The Berlin rezident who piped Nazi disinformation to Moscow
In Berlin, Kobulov's prized agent 'Lycéist' was in fact a double agent run by the Gestapo. His reports bypassed NKVD intelligence analysts and went straight through Beria to Stalin's desk, reinforcing the conviction that there was "no risk of a German invasion" in 1941.
The younger brother of Bogdan Kobulov, Amayak rose through the NKVD on the patronage of his brother and Beria. In 1938, at thirty-two, he became acting NKVD chief of Ukraine; the following year he was posted to Berlin as NKVD rezident despite speaking no German and having no operational training. His prize agent 'Lycéist' was in fact a German plant, and through 1940–41 Nazi disinformation flowed through Kobulov into Moscow. He spent the war as security chief of Uzbekistan, then ran the POW administration and served as deputy head of the Gulag. Arrested after Beria's fall in 1953, he was shot in 1955.
Career Timeline
- 1937–1938Head of the Gagra city NKVD department, then of the NKVD of the Abkhaz ASSR
- 1938–1939Acting People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Ukrainian SSR
- 1939–1941Counsellor of the Soviet embassy in Berlin; legal NKVD rezident
- 1941–1945People's Commissar of State Security, then of Internal Affairs, Uzbek SSR
- 1945–1951Deputy, then first deputy head of the Main Directorate for POWs and Internees
- 1951–1953Head of the POW directorate and first deputy head of the Gulag
- 1953–1955Arrested, tried separately and executed
Related historical events
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeThe Gagra and Abkhaz NKVDHe ran the Gagra and Abkhaz NKVD during the terror, and in December 1938 became acting NKVD chief of Ukraine at thirty-two.
- 1953The Fall of BeriaTried separately and executedArrested in East Germany on 27 June 1953, he was tried separately from the Beria group, condemned in October 1954 and shot in February 1955.
Operation Myth: Investigating Hitler's Death
In late 1945, the Soviet leadership launched a fresh inquiry into the contradictory reports surrounding Hitler's death. Code-named Operation Myth (Операция «Миф»), the investigation was led by Kobulov, who as head of the NKVD's Operational Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees (GUPVI) had access to high-ranking German captives. The investigative team re-interrogated bunker survivors (Hitler's valet Heinz Linge, adjutant Otto Günsche, personal pilot Hans Baur) and in the summer of 1946 traveled with witnesses to Berlin to re-excavate the Reich Chancellery garden. Kobulov directed the inquiry without ruling out the possibility that Hitler was still alive, though no conclusive evidence overturning the suicide finding emerged. Six volumes of case files and physical evidence (a skull fragment, pieces of the sofa on which Hitler died) were shipped to Moscow for special storage, and only transferred to the state archive in 1962. Historians assess the operation less as a search for truth than as an episode in the institutional rivalry between the NKVD and SMERSh, played out within the power structure around Stalin.