Kirjahaku

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.

The Black Book of Espionage: Secret Tradecraft of Russian Female Agents – A Tale of “Red Swallows” (‘Lastochki’, in the KGB parlance), is a groundbreaking exploration of the covert operations and cunning strategies employed by some of Russia’s most enigmatic female spies from the ancient times to the first decades of the twenty-first century. This authoritative work is the first of its kind to delve deep into the lives and careers of the Russian women who spied for their country, unveiling their roles in shaping espionage history. Drawing from meticulously researched historical documents, multiple secondary sources in several languages and the author’s own professional experience, this book chronicles not only daring missions and extraordinary personalities like Countess Dorothea Lieven but also the unique tradecraft techniques that set these female spies apart in a male-dominated field. Readers will uncover extraordinary stories of women who defied societal norms, from Roxelana - the most seductive, powerful, egoistical, intriguing, manipulative and enigmatic woman of the early 16th century to modern-day intelligence operators like Anna Chapman, Nomma Zarubina and Olga Kolobova (‘Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera’). The Black Book of Espionage sheds new light on a popular yet often misunderstood and misinterpreted subject, revealing the psychological and tactical nuances of female spies who have on occasion shaped the geopolitical landscapes of their times. With its blend of thrilling narratives and insightful analysis, this book is a must-read for history enthusiasts, intelligence scholars and spy fans, and for anyone intrigued by the power dynamics of gender in espionage. Prepare to be captivated by the secrets that have remained hidden for too long, and discover ‘invisible agents’ (female spies) behind the curtain of international intrigue. The book is well-illustrated using rare photos from the author’s archive.

In his famous Moonlight and Vodka, Chris de Burgh got it right: Espionage is a serious business. And like every serious business, it must be taken seriously. Less than two decades after the untimely death of Sasha Litvinenko, poisoned at the heart of London's Mayfair by Russian secret agents by the previously unknown radioactive substance containing a fatal dose of Polonium-210, it is hardly remembered by anyone in the West. No wonder, we live in an information-rich world when the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. Such an obvious thing was suddenly discovered by a simple old man from Milwaukee, and he's got a point there. This book is about the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, whose legal case seems to many people like open-and-shut. Even to his widow Marina and their son. To MI6, MI5 and the Special Operations branch of the London's Metropolitan Police who presented it to the public as thoroughly investigated and closed. To judge Sir Robert Owen appointed to hold the inquest into the death of a Russian Spy as the BBC and other media has put it - a terrible mistake. To journalists and writers who had been following this case for as long as a decade, not to mention the prime suspect living a good life in Moscow. But not for me. For me this case remains open.

This book is new in every aspect and not only because neither the official history nor an unofficial history of the KGB, and its many predecessors and successors, exists in any language. In this volume, the author deals with the origins of the KGB from the Tsarist Okhrana (the first Russians secret political police) to the OGPU, Joint State Political Directorate, one of the KGB predecessors between 1923 and 1934\. Based on documents from the Russian archives, the author clearly demonstrates that the Cheka and GPU/OPGU were initially created to defend the revolution and not for espionage. The Okhrana operated in both the Russian Empire and abroad against the revolutionaries and most of its operations, presented in this book, are little known. The same is the case with regards to the period after the Cheka was established in December 1917 until ten years later when Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party and exiled, and Stalin rose to power. For the long period after the Revolution and up to the Second World War (and, indeed, beyond until the death of Stalin) the Cheka's main weapon was terror to create a general climate of fear in a population. In the book, the work of the Cheka and its successors against the enemies of the revolution is paralleled with British and American operations against the Soviets inside and outside of Russia. For the first time the creation of the Communist International (Comintern) is shown as an alternative Soviet espionage organization for wide-scale foreign propaganda and subversion operations based on the new revelations from the Soviet archives Here, the early Soviet intelligence operations in several countries are presented and analysed for the first time, as are raids on the Soviet missions abroad. The Bolshevik smuggling of the Russian imperial treasures is shown based on the latest available archival sources with misinterpretations and sometimes false interpretations in existing literature revised. After the Bolshevik revolution, Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the first chief of SIS, undertook to set up an entirely new Secret Service organization in Russia'. During those first ten years, events would develop as a non-stop struggle between British intelligence, within Russia and abroad, and the Cheka, later GPU/OGPU. Before several show spy trials' in 1927, British intelligence networks successfully operated in Russia later moving to the Baltic capitals, Finland and Sweden while young Soviet intelligence officers moved to London, Paris, Berlin and Constantinople. Many of those operations, from both sides, are presented in the book for the first time in this ground-breaking study of the dark world of the KGB.