In Stalin’s Secret Service - Expose of Russia’s Secret Policies by Former Chief of Soviet Intelligence in Western Europe

Walter Krivitsky was the first Soviet spymaster to defect to the West in 1937. A classic text of espionage history last published in 1939. With the help of journalist Isaac Don Levine and literary agent Paul Wohl, Krivitsky produced an inside account of Stalin's underhanded methods. In England in 1940, he came very close to unmasking the Soviet network inside Britain’s intelligence services known as the “Cambridge 5” led by Kim Philby. Attacked by the American left, Krivitsky was vindicated when the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, which he had predicted, was signed in August 1939. Krivitsky thought that he would be safe in America, but he was unable to shed the dangerous secrets that he took with him. Stalin had to act quickly to protect his vast espionage network and there would be no escape from the Soviet assassination squad. In Stalin’s Secret Service is like a spy thriller with an unwritten ending, because the author couldn’t imagine his own death.