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`This is a fascinating work of anguished confession, written by a repentant participant in many of the crimes he recounts, a party to the most hidden secrets of Stalin's heyday…’ – Times Literary Supplement Krivitsky’s first-hand account as the top Soviet espionage officer in western Europe and his ultimate defection is a fundamental document of the crisis preceding the Second World War. First appearing as a series of articles in The Saturday Evening Post in the spring and summer of 1939, it revealed the horrors of Stalin’s Great Terror to a disbelieving world as the dictator purged the ranks of the Soviet hierarchy. Recent studies, based on documents previously buried in Soviet archives, have unveiled only part of the process that led up to the Terror and the purges. New interpretations have emerged largely confirming what Krivitsky had revealed for the first time in 1939. Krivitsky excelled at foreign military espionage, running a network of agents in almost every country on the continent. He had the advantage of knowing western Europe particularly well. His eyewitness account of the beginnings of Stalin’s great purge, which he saw from the inside of the Soviet military’s intelligence service, dramatically conveys the immediacy of the terror engulfing millions of Soviet citizens. Krivitsky’s story of his experiences and early description of the grim reality of Stalin’s methods is a classic of history and espionage, and is an ominous reminder about the inner workings of ruthless tyranny.

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9781929631384

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Before his defection Walter Krivitsky was the chief of all Soviet military intelligence of Western Europe, thus making him the most knowledgeable person when it came to Soviet espionage.

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