Stalin's Agent: The Life and Death of Alexander Orlov

832 Pages·2015·6.56 MB·English

by  Boris Volodarsky

STALIN’S AGENT
Books by the Same Author
Nikolai Khokhlov (‘Whistler’): Self-Esteem with a Halo (2005)
The KGB’s Poison Factory: From Lenin to Litvinenko (2009, 2010)
El caso Orlov: Los servicios secretos sovie´ticos en la guerra civil espan˜ola,
1936–1939 (2013)
STALIN’S AGENT
the life and death of
alexander orlov
BORIS VOLODARSKY
1
3
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For Valentina

Acknowledgements
Iwish firstofall tothankmywife, Valentina. Throughthethirty-six years
of our marriage she has unfailingly supported everything I have done.
Throughout this exciting and demanding project, which has been a long
timeinthemaking,shehelpedtoresearcharchives,generateideas,navigate
through the murky world of Russian espionage and deception—and
enabled us to finance it. Without her this book would not and could not
have been written.
I could not have carried out the work without the friendly and profes-
sional advice of Dr Tennent H. (‘Pete’) Bagley, former tough intelligence
operator, knowledgeable expert on Soviet intelligence history, and author
ofseveralimportantbooksontheKGB.DrWarrenW.‘Bud’Williams,an
outstanding former intelligence officer, decorated US Ranger, and an aca-
demic historian with special interest in Austria, gave important advice.
Itwasdifficulttogainaccesstosomanyarchivalsourcesindifferentparts
oftheworld,soIamparticularlygratefultoJorgeSaenzCarbonell,Ambas-
sador and Research Director for Diplomatic History in Costa Rica, who
provided important documents never before studied by historians. I was
greatlyhelpedbyGailMalmgreen,AssociateHeadofArchivalCollections,
TamimentLibrary,RobertF.WagnerLaborArchives,NewYorkUniver-
sity, New York; Anatol Shmelev, Project Archivist, RFE/RL Collection,
HooverInstitution,StanfordUniversity,California;MartinF.Russellofthe
NationalArchivesinCollegePark(NARA),Maryland;RussellA.Nichols,
chief of the Freedom of Information Privacy Office of the US Army
Intelligence and Security Command, Fort George G. Meade, Maryland;
Celia Ashworth of The National Archives, Kew, Richmond; Anthony
Tedeschi of the Lille Library, Bloomington, Indiana; Hans Landauer,
founder and supervisor of the Document Archives of the Austrian Resist-
ance(DO¨W),Vienna;TeunvanLieroftheInternationalInstituteofSocial
HistoryinAmsterdam;andFra’EliedeComminges,atthetimeofwriting
Curator of the Magistral Archives and Libraries of the Order of Malta,
viii acknowledgements
Rome.Ialsobenefitedfromthemostwelcomeandfriendlyassistancefrom
archivists of the City of Vienna and others in the USA, France, Belgium,
Germany, Russia, and Britain.
Among my academic colleagues, the outstanding Spanish scholar and
diplomatProfessorA´ngelVin˜asgavemeinvaluableadviceandevenediting
help, although he was himself busy at the time writing five important
volumes on the history of the Spanish Civil War. I am grateful and proud
to call him my friend.
I owe particular thanks to another good friend, the renowned Spanish
scholar Professor Paul Preston of the London School of Economics and
PoliticalScience.Paulnotonlygavememanyhoursofhisvaluabletimebut
alsoagreedtosupervisemydoctorateonarelatedsubject.ProfessorPreston
read all chapters dealing with the Spanish Civil War with hawk-eyed
precision and saved me from many errors. Other academics contributed
knowledge and personal experience, among them Christopher Andrew,
Hugh Thomas (Lord Thomas), Helen Graham, and Richard Baxell in
Britain, Professors Stanley S. Payne, Robert H. Whealy, and George
R.EsenweinintheUnitedStates,PeterHuberandRalphHuginSwitzer-
land, Jesu´s F. Salgado Velo and Antonio M. D´ıaz Ferna´ndez in Spain,
Reiner Tosstorff in Germany, and Nikita Petrov inRussia.
I must also thank Maria Dolors Genove´s, director and author of the
Catalonian Television documentary entitled Especial A. Nin: Operacio´ Ni-
kolai,agreatfilmthatisunfortunatelylittleknowntotheEnglish-speaking
public.Igotvaluableinsightsfromthematerialshegavemefromherteam’s
filmingofOlegTsarevinhisKGBofficeinMoscow.Greatthanks,too,to
JohnHiltonoftheAnnArborObserverinMichigan,forhishelp,advice,and
the rare documents that he kindly sent me.
Perhaps the most valuable documentary support came from declassified
KGB, CIA, FBI, and French DST files kindly provided by Professor
Hayden B. Peake, a US expert in intelligence documentation.
GaryKern,theauthorofseveralimportantworksonthehistoryofSoviet
intelligence, found time to advise me and to discuss the Krivitsky case,
which he had written about with impressive research based on a large
collection of documentary evidence.
During my research of this book I have studied a great number of
secondary sources in many languages, but no books were more valuable to
me than those written by the eminent intelligence historian Christopher
Andrew. Professor Andrew also demonstrates his great knowledge and
acknowledgements ix
sophisticationinhisexcellentIntelligenceSeminaratCorpusChristiCollege,
which brings togethera remarkablegroup ofpostgraduates from aroundthe
world,andwhereIwasprivilegedtolecture.
I would like to thank Mark Seaman, former official historian at the
Imperial War Museum in London and expert on military intelligence, for
reviewing my manuscript in its early stages. I am also grateful to Alex
Goldfarb, an author and a former Soviet dissident, for his efforts to make
this book appear earlier. My special thanks to Paolo Guzzanti, an Italian
politician, journalist, and author, for his great help and support.
ItisimpossiblenottomentionthestaffoftheCan˜adaBlanchCentrefor
ContemporarySpanishStudiesattheLSE,allofwhomweremosthelpful.
Finally, I must thank Luciana O’Flaherty of Oxford University Press for
her painstaking, insightful, and sympathetic reading of all the chapters.
So great was the contribution of these many fine scholars, intelligence
professionals, archivists, and librarians that ‘my’ book might also be con-
sidered a collective work. I am deeply grateful. At the same time, I remain
solely responsible for any errors herein.
Boris Volodarsky,
London
May 2014