Aleksandr Mikhailovich Orlov - The Secret History

The Secret History

After his defection in 1938, he was afraid of being killed like other NKVD defectors, Walter Krivitsky and 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.