Risky diplomacy conducted behind an intelligence officer’s cover
In April 1938, he warned the Finnish side that Germany might attack Leningrad through Finland.
Boris Arkadyevich Rybkin was a Soviet intelligence officer and diplomat who operated in Finland under the name Yartsev. In 1938 he opened secret negotiations, framed as an effort to prevent a German threat to Finland, but Soviet demands for territorial concessions produced no agreement. The failed contact marked the first step in a Soviet-Finnish sequence shaped by negotiation, security fears and mistrust that led to the Winter War.
Career Timeline
- 1921Joined the Yekaterinoslav Cheka
- 1924–1929Officer in the OGPU counterintelligence section
- 1931–1935INO OGPU operations in Central Asia and abroad
- 1935–1938Consul at Helsinki, operating under the name Yartsev
- 1938–1939Handled secret negotiations with Finland
- 1941–1943Ran the intelligence station at the Soviet mission in Stockholm
- 1944–1945Headed the section inserting agents and sabotage groups into Eastern Europe
- 1947Died during an MGB foreign special operation