Vladimir Pravdin: Six Aliases and a Bullet in Switzerland
The name Roland Jacques Claude Abbiate was a mask for an NKVD killer whose movements from Mexico to New York stayed in British files for decades
By Desmond Okafor ·
NKVD
Boris Bykov and the 1937 Mapping of the NKVD
Kept in a personal file in London, the record of a Soviet spymaster in the United States tracks a man who likely vanished during the Great Purge
By Constance Bell ·
Joseph Volodarsky and the Forged Identities of Soviet Illegals
A Polish-Russian agent spent a decade infiltrating the UK and USA before a 1940 Canadian internment ended his career as a provider of fake passports for the NKVD.
By Constance Bell ·
Margherita Standen and the 1939 Soviet Export to America
A German national operating under a Soviet cover in London vanished into the United States just as the war began, her movements tracked by the Security Service in files that remain partially obscured.
By Constance Bell ·
Simon Peter Alexandrov and the 1946 Atomic Bluff at Bikini
Kept secret for decades, a 1946 report exposes the psychological terror of Polish observers and the calculated lies of a Soviet agent attempting to rattle the American atomic monopoly.
By Eleanor Voss ·
Brian Goold-Verschoyle and the 1937 Kidnapping in Valencia
Kidnapped by the secret police of the state he served and reported dead in a bombing, an Irish courier's path from a London cypher desk to a Soviet gulag stayed hidden for decades.
By Harlan Pryce ·
Philip Rosenbliett Fled the US to Serve Soviet Intelligence in 1936
A dentist vanished from the United States in 1936 to join the Soviet apparatus, leaving British intelligence to track his movements across London and the West.
By Constance Bell ·
Stalin's SMERSH Hunted Red Army Spies to Purge the Eastern Front
Kept in British archives as a translation of a captured German file, these 1943 details track the NKVD's transition into a force dedicated to the death of spies.
By Vera Kessler ·