Post fall of USSR, what happened to Soviet spies in the US? US informants moved to the USSR?

by profeDB

SPOILERS

Inspired by The Americans. It seems American Martha has been found out and will be sent to Russia, although I don't believe she will live. After the fall of the USSR, what happened to US informants sent to Russia? And conversely, Soviet spies in the USA? Did they continue their lives as per normal, or return to their home countries?

ImOP_need_nerf

This has been asked before and turned out to be very hard to answer. There's simply no real good way of knowing. Some spies surely went inactive and slipped into normalcy within the US. Others may have returned back to Russia over the years. The whole point of spying is to keep it a secret - as such there's no reliable way to say what they did or didn't do. You can find information about those who were exposed, and consequently captured or exchanged but that won't answer the question of what happened to spies who managed to keep off the radar.

[deleted]

How many informants did the US even send to Russia?

createanewfolder

You might want to read up on Andrew Hansen, who was one of the most prolific spies that spied for the Soviet Union and then Russia.

After the Soviet Union broke up, he cut off contact for a while, but made contact again in 1992.

Most spies would have behaved differently, depending on their motivation for spying in the first place.