RUSSIA: Chris Stephen, in Moscow, on an espionage anniversary that is failing to attract public attention
Today marks the 50th anniversary of arguably the most dramatic moment in the annals of Cold War espionage, but nobody will be celebrating.
On a cold and frosty morning on February 11th, 1956, journalists in Moscow were summoned to a cramped hotel room overlooking Red Square and confronted with two defectors from the heart of British intelligence, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean.
Both men, appearing in pin-striped suits, denied spying for the Soviets, handing the reporters a 1,000-word statement declaring that they had defected to "work for the aim of better understanding between the Soviet Union and the West".
But the truth was soon out, with revelations that Burgess and Maclean had been sending Moscow secrets, including details of America's atomic bomb, for the best part of a decade.
The news cast a shadow over British intelligence that it never emerged from.
Unsurprisingly, the British want to forget the whole thing. A spokesman in the Moscow embassy confirmed that there were no plans to commemorate the event, which took place in the National Hotel, still one of Moscow's top destinations.
More surprising is Russia's silence over what was perhaps its greatest intelligence triumph.
After all, the KGB had successfully penetrated the very heart of British intelligence and, thanks to London's ties to Washington, America's secret services as well.
In 1963 rumours of a Third Man were confirmed when Harold Philby, nicknamed Kim, leader of what became known as the Cambridge Ring, defected. And in 1979 the Fourth Man was revealed as Anthony Blunt.
Extra embarrassment was heaped on London's shoulders with this one, when it emerged that the queen had known of Blunt's treachery since 1964, yet had not stripped him of his knighthood.
Nor had she even sacked him from his Buckingham Palace job as Keeper of the Queen's Pictures.
The fascination with the Cambridge Ring, well-bred young men, two them homosexual, who had converted to communism at university, inspired a whole genre of play and film.
Several writers, such as Graham Greene and John Le Carré, made a career out of portraying a secret service whose incompetence was matched only by saturation with double agents.
Meanwhile, the British are coping with the aftershocks of perhaps the most embarrassing incident since the Burgess-Maclean defections - the Hollow Rock affair.
Since Russian television last month showed footage of what it said were four British diplomats, all named, trying to communicate with a rock in a Moscow park containing a digital transmission device, spying and rumours of spying are on everyone's lips on the cocktail circuit.
President Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB agent, went public with his amusement at the Hollow Rock episode, saying the British, in allowing themselves to be filmed, had so badly bungled that he would not be expelling them in case London sent more professional operators in their place.
All of which make's Moscow's coyness over the Burgess-Maclean anniversary an oddity. The FSB has been silent on the issue, and the National Hotel will not mark the event.
One reason is that, for the average Russian, it is no big deal. The West may remain obsessed by stories of spies and secrets, but Russians prefer not to talk about it.
"We don't like to talk about it. It's an old habit that we still keep," said one acquaintance, the daughter of a KGB officer who, unsurprisingly, won't give me her name.
A more straightforward reason is that Moscow may crow about the unmasking of other people's spies, but does not like to parade its own in public.
This is a shame, because there is much still to know about the Burgess-Maclean affair, not least the reason why.
Becoming a communist in the 1930s is easy to understand. More puzzling is why, when Comrade Stalin's terror, gulags and mass executions crushed the revolution's ideals, all four men stuck to their principles and to their alliance with the KGB.
That secret remains as elusive now as on that cold February day 50 years ago when one of the journalists asked that same question: why?
"I have given out too many statements to the press in my time not to know what I have just given you fellows," replied Burgess. "We just don't want to add to our statement."