The defector who first told the West how Stalin's secret service worked
In December 1936 Slutsky told him of the coming understanding between Moscow and Berlin: 'This time it is serious. There are perhaps only three or four months left before an agreement with Hitler...' Krivitsky's recollections are among Naumov's main sources for the hidden politics of 1936 and 1937.
Born into a Jewish family in Galicia as Samuel Ginsberg, he was a Soviet military-intelligence officer who ran illegal networks across Western Europe from The Hague in the 1930s. In December 1936 the foreign-intelligence chief Slutsky told him of the back-channel contacts between Moscow and Berlin, and in the summer of 1937 he talked through the real nature of the Tukhachevsky affair with Shpigelglas in Paris; when his fellow officer Ignace Reiss was assassinated that autumn, he defected. He published In Stalin's Secret Service in 1939 and testified before the US Congress, and in February 1941 was found shot dead in a Washington hotel, a death ruled a suicide and disputed ever since.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1919–1921Began intelligence work for the Red Army
- 1921–1935Officer of the military-intelligence Fourth Directorate on illegal work in Europe
- 1935–1937Illegal resident at The Hague
- 1937Defected in Paris after Reiss's assassination
- 1939Published his memoir and testified before Congress
- 1941Died in Washington
Related historical events
MI5 debriefing and intelligence provided
In 1939 Krivitsky published articles on Soviet intelligence activity in the United States with Isaac Don Levine and brought out his memoir, In Stalin’s Secret Service. British intelligence approached him on the strength of this public testimony and information passed on in the United States. In January 1940, MI5 officer Jane Archer debriefed him in London. Krivitsky initially denied knowledge of Soviet activity in Britain and any involvement of his own, but later provided information about John Herbert King, a spy in the Foreign Office communications department, and King’s predecessor, Ernest Oldham. British records identified the dead predecessor as Oldham, who had died in 1933. Krivitsky also explained that Henri Pieck, operating from The Hague, had recruited King; he recognized Pieck in a photograph and said he had read diplomatic telegrams obtained through King. He did not disclose their contents to Archer.
The information was used as British authorities investigated King and prosecuted him for espionage. A 2012 study of MI5 records concludes that Krivitsky supplied useful intelligence while suggesting that he may have withheld or understated details about people and operations. The extent of what he knew and why he disclosed information selectively remains a question of interpretation.