The NKVD's highest-ranking defector who plotted to kill Stalin
On the night of June 13, 1938, Lyushkov arrived at Border Detachment 59 in full field uniform with medals, ordered the outpost commander to wait behind while he met a 'Manchurian agent' — then crossed the border and surrendered to Japanese military police.
An architect of Stalin's Great Purge who became the highest-ranking NKVD officer ever to defect. Posted as Far East NKVD chief in 1937, he personally directed the USSR's first mass ethnic deportation: the forced removal of roughly 170,000 Soviet Koreans to Central Asia, while overseeing tens of thousands of arrests and executions. Sensing the purge closing in on him, he fled across the Manchurian border in June 1938, handed Japan detailed Soviet military intelligence, and masterminded the only seriously prepared attempt to assassinate Stalin, only to be shot by his Japanese handlers as Soviet forces closed on Dalian in August 1945.
Career Timeline
- 1919Political commissar, 14th Red Army
- 1920Odessa Cheka operative
- c.1930Industrial espionage at Junkers, Germany
- 1937–1938NKVD chief, Far East; Commissar 3rd Class
- 1938Defected to Manchukuo
- 1938–1945Intelligence collaborator, Kwantung Army
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign Interventionpolitical commissar
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationHead of NKVD of Far East
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeNKVD plenipotentiary for the Far EastSenior NKVD official who defected to Japan in June 1938, a decisive factor in Yezhov's downfall.
- 1938–1941The Soviet-Japanese Border Wars and the Neutrality PactNKVD Far East chief and defectorDefected to Japan in June 1938, revealing Soviet Far East troop strength, deployments, and purge scale. His data showing overwhelming Soviet superiority (5:1 or worse) paralysed Kwantung Army operational planning.
The Stalin Assassination Plot
Shortly after his defection, Lyushkov proposed a plan to assassinate Stalin to the Kwantung Army's intelligence section. As the former NKVD chief for the Azov-Black Sea region, he had personally designed the security arrangements for Stalin's spa treatments at the Matsesta baths in Sochi. He knew the layout of the dacha, the rotation patterns of the guards, and every access point, knowledge that led the Japanese to take the plan seriously.
The Japanese Army General Staff assembled a six-man team of White Russian émigrés, with Lyushkov in command. The plan was to cross the Turkish-Soviet border, traverse the mountainous terrain near Batumi, and infiltrate Sochi. Lyushkov personally reconnoitered the border terrain and the operation was launched in early 1939.
But a Soviet intelligence agent had been planted within the group. The moment the team crossed the border, they were ambushed by Soviet guards. Most of the team was killed or fled, and Lyushkov barely escaped back to Turkish territory. The operation is regarded as the only seriously prepared attempt to assassinate Stalin. Lyushkov was thereafter relocated to Dalian (Dairen), where he devoted himself to anti-Soviet intelligence work for the Kwantung Army.