Walter G. Krivitsky
MI5 DEBRIEFING
and Other Documents on Soviet Intelligence

edited, with translations, by Gary Kern

ISBN 1-879378-50-7 (paper)

229 pages, $15.00

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SEVEN DOCUMENTS generated by the master spy Walter G. Krivitsky. The first five, translated from Russian, record his 1937 defection, describe Stalin's police state and exemplify methods of intelligence analysis. The next two, originally in English, explain the instruments of the Soviet government and detail the methods of its intelligence agencies, both military and civil. Taken together, the seven documents provide a succinct exposition of the totalitarian system of control, one that may have application to intelligence structures in existence today. The last and longest document, Krivitsky's debriefing by British intelligence in January 1940, declassified only in June 2002, served as an intelligence primer for generations of MI5 trainees.

THE COLLECTION is edited, annotated and translated from Russian by Gary Kern, translator of This I Cannot Forget: The Memoirs of Nikolai Bukharin's Widow by Anna Larina (Norton, 1998) and author of the highly acclaimed A Death in Washington: Walter G. Krivitsky and the Stalin Terror (Enigma Books, 2003.

WALTER G. KRIVITSKY (1899-1941) was one of the first Soviet defectors to reveal the inner workings of the KGB and GRU, and also one of Stalin's most celebrated victims. After telling his friends never to believe any newspaper report of his suicide, he was found dead in a Washington DC hotel near the Capitol with three suicide notes by his bed.

REVIEWS

...highly readable... a real-life detective story. Krivitsky arose out of the first generation of Soviet spies. Mr. Kern, one of the leading experts on Stalin's Great Terror, writes, "driven by ideological fervor, united by mututal purpose and... unchastened by bloodthirsty purges.

~Arnold Beichman, The Washington Times, Books, February 13, 2005

For anyone who has a taste for nonfiction reading about spycraft and who knows who Soviet spy-defector Walter Krivitysky was, operating during the height of Soviet spying pre-World War II, would naturally prefer to see orignal-source documents about him. This is what this excellent collection of secret documents does. They are organized by the leading authority on matters concerning this intriguing character, Krivitsky: Author Gary Kern. Mr. Kern has translated these materials from Russian into English for the first time, thus making the comppilation unique and indispensable to serious readers.

~Albert L. Weeks, Amazon.com book review

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