This is the history of an unprecedented deception operation - the biggest KGB deception of all time. It has never been told in full until now. There are almost certainly people who would like it never to be told.
It is the story of General Alexander Orlov. Stalin's most loyal and trusted henchman during the Spanish Civil War, Orlov was also the Soviet handler controlling Kim Philby, the British spy, defector, and member of the notorious 'Cambridge Five'. Escaping Stalin's purges, Orlov fled to America in the late 1930s and lived underground. He only dared reveal his identity to the world after Stalin's death, in his 1953 best-seller The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes, after which he became perhaps the best known of all Soviet defectors, much written about, highly praised, and commemorated by the US Congress on his death in 1973.
But there is a twist in the Orlov story beyond the dreams of even the most ingenious spy novelist: 'General Alexander Orlov' never actually existed. The man known as 'Orlov' was in fact born Leiba Feldbin. And while he was a loyal servant of Stalin and the controller of Philby, he was never a General in the KGB, never truly defected to the West after his 'flight' from the USSR, and remained a loyal Soviet agent until his death. The 'Orlov' story as it has been accepted until now was largely the invention of the KGB - and one perpetuated long after the end of the Cold War.
In this meticulous new biography, Boris Volodarsky, himself a former Soviet intelligence officer, now tells the true story behind 'Orlov' for the first time. An intriguing tale of Russian espionage and deception, stretching from the time of Lenin to the Putin era, it is a story that many people in the world's intelligence agencies would almost definitely prefer you not to know about.
Author(s): Boris Volodarsky
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Year: 2014
Language: English
Pages: 832
Cover
Stalin's Agent: The Life and Death of Alexander Orlov
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Plates
Abbreviations and Acronyms
Chronology: The Evolution of the KGB, 1917–2012
Foreword by Tennent H. Bagley
Foreword by Paul Preston
Introduction
PART I: Feldbin, aka Nikolsky, aka Nikolaev, aka Goldin, aka Orlov
1: Bobruisk and Moscow
2: Paris: August 1926–December 1927
3: Berlin: January 1928–April 1931
Interlude 1: First American Adventure: September–November 1932
4: Vienna: April–July 1933
5: Geneva and Paris: Operation EXPRESS, July 1933–May 1934
6: Enterprise ‘O’
7: Vienna, Copenhagen, and London: 19 June–25 July 1934
Interlude 2: London: September–December 1934
8: London: January–March 1935
9: Copenhagen: Early 1935
10: Comrade Resident: June–September 1935
11: Home, Sweet Home: October 1935–September 1936
PART II: In Spain
12: The Backdrop: Spilling the Spanish Beans
13: Moscow, Madrid, and Valencia: August 1936–January 1937
14: The Internationals
15: JUZIK will be called ARTUR
16: NKVD and their ‘Neighbours’, 1937
17: The Secret History of Orlov’s Crimes: January 1937–July 1938
18: The POUM Affair: Operation NIKOLAI
19: Murder in Lausanne
20: 1938 and Beyond
PART III: The Orlov Legacy
Interlude 3: The Letter
21: From Trotsky to Tito
22: True Lies
23: The Affair called ‘Agent Mark’
24: MI5: Secrets of Personal File 605.075
25: KGB in the Law Quad
26: In and Out of the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire
27: Comrade Walter
28: Conclusion: Behind Closed Curtains
APPENDIX I: Dr Arnold Deutsch
APPENDIX II: Soviet Agents, Suspected Agents, Collaborators, and Sympathizers
APPENDIX III
Archives
Russia
Austria
Belarus
Costa Rica
France
Germany
Great Britain
Hungary
Italy
The Netherlands
Spain
Switzerland
USA
Endnotes
Chronology
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Interlude 1
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Interlude 2
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Interlude 3
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Appendix
Bibliography
Private Document Collections
Unpublished Typescripts
Author’s Interviews
Documentaries and Broadcasts
Published Documents
Secondary Sources: Books and Articles
Index
