Alexander Mikhailovich Orlov (Russian: Александр Михайлович Орлов, born Leiba Leyzerovich Feldbin, later Lev Lazarevich Nikolsky, and in the US assuming the name of Igor Konstantinovich Berg; 21 August 1895 – 25 March 1973), was a colonel in the Soviet secret police and NKVD Rezident in the Second Spanish Republic.
When the Russian Civil War erupted in 1918, Orlov joined the Red Army and became a GRU officer assigned to the region around Kyiv, Ukraine.
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.
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.
Military advisors like Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, journalists like Mikhail Koltsov were open to infection by the heresies, especially Leon 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 Francisco Franco.
In October 1936, Orlov, according to his own disputed testimony, was placed in command of the operation which moved the Spanish gold reserves from Madrid to Moscow.
It took four nights for truck convoys, driven by Soviet tankmen, to bring the 510 tonnes of gold from its hiding place in the mountains to the port of Cartagena.
According to Boris Volodarsky's research, Orlov greatly exaggerated his role in this operation (e.g., by claiming he made it possible by negotiating the matter with the Spanish republican government), his mission being mostly logistical and a security one.
However, Orlov's main task in Spain remained arresting and executing Trotskyites, Anarchists, Roman Catholic supporters of Franco's Nationalists, and other suspected foes of the Spanish Republic.
[1]: 345 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.
As the FBI was searching in vain for him and his wife, "two unidentified Russian aliens", he was studying business administration at Dyke College, Cleveland, Ohio.
The College and the local FBI division were located in the same Standard Building on 1370 Ontario Street and St Clair Avenue, occupying the third and the ninth floors, respectively.
"[1] 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.
[15] Stalin, Orlov continued, uncovered the plot and this was his motive behind the secret trial and execution of Soviet Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and the purge of the Red Army.
[16] The Life article cites the Eremin letter as evidence that Stalin was a member of the Okhrana, but most historians today agree it is a forgery.
[citation needed] Orlov was shown to have produced a number of false claims to support his story and elevate his status in the eyes of his debriefing officials and the wider Western public.
In the words of researcher Boris Volodarsky:... most of what Orlov said, even under oath, or during his debriefing by the US intelligence officials, or in private discussions with his friend Gazur, has by now been established as outright invention.
The claim that Orlov, the most senior intelligence officer involved in British operations in the 1930s, "recruited" Philby is a characteristic example of this common phenomenon."
The other reason was that: "It suits the SVR ..., to seek to demonstrate the foolishness of Western intelligence...by claiming that they failed for over 30 years to notice that the leading recruiter of the Cambridge Five...was living under their noses..."[20]