Institute of Red Professors
The young Avtorkhanov enthusiastically joined the Communist Party in 1927 and served as a high-ranking party functionary. He graduated from the elite Moscow Institute of Red Professors with a major in Russian history in 1937, during which time he wrote six books on the history of the Caucasus. He was arrested and falsely accused in 1937 during Great Purge, but released in 1942. The NKVD assigned him to infiltrate the anti-Soviet Chechen movement in which his school friend Khasan Israilov was a leader, but Avtorkhanov crossed the front line to Germans, was arrested by Gestapo, released and lived until the end of the war in Berlin. During the war, he published in many newspapers of Nazi Germany. After the war, Avtorkhanov became a co-founder of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in 1951.