was awarded the Grand Prix du roman of the Académie française.¹

Adam Zalewski’s Polish translation was published in 1986 by the London publisher Polonia; the Open Society Archives catalogue holds it in Radio Free Europe’s collection of émigré and underground publications. A reprint was issued in Poland by the Myśl publishing house.^4,5

The protagonist, Aleksandr Psar, the son of a White Russian émigré in Paris, wants to return to his homeland and agrees to work with the KGB to that end. As an influential literary agent in Paris, he works on French intellectuals and journalists. The plot turns on a manuscript by an imprisoned dissident, smuggled out of the USSR, and a second, forged manuscript intended to discredit the first.^2,4

The real background

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesAccording to “Conflits” (2019), Volkoff wrote “Le Montage” with the help of Alexandre de Marenches, then head of French intelligence, to make the French aware of disinformation techniques; the author of the article calls him a kind of whistleblower.³

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesAccording to the same magazine, Volkoff was an intelligence officer during the Algerian War and later taught literature in the USA.⁶

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesVolkoff defined disinformation as the manipulation of public opinion for political ends by means of information processed through indirect methods; he distinguished it from propaganda, which openly serves a declared aim, and from “intoxication”, aimed at a narrow circle of decision-makers. Today’s official definitions are different – see the entry disinformation.^3,6

What is accurate

The novel shows the mechanism the glossary describes as the work of an agent of influence: someone who does not steal secrets but shapes opinions. The reviewer for “Kirkus Reviews” (1985) remarked that some passages on disinformation techniques read more like a textbook than fiction.²

What was changed or exaggerated

The same reviewer found the picture one-sided: the French intellectuals are vain fools, while Psar and his Soviet superiors are almost flawless tacticians. He judged its view of Soviet disinformation dubious and paranoid, and the book as a whole more effective as a polemic than as a convincing spy story.²

Psar, the manuscripts and the operation itself are invented. We have found no source linking the plot to a specific KGB case in France.⁴