Jeff Kisseloff (2003)

Editor’s Note: Re Error No. 4, described above, new information is now available. The text of the review says, “Levine, who played a crucial (and still mysterious) role in developing Chambers’ story, years later was shown to be a falsifier of evidence: he claimed to have a document showing that Stalin had once been an agent of the Czarist secret police; the document proved to be a forgery.”

In fact, Levine bought that document (so he definitely had it) without knowing it to be a forgery that had been created by White Russian emigrants at some point prior to his purchasing it. The document had been typed out on an authentic, pre-Revolutionary form, using an old, Czarist-era typewriter. The fact that this document had been forged was not proven until the 1990s, long after Levine’s death in 1981.

Details in: Byl li Stalin agentom okhranki? Sbornik statei, materialov i dokumentov [Was Stalin an Okhranka Agent? Compilation of Articles, Materials, and Documents], edited by Yu. Felshtinsky (Moscow: Terra, 1999) [in Russian].