Russian spy in Italy: from Mata Hari to the Soviet school, how seduction works in espionage

LONDON – In English it is called “honey trap”: literally, honey trap, where the sweet amber liquid is a metaphor for sexual seduction, used to get intimate with an enemy source and obtain confidential information. In Moscow, in the first years after the Bolshevik revolution, the women specialized in these operations were called “mozhno”, which in Russian means “it is possible”, in the sense of “it is allowed to do it”: of course, approaching a foreign citizen and taking him to read to learn its secrets.