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Abram Slutsky
Abram Aronovich Slutsky (russian: Абра́м Аро́нович Слу́цкий) (July 1898 – 17 February 1938, Moscow) was a Soviet intelligence officer who headed the Soviet foreign intelligence service ( INO), then part of the NKVD, from May 1935 to February 1938. Biography Slutsky was born in 1898 into the family of a Jewish railroad worker in a Ukrainian village, Parafiivka, currently in Chernihiv Oblast. As a youth he worked as an apprentice to a metal craftsman, then as clerk at a cotton plant. In the First World War he served in the Imperial Russian Army as a volunteer in the 7th Siberian Rifle Regiment. In 1917, he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks). During the Civil War he fought for the Red Army and afterward, in 1920, moved to the organs of the GPU/OGPU, where by dint of his affable personality he rose rapidly through the ranks. Originally, Slutsky worked in the OGPU's Economic Department engaged in industrial espionage. He receive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Artur Artuzov
Artur Khristyanovich Artuzov (name at birth: Artur Eugene Leonard Fraucci) (russian: Арту́р Христиа́нович Арту́зов (), (18 February 1891 – 21 August 1937) was a leading figure in the Soviet international intelligence and counter-intelligence and security officer and spymaster of the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. Early life Artuzov's father was Italian-Swiss and employed as a cheesemaker; his mother was Estonian-Latvian. Artuzov studied metallurgy at St. Petersburg Polytechnical Institute. Since childhood he was familiar with the Bolshevik revolutionaries Nikolai Podvoisky and Mikhail Kedrov, who were the husbands of his mother's sisters. He started distributing illegal revolutionary literature as a teenager in 1906. In May 1909 he graduated with a gold medal from the Novgorod classical men's gymnasium and entered the metallurgical department of the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute, from which he graduated with honors in February 1917, after w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ivar Kreuger
Ivar Kreuger (; 2 March 1880 – 12 March 1932) was a Swedish civil engineer, financier, entrepreneur and industrialist. In 1908, he co-founded the construction company Kreuger & Toll Byggnads AB, which specialized in new building techniques. By aggressive investments and innovative financial instruments, he built a global match and financial empire. Between the two world wars, he negotiated match monopolies with European, Central American and South American governments, and finally controlled between two thirds and three quarters of worldwide match production, becoming known as the "Match King".''Kreuger Genius And Swindler'' by Robert Shaplen (Alfred A. Knopf Inc. New York; 1960, p.9) Kreuger's financial empire has been described by one biographer as a Ponzi scheme, based on the supposedly fantastic profitability of his match monopolies. However, in a Ponzi scheme early investors are paid dividends from their own money or that of subsequent investors. Although Kreuger did this ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Bolsheviks
Old Bolshevik (russian: ста́рый большеви́к, ''stary bolshevik''), also called Old Bolshevik Guard or Old Party Guard, was an unofficial designation for a member of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party before the Russian Revolution of 1917. Many Old Bolsheviks became leading politicians and bureaucrats in the Soviet Union and the ruling Communist Party. Most died over the years from natural causes, but a number were removed from power or executed in the late 1930s, as a result of the Great Purge by Joseph Stalin. Overview Definition Initially, the term "Old Bolshevik" (ста́рый большеви́к, ''stary bolshevik'') referred to Bolsheviks who joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party before 1905. On February 13, 1922, under the chairmanship of the Old Bolshevik historian Mikhail Olminsky, the Society of Old Bolsheviks (Общество старых большевиков) at the Istpart (Commission on the Study ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ivan Nikitich Smirnov
Ivan Nikitich Smirnov (russian: Ива́н Ники́тич Смирно́в) (1881 – 25 August 1936) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet politician and Communist Party functionary. A prominent member of the Left Opposition, he led a secret trotskyist opposition group in the Soviet Union during the Stalin period. He was arrested in 1933 and shot during the Great Purge. Political life He was born in Gorodishche, Penza Governorate in a family of Russian ethnicity. In 1899, Smirnov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and became a Bolshevik. He led Party activity in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Vyshniy Volochok, Rostov, Kharkov, and Tomsk. Smirnov was subject to repeated arrests. In 1916, he was called up for army service in a reserve regiment in Tomsk. In 1917, he became a member of the executive committee of the Tomsk Soviet. In August of the same year, Smirnov was one of the organizers and managers of the Bolshevist publishing house ''"Volna"'' (Wave) in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sergei Mrachkovsky
Sergei Vitalevich Mrachkovsky (Russian: Сергеий Витальевич Мрачковский; 15 June 1888 – 24 August 1936) was a Russian revolutionary, Red Army commander, and supporter of Leon Trotsky, who was executed at the start of the Great Purge. Career Mrachkovky was born in Tobolsk district, in Siberia, where his mother was a political exile. His grandfather was a founding member of Russia's first underground Marxist circles, the South Russian Workers' Union. His father, a locksmith, was also a revolutionary. After three years at a local school, Mrachkovsky was sent to a railway school in Chelyabinsk, then worked as a locksmith. Reportedly he was interested in anarchism and was in contact with criminals in his teens. He joined the Bolsheviks during the 1905 Revolution. Arrested in 1908, he was in prison until 1911, then returned to work as a locksmith. After the February Revolution, Mrachkovsky was elected to the Yekaterinburg soviet (council) and the Ural Regi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moscow Trials
