page_title: Walter Krivitsky
section_title: Defection
hierarchical_section_title: Walter Krivitsky / Defection
caption_attribution_description: Ignace Reiss, a spy.
context_page_description: Walter Germanovich Krivitsky was a Soviet intelligence officer who revealed plans of signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact before he defected, weeks before the outbreak of World War II.
context_section_description: At the time, the General Staff of the Red Army was undergoing the Great Purge in Moscow, which Krivitsky and close friend, Ignace Reiss, both abroad, found deeply disturbing. Reiss wanted to defect, but Krivitsky repeatedly held back.
  Finally, Reiss defected, as he announced in a defiant letter to Moscow. His assassination, in Switzerland, in September 1937 prompted Krivitsky to defect the following month.
  In Paris, Krivitsky began to write articles and made contact with Lev Sedov, Trotsky's son, and the Trotskyists. There, he also met undercover Soviet spy Mark Zborowski, known as "Etienne," whom Sedov had sent to protect him. Sedov died mysteriously in February 1938, but Krivitsky eluded attempts to kill or kidnap him in France, including flight to Hyères.
  As a result of Krivitsky's debriefing, the British were able to arrest John King, a cypher clerk in the Foreign Office. He also gave a vague description of two other Soviet spies, Donald Maclean and John Cairncross but without enough detail to enable their arrest. Soviet intelligence operation in the United Kingdom was thrown into disarray for a time.
  At the end of 1938, anticipating the Nazi conquest of Europe, Krivitsky sailed from France to the United States.
caption: The assassination of childhood friend and comrade, Ignace Reiss, in September 1937 provoked Krivitsky's immediate defection
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