The OGPU illegal who refused a pardon and endured three years in solitary
Born in Crimea, he reached Turkey as a sailor of the White fleet and studied law in Prague; recruited by the OGPU station there in 1924, he became an illegal officer of its Foreign Department (INO) in 1930 and in Europe ran sources such as the British Foreign Office cipher clerk Ernest Oldham, obtaining the diplomatic codes of several countries. Back in Moscow at the end of 1936, he was arrested in September 1938, sentenced to twenty years and served them in Norillag and Siblag. Brought to Moscow on Abakumov's orders in January 1948, he was held in solitary in the Sukhanovka special prison until 1951, then in Ozerlag and Kamyshlag; released after a stroke in 1954, he was rehabilitated in 1956 and in his last years wrote the prison memoir The Feast of the Immortals.
Also known as: Dmitri Bystrolyotov · Dmitry Bystroletov
Activities and affiliations
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1924–1938
Soviet Union state institutionsState security agenciesMain
Security, intelligence and policing
Career Timeline
- 1924Recruited as an agent by the OGPU station in Prague
- 1930.02–1936Illegal officer of the OGPU Foreign Department (INO), recruiting sources in Europe
- 1938.09.17Arrested
- 1939.05.08Sentenced to twenty years by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court
- 1939–1947Served in Norillag and Siblag (Mariinsk, Suslovo)
- 1948.01–1951Held in solitary in the Sukhanovka special prison
- 1951–1954Special camps Ozerlag and Kamyshlag
- 1954Released after a stroke
- 1956Rehabilitated
- 1957–1975Language editor at a medical information institute; wrote the memoir The Feast of the Immortals