In 1952, the famous American Life magazine published a series of articles that became a sensation. In them, the author, a former Soviet intelligence officer, and by that time a defector who secretly fled to the West - Igor Konstantinovich Berg - disclosed facts testifying to the crimes of the Stalinist regime, which he knew what was called from the inside, and to which he had a direct relationship. Who is this man and what made him leave his homeland?
Youth of the future intelligence officer
His real name is Leib Lazarevich Feldbin. He was born on August 21, 1895 in a Jewish family living in the city of Bobruisk, Minsk province. So he would have lived his life without a break in this small town, far from the bustle of the capital, but in 1916, at the height of the First World War, he received a summons and was forced to put on his soldier's overcoat. However, the frozen trenches of the advanced positions did not wait for the young Leib Feldbin, who served in the rear until the beginning of the February Revolution.
Weakly guided by the whirlpool of political movements that swept Russia after the fall of the autocracy, in February 1917 he joined the United Internationalists Party, which was one of the creatures of the then Social Democrats. But he did not stay in the ranks of this organization for long - being in the ranks of the Red Army on the fronts of the Civil War, Leib became a member of the RCP (b).
Lev Lazarevich - employee of the special department
Having learned from childhood the bitterness of poverty and national humiliation generated by the well-known law on the Pale of Settlement for the Jews, he wholeheartedly believed in those lofty ideals that the Bolsheviks proclaimed as the goal of their political activity. Leib was then only twenty-five years old, and with all his young ardor rushed to fight those who, in the opinion of his ideological idols, prevented the onset of universal happiness.
In 1920, he became an employee of the Special Department of the 12th Army and took part in the disclosure and liquidation of counter-revolutionary organizations in Ukraine. For the outstanding combat and organizational qualities shown at the same time, Leib was appointed the commander of the special forces detachment the next year. In the same period, he changes his name and surname, so that henceforth in all documents appears as Lev Lazarevich Nikolsky.
Stages of career growth and study in Moscow
In 1921, the party sent Lev Lazarevich to Arkhangelsk to lead the secret operational unit. Here, after a short time, he is appointed head of the intelligence and investigation department and authorized to filter those White Guard officers who were given the opportunity to leave Russia.
In the same year, Nikolsky, as a promising worker and member of the RCP (b), receives a referral to study in Moscow, where he spends the next four years as a student at the School of Law, established on the basis of Moscow University. He combines all this time in classrooms with practical work in law enforcement, and upon completion of his studies, he is credited with an employee of the economic department of the GPU, headed by his cousin Zinovy Katznelson.
Foreign Intelligence Service
The career of the intelligence agent Lev Lazarevich began in 1926, with the enrollment in the staff of the foreign department of the OGPU. The specifics of his future work made him continue his life under an assumed name. From now on in his documents stood: Orlov Alexander Mikhailovich. The former name and surname remained only in the secret folders of the personnel department.
Having passed the appropriate training and is fluent in several foreign languages, he performs various tasks in many countries of Europe and America. In particular, it was Orlov who directly worked with Kim Philby, a senior British intelligence officer recruited by the Soviet intelligence services. Thanks to Orlov, a whole network of agents working for the Soviet Union was created around him. This was the famous "Cambridge Group", which entered the world history of intelligence services.
Spanish gold
In 1936, a civil war erupted in Spain, and Orlov Alexander Mikhailovich was sent there to help the republican government as a specialist in internal security and counterintelligence. Here, with his participation, an operation was prepared and brilliantly carried out to transfer a significant part of the gold reserves of Spain to the Soviet Union, as a result of which 510 tons of precious metal were in Moscow vaults, accounting for almost 73% of all that the Spanish State Bank had. He also performed many other tasks that the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR gave him.
Difficult decision
In 1936, Stalin gave an impetus to the process that led to one of the darkest periods of Soviet history and known as the Great Terror. The country in those years was swept by a wave of mass repressions, the victims of which overwhelmingly became innocent people. They also touched on the political and military leadership. Many of the founders and veterans of the Cheka were removed from their posts, and later arrested and shot on clearly far-fetched charges. Among them were many with whom Orlov began his service.
Alexander Mikhailovich perfectly understood that sooner or later he would face the same fate. Numerous reviews of diplomats working abroad also reinforced confidence in this. They received orders to arrive on official business, and were arrested along with family members right at the ramp. In February 1938, Orlov finally decided to break with the state, the regime of which he considered criminal and posing a mortal danger to him and his family.
Forced flight
At that time, under very mysterious circumstances, the direct head of Orlov, the head of the foreign department of the NKVD Abram Slutsky, unexpectedly died, and S. M. Shpigelglas was appointed in his place. On February 17, Alexander Mikhailovich received an order to meet with him on board the Soviet ship Svir, which arrived in Antwerp. However, he had every reason to believe that, having climbed the ladder, he would be trapped.
He never showed up to meet with his new boss. Instead, taking his wife and daughter, and at the same time sixty thousand dollars from the service fund, Orlov Alexander Mikhailovich secretly left for France, and from there he moved to Canada to the United States. In the Soviet Union, he still had relatives. To protect them from possible reprisals associated with his escape, Orlov sent a letter to the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR. In it, he warned that if people close to him suffer, he will transmit information about Soviet intelligence officers who worked in different countries of the world to foreign services.
Authorities reaction
Orlov managed to secure this threat only with his relatives, who were not really touched to avoid the promised failures, but many intelligence leaders suffered from his escape. Among them was Yakov Serebryansky, who served as the head of a special task force and supervised the work of sixteen residents in several western states. He was arrested with his wife and sentenced to death by court decision. Due to unclear circumstances, the sentence was not carried out, and the couple married again, but it is hard to imagine what they had to endure.
Materials published by Orlov
Living in America under the name of Igor Konstantinovich Berg, Orlov published in the Life magazine a series of articles that were already mentioned above. In them, he described in detail those crimes of the communist regime, of which he was a witness and compelled accomplice during his service in the NKVD. A large place in this publication was allotted to the role of Stalin in the lawlessness in the USSR.
Later, these materials were included in a book published in New York in 1953 and translated into many languages. The information contained in it was used by many researchers even before its publication in Russia in 1991. In the early sixties, another book by Orlov, designed for a very specific circle of readers, went out of print - in it he shared the experience of guerrilla warfare and the organization of the counterintelligence service.
Belated invitation
While in America, Orlov had reason to fear the revenge of the Moscow authorities to a greater extent than other Soviet defectors, because he knew many of the secrets of their special services. Living for many years under an assumed name and carefully hiding his address, the former intelligence officer remained out of reach for the NKVD, and subsequently the KGB.
Only in the mid-sixties did the Soviet agent Mikhail Feaktistov establish his whereabouts. However, times have changed, and the information available to Orlov has lost its relevance, so nothing really threatened his life. Then Feaktistov visited the Orlov couple and conveyed the invitation of the Soviet government to return to their homeland. They were guaranteed freedom, and Alexander Ivanovich also the return of his military rank, along with all the awards he had.
The Orlovs refused. They were already under seventy, the old people did not want to start life anew in a country from which they had weaned for many years. Alexander Ivanovich only asked to convey to the current leaders of the country that, despite numerous interrogations, the FBI did not receive from him any information about the agent networks created with his participation. Orlov said that he simply could not betray those who unconditionally trusted him and served the same idea that he himself had once bowed to.
After his death on March 25, 1977, due to the absence of heirs, a federal judge ordered that all documents of the deceased, including manuscripts of memoirs, be sealed and archived. They should have been stored there until 1999, and only after that could they become public.