How the NKVD liquidated the first Soviet intelligence officer who betrayed his homeland out of love, Georgy Agabek

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Soviet intelligence agent Georgy Agabekov was the first renegade in the history of the secret services in the USSR, who, after escaping to another country, released classified information about Soviet intelligence. For 7 years of his stay abroad in the status of a defector, the traitor Chekist wrote several books, and in 1937 he was punished for this by the NKVD officers.

A brilliant career as an intelligence officer in the OGPU

Georgy Sergeevich Agabekov (real name Arutyunov) was born in 1895 in a simple family of workers from Ashgabat. In the First World War, he went to the front immediately after graduating from high school. For two years of service, the young man managed to prove himself on the good side and, thanks to his perfect command of the Turkish language, got the position of an interpreter.

The turning point in Agabekov's career was the February Revolution - a young and talented translator was accepted into the ranks of the Red Army, and in 1920 he joined the party.

An intelligent and courageous leader who speaks several languages was spotted in the Extraordinary Commission and invited to work in the Yekaterinburg Cheka. Agabekov quickly gained the confidence of the party, brilliantly coping with the most difficult tasks. He led a campaign against banditry in Turkestan, caught spies and eliminated smugglers in Tashkent.

In 1924, Agabekov undergoes special training in the laboratory of the OGPU, where he learns to open envelopes, use secret writing and masters other wisdom of the intelligence department. In the same year, the Chekist was transferred to the Foreign Department of the OGPU and sent undercover to Afghanistan, where he actually headed the local agents. Two years later, Agabekov became a resident of the intelligence service in Iran, where he recruited Russian emigrants hiding from the Soviet regime. It is known that Agabekov managed to recruit one of the generals of the former White Army, as well as to expose several British and French agents.

In 1928, the scout returned to Moscow and until October 1929 oversees the OGPU sector in the Middle and Near East.

Soviet intelligence resident in Turkey

Soviet intelligence officer Yakov Blumkin, who was in charge of the OGPU station in Constantinople, was recalled to Moscow in 1929. He was arrested and shot, accused of collaborating with the Trotskyists, and the post of head of the OGPU in Turkey was given to Agabekov.

In the fall of 1929, the scout arrived in Constantinople under the name of the Persian merchant Nerses Hovsepyan, who wanted to open his own shop with carpets in Turkey. During a couple of months of his stay in Istanbul, Agabekov established relations with Turkish merchants and established contact with a local legal resident of the GPU, who worked in the Soviet consulate as an attaché.

As soon as Agabekov settled in a new place, he advertised in the newspaper that he was looking for an English teacher with an Oxford accent. Three days later, a letter arrived in which 20-year-old Oxford graduate Isabelle Streeter offered her services and made an appointment in the park of the Summer Palace Hotel.

Escape to France for love

When the Istanbul agent did not get in touch in June 1930, the NKVD decided that something had happened to him. And later it became known that the scout had betrayed his homeland and fled to France. According to one version, the story of Blumkin pushed Agabekov to such a desperate step. He believed that the OGPU had mistreated his predecessor, and was afraid of the same fate.

Soviet intelligence agent and historian Pavel Sudoplatov adhered to a different version. In his opinion, the fault of the escape was a young English teacher, for the sake of which the Soviet agent broke with the intelligence department and became a traitor to the homeland. Another unpopular version says that young Isabel Streeter was the daughter of an English resident in Constantinople and participated in a special operation to recruit N. Hovsepyan.

It is known from the memoirs of Georgy Agabekov and the materials of the FSSS that he prepared for the escape in advance, wrote down the secrets of the GPU and offered his services to British intelligence. Potential employers saw him as a decoy duck and were in no hurry to answer. In May, an employee of the British Embassy nevertheless got in touch and told Hovsepyan that they were ready to consider his proposal. At the same time, Isabel Streeter's parents, who were against her connection with the "wild Asian", sent their daughter to Paris. Agabekov goes after her, dreaming of profitably selling the manuscript with the secrets of the OGPU and ensuring himself a comfortable and free life with Isabelle.

"Russian Secret Terror": Memoirs of the Secrets of Soviet Intelligence

In France, Georgy Agabekov met with his beloved. But under pressure from her sister and her husband, a lieutenant in the British Royal Navy, Isabelle was forced to stop meeting with the Soviet defector and went back to Istanbul. Later, in the fall of 1930, they met again in Belgium and got married.

Through French newspapers, the former GPU intelligence officer announced that he would no longer return to the USSR, and hoped for cooperation with foreign special services. But time passed, the money ran out, and the Europeans were in no hurry to offer the defector a job. Poverty and hopelessness pushed Agabekov to write a book with the secrets of Soviet espionage. The first edition of "OGPU: Russian Secret Terror" dealt a significant blow to Soviet agents in the countries of the East and worsened relations between the USSR and Iran.

Special operation of the NKVD to neutralize the traitor

The NKVD decided to find and eliminate the fugitive at any cost. At first, they tried to solve the problem peacefully and turned to the French government with a request to extradite Agabekov-Arutyunov. The French refused, but at the end of the summer of 1931, in order not to spoil relations with the USSR, they expelled the defector from the country. This time he settled in Belgium, where he began to negotiate cooperation with the intelligence services of 7 countries. But even these attempts failed miserably - they treated Agabekov with caution, considering him impulsive and unreliable.

Attempts by the NKVD to destroy the traitor, undertaken in 1931 and 1934, were unsuccessful. The experienced intelligence officer knew all the tools that his former colleagues used.

The fugitive was eliminated only in 1937. By that time, the European special services had pulled out everything they could from Agabekov, and periodically planted insignificant orders with meager pay. He was desperate for money and lost his guard.

The neutralization of a traitorous scout is described in detail in the book by P. Sudoplatov “Special Operations. Lubyanka and the Kremlin 1930-1950 . NKVD officers under the leadership of Alexander Korotkov came up with a large-scale plan to eliminate Agabekov. Promising a large reward, the defector was lured to Paris, to a safe house, where they were supposed to discuss working conditions - transportation of jewelry belonging to one wealthy Armenian family. There were two waiting for him - Korotkov and an unknown Turk, an agent of Soviet intelligence.

A Turkish militant stabbed Agabekov with a knife, after which the corpse was photographed for reporting, loaded into a suitcase and thrown into the river.

And then the war began, and there were already a lot of deserters. And even an emigrant partyot nobleman Boris Smyslovsky created the "Green Army" and became an agent of the Abwehr, having ruined more than one life of Soviet citizens.