Aleksandr Mikhailovich Orlov Alexander Mikhailovich Orlov ( ) , born Lev Feldbin , 21 August 1895 – 25 March 1973 ) , was a General in the Soviet secret police and NKVD " Rezident " in the Second Spanish Republic . In 1938 , Orlov refused to return to the Soviet Union because he realized that he would be executed , and fled with his family to the U . S . . He is known mostly for secretly transporting the entire gold reserve of the Spanish Republic to the USSR and for his book , " The Secret History of Stalin ' s Crimes " . Early life . He was born Leiba Lazarevich Feldbin in the Byelorussian town of Babruysk on August 21 , 1895 to an Orthodox Jewish family . He attended the Lazarevsky Institute in Moscow , but left it after two semesters to enroll at Moscow University to study law . His study , however , was cut short when he was drafted into the Imperial Russian Army . When the Russian Civil War erupted in 1918 , Orlov joined the Red Army and became a GRU officer assigned to the region around Kiev , Ukraine . Orlov personally led and directed sabotage missions into territory controlled by the anti - communist White Movement . He later served with the OGPU Border Guards in Arkhangelsk . In 1921 he retired from the Red Army and returned to Moscow to resume his study of law at the Law School at Moscow University . Orlov worked for several years at the Bolshevik High Tribunal under the tutelage of Nikolai Krylenko . In May 1924 his cousin , Zinoviy Katznelson , who was chief of the OGPU Economic Department ( EKU ) , invited Lev Nikolsky ( his official name since 1920 ) to join the Soviet secret police as an officer of Financial Section 6 . Career as a Chekist . When his cousin was moved to supervise the Transcaucasian Border Troops of the OGPU , he offered to Nikolsky and his wife the opportunity to move to Tiflis ( now Tbilisi , Georgia ) as chief of the Border Guard unit there , which he accepted . There their daughter contracted a rheumatic fever infection and Orlov asked his friend and former colleague Artur Artuzov to give him an assignment abroad so that Orlov could have European doctors treat his daughter . Posted to Paris , Berlin . Therefore , in 1926 Nikolsky was transferred to the INO , the branch of the NKVD responsible for overseas operations , now headed by Artuzov , and sent to Paris under a legal cover of a Soviet Trade Delegation official . After one year in France , Nikolsky , who operated on a fraudulent Soviet passport in the name of Léon Nikolaeff , was transferred to a similar position to Berlin . He returned to Moscow in late 1930 . Posted to USA . Two years later he was sent to the United States to establish relations with his relatives there , and to obtain a genuine American passport that would allow free travel in Europe . " Leon L . Nikolaev " ( Nikolsky - Orlov ) arrived in the USA aboard the " SS Europe " on 22 September 1932 , sailing from Bremen . After being identified as a spy by U . S . Naval Intelligence , Orlov obtained a passport in the name of William Goldin and departed on 30 November 1932 on the " SS Bremen " back to Weimar Germany . Posted to Austria . In Moscow , Nikolsky again asked for a foreign assignment , as he wanted his sick daughter to be treated by Dr . Karl Noorden in Vienna . This was granted , and together with his wife and daughter , he arrived in Vienna in May 1933 ( as Nikolaev ) and settled in Hinterbrühl a few kilometres away from the capital . After three months , he went to Prague , changed his Soviet passport for the American one , and left for Geneva . Nikolsky ' s group , which operated against the French Deuxième Bureau , included Alexander Korotkov , a young Illegal Rezident , Korotkov ' s wife Maria , and a courier , Arnold Finkelberg . Their operation , codenamed EXPRESS , was unsuccessful and in May 1934 Nikolsky joined his family in Vienna . From here he was ordered to go to Copenhagen to serve as assistant to " rezidents " Theodore Maly ( Paris ) and Ignace Reif ( Copenhagen ) . Posted to England . In June 1935 , Nikolsky ( William Goldin ) himself became a " rezident " in London . His cover in London , as Goldin , was as a director of an American refrigerator company . He had nothing to do with the recruitment of Kim Philby or any other member of the Cambridge Five , and deserted his post in October 1935 , coming back to Moscow . Here he was dismissed from the Foreign Service and put into a lowly position of deputy chief of the Transport Department ( TO ) of the NKVD , the successor secret service organization of the OGPU . Work during the Spanish Civil War . In early September 1936 Orlov was appointed NKVD liaison to the Spanish Republican Ministry of Interior arriving in Madrid on September 16 . According to author Donald Rayfield , " Stalin , Yezhov , and Beria distrusted Soviet participants in the Spanish war . Military advisors like Vladimir Antonov - Ovseenko , journalists like Koltsov were open to infection by the heresies , especially Trotsky ' s , prevalent among the Republic ' s supporters . NKVD agents sent to Spain were therefore keener on abducting and murdering anti - Stalinists among Republican leaders and International Brigade commanders than on fighting Franco . The defeat of the Republic , in Stalin ' s eyes , was caused not by the NKVD ' s diversionary efforts , but by the treachery of the heretics . " It is said Orlov was sent to Spain after a young secretary , with whom he had been carrying on an affair , shot herself in front of Lubyanka because he refused to leave his wife . Orlov arrived in Madrid on 15 September 1936 . Orlov organized guerrilla warfare behind Nationalist lines as he had in Ukraine during the Civil War , but the work was later credited to his deputy Grigory Syroezhkin to avoid mention of the defected General . In October 1936 Orlov was placed in