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 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,ox26dp, UnitedKingdom OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwide.Oxfordisaregisteredtrademarkof OxfordUniversityPressintheUKandincertainothercountries #BorisVolodarsky2015 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted FirstEditionpublishedin2015 Impression:1 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,storedin aretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,withoutthe priorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress,orasexpresslypermitted bylaw,bylicenceorundertermsagreedwiththeappropriatereprographics rightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproductionoutsidethescopeofthe aboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment,OxfordUniversityPress,atthe addressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisworkinanyotherform andyoumustimposethissameconditiononanyacquirer PublishedintheUnitedStatesofAmericabyOxfordUniversityPress 198MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY10016,UnitedStatesofAmerica BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2014934427 ISBN 978–0–19–965658–5 PrintedinGreatBritainby ClaysLtd,StIvesplc LinkstothirdpartywebsitesareprovidedbyOxfordingoodfaithand forinformationonly.Oxforddisclaimsanyresponsibilityforthematerials containedinanythirdpartywebsitereferencedinthiswork. 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