Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov

Initially a devoted Communist Party functionary who experienced imprisonment during the Great Terror, Avtorkhanov defected to Nazi-Germany during the Second World War (not long before the Soviets deported the Chechens).

After the war, he stayed in West Germany and eventually aligned himself with the anti-Communist Western Bloc, working as a professor at the U.S. Army Russian Area School and becoming a co-founder of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

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.

Pyotr Grigorenko made and distributed copies of the book in the Soviet Union by photographing and typewriting.

[6]: 596 In his books, Avtorkhanov emphasized the leading role of Soviet security services in keeping the regime alive.

[7]One of his books named "Murder of Chechen-Ingush nation" (in Russian: "Убийство чечено-ингушского народа") is still very popular among Chechens and Ingush today.

A few months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Avtorkhanov was granted honorary citizenship by the Chechen-Ingush ASSR.

Typewritten text and microfilm of Avtorkhanov's books (center) smuggled into the Soviet Union for underground publishing