The newspaper wasn't forbidden. It was still a Soviet published newspaper. (for real)
As a spy it was important for Illya to improve his foreign language skills so it made sense for me to have him read the only English language paper in Russian. Books in English would probably have been more difficult to find, plus on his meager salary he couldn't spend money on such things.
In my early stories I have the Directorate 'give' Illya away to UNCLE as they thought he would amount to nothing and probably would be killed in his first year. So the Colonel in this story was merely parroting (at first) what the GRU thought of young Kuryakin. He had no political connections and his GRU sponsor, Viktor Karkoff was not well liked among his peers....so that was also a strike against IK.
The Colonel's instincts about Illya were quite the opposite though.
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Date: 2016-04-09 04:43 pm (UTC)As a spy it was important for Illya to improve his foreign language skills so it made sense for me to have him read the only English language paper in Russian. Books in English would probably have been more difficult to find, plus on his meager salary he couldn't spend money on such things.
In my early stories I have the Directorate 'give' Illya away to UNCLE as they thought he would amount to nothing and probably would be killed in his first year. So the Colonel in this story was merely parroting (at first) what the GRU thought of young Kuryakin. He had no political connections and his GRU sponsor, Viktor Karkoff was not well liked among his peers....so that was also a strike against IK.
The Colonel's instincts about Illya were quite the opposite though.
Thanks for reading and commenting.