The Moscow trials were a series of show trials held by the Soviet Union between 1936 and 1938 at the instigation of Joseph Stalin. They were nominally directed against "Trotskyists" and members of "Right Opposition" of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. At the time the three Moscow trials were given extravagant titles: # the "Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center" (or Zinoviev-Kamenev Trial, also known as the 'Trial of the Sixteen', August 1936); # the "Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center" (or Pyatakov-Radek Trial, also known as the 'Trial of the Seventeen', January 1937); and # the "Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites"" (or the Bukharin- Rykov Trial, also known as the 'Trial of the Twenty-One', March 1938). The defendants were Old Bolshevik Party leaders and top officials of the Soviet secret police. Most were charged under Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code with conspiring with Imperialist powers to assassinate Stalin and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cambridge Five
The Cambridge Spy Ring was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and was active from the 1930s until at least into the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted for spying. The number and membership of the ring emerged slowly, from the 1950s onwards. The general public first became aware of the conspiracy after the sudden flight of Donald Maclean (cryptonym: Homer) and Guy Burgess (cryptonym: Hicks) to the Soviet Union in 1951. Suspicion immediately fell on Harold "Kim" Philby (cryptonyms: Sonny, Stanley), who eventually fled the country in 1963. Following Philby's flight, British intelligence obtained confessions from Anthony Blunt (cryptonym: Johnson) and then John Cairncross (cryptonym: Liszt), who have come to be seen as the last two of a group of five. Their involvement was kept secret for many years: until 1979 for Blunt, and 1990 for Cairncross. The moniker Cambridge Four evolved to become ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theodore Maly
Theodore Maly (1894 – 20 September 1938) was a former Roman Catholic priest and Soviet intelligence officer during the 1920s and 1930s. He lived illegally in the countries where he worked for the NKVD and was one of the Soviet Union’s most effective spymasters. Early life He was born in Austria-Hungary in 1894 at Timișoara, Hungary, (now Romania) into a middle-class family. His father was an official of the Ministry of Finance. He entered a monastic order and studied theology and philosophy. At the outbreak of World War I he enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian Army. He attended the Military Academy and graduated in December 1915 with the rank of cornet. He was serving as a second lieutenant when he was captured by the Imperial Russian Army on the Eastern Front in 1916. Maly later related his experiences to a friend:During the war I was a chaplain, I had just been ordained as a priest. I was taken prisoner in the Carpathians. I saw all the horrors, young men with frozen limbs d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arnold Deutsch
Arnold Deutsch (1903–1942?), variously described as Austrian, Czech or Hungarian, was an academic who worked in London as a Soviet spy, best known for having recruited Kim Philby. Much of his life remains unknown or disputed. Early life He was a cousin of Oscar Deutsch, the proprietor of the Odeon Cinemas chain. Though he claimed to be an observant Jew to disguise his role as a Communist agent, Deutsch was in fact lapsed in his religious beliefs. At the age of 24, Deutsch received with distinction his PhD in chemistry from the University of Vienna. He was also a follower of Wilhelm Reich and his "sex-pol" movement. Espionage career At the same time, Deutsch embarked on his lifelong involvement with Communism and the Soviet Union. In the 1920s he was working for the OMS, the International Liaison Department of the Comintern. A co-worker of his there was Edith Suschitzky, whom he met at 1926 in Vienna and who would be instrumental in his later espionage career. Soon after le ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link=no) or The Uprising ( es, La Sublevación, link=no) among Republicans. was a civil war in Spain fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republicans and the Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic, and consisted of various socialist, communist, separatist, anarchist, and republican parties, some of which had opposed the government in the pre-war period. The opposing Nationalists were an alliance of Falangists, monarchists, conservatives, and traditionalists led by a military junta among whom General Francisco Franco quickly achieved a preponderant role. Due to the international political climate at the time, the war had many facets and was variously viewed as cla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ignace Reiss
Ignace Reiss (1899 – 4 September 1937) – also known as "Ignace Poretsky," "Ignatz Reiss," "Ludwig," "Ludwik", "Hans Eberhardt," "Steff Brandt," Nathan Poreckij, and "Walter Scott (an officer of the U.S. military intelligence)" – was one of the "Great Illegals" or Soviet spies who worked in third party countries where they were not nationals in the late 1920s and 1930s. He was known as a nevozvrashchenec ("unreturnable"). An NKVD team assassinated him on 4 September 1937 near Lausanne, Switzerland, a few weeks after he declared his defection in a letter addressed to Joseph Stalin.Pg 457 - - Total pages: 511 He was a lifelong friend of Walter Krivitsky; his assassination influenced the timing and method of Whittaker Chambers' defection a few months later. Background Reiss was born Nathan Markovich Poreckij in 1899 in Podwołoczyska (today Pidvolochysk), then in Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Ukraine). His mother was a Lithuanian Jew but his father was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evgenii Miller
Eugen Ludwig Müller (russian: Евге́ний-Лю́двиг Ка́рлович Ми́ллер, tr. ; 25 September 1867 – 11 May 1939), better known as Yevgeny Miller, was a Russian general of Baltic German origin and one of the leaders of the anticommunist White Army during and after the Russian Civil War (1917–1922). After the civil war he lived in exile in France. Kidnapped by Soviet intelligence operatives in Paris in 1937, he was smuggled to the USSR and executed in Moscow in 1939. Early life Miller was a career officer born to a Baltic German aristocratic family in Dünaburg (now Daugavpils, Latvia). After he graduated from the General Staff Academy, he served with the Russian Imperial Guard. Between 1898 and 1907, he was a Russian military attaché in several European capitals, such as Rome, The Hague and Brussels. During the First World War, he headed the Moscow Military District and the 26th Army Corps and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general. Civil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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