command of the operation which moved the Spanish treasury from Madrid to Moscow . The Republican government had agreed to use this hoard of bullion as an advance payment for Soviet military supplies . Orlov undertook the logistics of this transfer . It took four nights for truck convoys , driven by Soviet tankmen , to bring the 510 tons of gold from its hiding place in the mountains to the port of Cartagena . There , under threat of German bombing raids , it was loaded on four different Russian steamers bound for Odessa . The gold was conveyed to Moscow by special armored train . Once it was safely locked away Stalin threw a party and remarked , " The Spaniards will never see their gold again , just as cannot see one ' s own ears . " For his service , Orlov received the " Order of Lenin . " However , Orlov ' s main task in Spain remained arresting and executing Trotskyites , Anarchists , Roman Catholics supportive of Francisco Franco ' s forces , and other suspected foes of the Second Spanish Republic . Documents released from the NKVD archives detail a number of Orlov ' s crimes in Spain . He was responsible for orchestrating the arrest and summary execution of members of the Workers ' Party of Marxist Unification ( POUM ) . He also directed the kidnapping and execution of the POUM leader Andreu Nin . Defection . Meanwhile , the Great Purge continued as Joseph Stalin and his inner circle sought to exterminate all suspected enemies of the people . Orlov was alerted as close associates and friends were arrested , tortured , and shot one by one . In 1938 Orlov realised that he would soon be next . When he received orders from Moscow to report to a Soviet ship in Antwerp , Orlov was certain that he was about to be arrested . Instead of obeying Orlov fled with his wife and daughter to Canada . Following his refusal to return to the Soviet Union when " invited " in 1969 the KGB made efforts to discredit Orlov . He was accused of stealing $ 60 , 000 in operational funds from the embassy safe before fleeing Spain and of taking part in the assassination of Rudolf Klement , a former secretary of Leon Trotsky , in Paris on 13 July 1938 - the day he left Paris for Quebec . The accusations , like so many other " revelations " from KGB files during and after the Cold War regarding General Orlov and other defectors , were full of easily spotted errors . Before leaving Paris , Orlov left 2 letters for the Soviet Ambassador , one for Stalin and one for NKVD chief Yezhov . He told the dictator and the chief of the NKVD that he would reveal everything he knew about NKVD operations if any action was taken against him or his family . In a two - page attachment , Orlov listed the codenames of numerous illegals and moles operating in the West . Orlov also sent a letter to Trotsky alerting him to the presence of the NKVD agent Mark Zborowski ( codename TULIP ) in the entourage of his son Lev Sedov . Trotsky dismissed this letter as a provocation . Then Orlov traveled with his family to the United States and went underground . The NKVD , presumably on orders from Stalin , did not try to locate him until 1969 . " The Secret History " . After his defection in 1938 , he was afraid of being killed like other NKVD defectors such as Ignace Reiss . Therefore , he wrote a letter to Stalin promising to keep all secrets he knew if Stalin spared him and his family . Orlov kept his word and published his memories , " The Secret History of Stalin ' s Crimes , " only after the death of Stalin in March 1953 , and exactly fifteen years after his own flight . A textual comparison of the " Secret History " with Walter Krivitsky ' s " In Stalin ' s Secret Service " reveals that , for both books , the authors ' secret informant on the history of the Moscow Trials was Abram Slutsky , head of NKVD Foreign Intelligence . Many historians believe there is the ring of truth to Orlov ' s tales , though the reader should remember that some of the stories were told second - hand and that Orlov himself was deliberately dishonest about his own complicity in these affairs . After " The Secret History " . After the publication of " The Secret History " , Orlov was forced to come in from the cold . Both the U . S . Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation were embarrassed by the revelation that a high ranking NKVD officer ( Orlov was a Major of State Security , equal to an army colonel ) had been living underground in the United States for fifteen years without their knowledge . Orlov was interrogated by the FBI and twice appeared before Senate Sub - Committees , but he always downplayed his role in events and continued to conceal the names of Soviet agents in the West . In 1956 he wrote an article for Life Magazine entitled , " The Sensational Secret Behind the Damnation of Stalin " . This story held that NKVD agents had discovered papers in the Tsarist archives which proved Stalin had once been an Okhrana agent and , on the basis of this knowledge , the NKVD agents had planned a coup d ' état with the leaders of the Red Army . Stalin , Orlov continued , uncovered the plot and this was his motive behind the secret trial and execution of Soviet Marshal Tukhachevsky and the purge of the Red Army . The research of Simon Sebag Montefiore contradicts this theory , however . Orlov and his wife continued to live secretly and modestly in the United States . In 1963 , the CIA helped him publish another book , " The Handbook of Counter - Intelligence and Guerilla Warfare " , and helped him obtain a job as a researcher at the Law School of the University of Michigan . He moved to Cleveland , Ohio . His wife died there , and then he died on 25 March 1973 . Orlov never wavered in his contempt for Stalin . His last book , " The March of Time " , was published in the USA in 2004 by former FBI Special Agent Ed Gazur .