The NKVD rezident who ran a Gestapo mole and coordinated Soviet atomic espionage in America
On 12 October 1941, as German troops reached the outskirts of Moscow, Stalin personally summoned Zarubin and gave him one task in Washington: 'Find out if the Americans will try to arrange a separate peace with Germany.'
A leading officer of Soviet foreign intelligence, Zarubin spent 13 of his 23 years of service as an illegal rezident operating under deep cover across Europe and Asia. As illegal rezident in Berlin from 1933 to 1937, he personally ran Gestapo officer Willy Lehmann (codename 'Breitenbach'), whose reporting on the structure, personnel, and operations of the RSHA and Gestapo, as well as German military plans, was rated among the most valuable Soviet intelligence of the prewar period. From 1941 to 1944 he served as chief NKVD rezident in the United States, coordinating the atomic espionage network that fed critical nuclear research data to Moscow during the Manhattan Project. After the war he became deputy chief of foreign intelligence (1945–1948), overseeing illegal operations worldwide before retiring and training future KGB officers.
Career Timeline
- 1914–1917Served in Russian Imperial Army, Eastern Front, WWI
- 1918–1920Served in Red Army, Southern Front, Russian Civil War
- 1920–1925Cheka/OGPU internal security and economic department, Vladivostok
- 1925–1927Legal rezident, INO OGPU: China, Finland
- 1927–1929Illegal rezident: Denmark, Germany (as Czech citizen Jaroslav Koček)
- 1929–1933Illegal rezident: France (codename 'Betti')
- 1933–1937Illegal rezident: Berlin, ran Gestapo agent Willy Lehmann ('Breitenbach')
- 1939–1940NKVD officer, interrogated Polish POWs at Kozelsk camp
- 1941Deputy chief, NKGB 1st Directorate; China mission to contact Walter Stennes
- 1941–1944Chief NKVD/NKGB rezident, USA (cover: Vice-Consul Vasily Zubilin)
- 1945–1948Deputy chief, foreign intelligence and illegal intelligence, NKGB/MGB
- 1948Retired on health grounds; later KGB training instructor