On February 24, Stalin forbade Soviet volunteers to be sent to fight in Spain, but he did not recall Order of Lenin awardee Alexander Orlov of the NKVD (secret police). Orlov and the NKVD orchestrated May Days, the war that broke out between May 3–8 in Barcelona between the Popular Front and the Trotskyist Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). The battle left some 1,000 fighters dead and 1,500 injured, though estimates vary. With the annihilation of the POUM, Stalin deprived the fugitive Leon Trotsky of a possible Spanish haven. Orlov used the same methods of terror, duplicity and deception that were employed in the Great Purge (1936–38).