Aleksandr Mikhailovich Orlov

Alexander Mikhailovich Orlov (Russian: Александр Михайлович Орлов), (born Lev Feldbin, 21 August 1895 – 25 March 1973), was a General in the Soviet secret police and NKVD Rezident in the Second Spanish Republic. In 1938, Orlov refused to return to the Soviet Union because he realized that he would be executed, and instead fled with his family to the United States. He is known mostly for secretly transporting the entire gold reserve of the Spanish Republic to the USSR and for his book, The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes.

He was born Lev Lazarevich Feldbin in the Belarusian town of Babruysk on August 21, 1895 to an Orthodox Jewish family. He attended the Lazarevsky Institute in Moscow but left it after two semesters to enroll at Moscow University to study law. His study, however, was cut short when he was drafted into the Imperial Russian Army.

When the Russian Civil War erupted in 1918, Orlov joined the Red Army and became a GRU officer assigned to the region around Kiev, Ukraine. Orlov personally led and directed sabotage missions into territory controlled by the anti-communist White Movement. He later served with the OGPU Border Guards in Arkhangelsk.

In 1921, he retired from the Red Army and returned to Moscow to resume his study of law at the Law School at Moscow University. Orlov worked for several years at the Bolshevik High Tribunal under the tutelage of Nikolai Krylenko. 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.

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