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.
Activities and affiliations
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
Related historical events
- 1914–1918First World WarRussian Imperial Army soldierHe served in the Russian Imperial Army on the Eastern Front from 1914 to 1917.
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionCivil War participant
- 1943–1949The Soviet Atomic ProjectResident in the United StatesRunning the networks in the United States, he oversaw the collection of Manhattan Project material.
Early Illegal Work Abroad and the French Residency, 1925-1933
Zarubin moved to the INO OGPU apparatus in September 1925 as a special plenipotentiary of its foreign department, and from December 1925 to 1926 served as legal resident in Helsinki under the cover of attaché at the Soviet mission to Finland. From 1927 he and his wife Yelizaveta went on illegal work in Denmark, where the couple obtained permission from the local authorities to take up permanent residence and began operations directed against Germany. After a meeting with a Center representative in Switzerland in 1929, he was sent to France and headed the illegal residency in Paris until 1933.
In France he concealed his identity with the papers of a Slovak engineer, Jan Koček, settled in the small resort town of Antibes in the south and later moved near Paris. He obtained a residence permit as co-owner of a garage and then became a partner in a small advertising firm run by the brother of a Polish agent, expanding its business. A French family he met in Antibes was drawn into cooperation with his residency and took on the management of a conspiratorial meeting place.
The residency he led obtained material not only on France but also on Germany, including the secret correspondence of the German embassy in Paris. His French posting ended in December 1933, when he was transferred as illegal resident to Berlin. In 1937 he received the Order of the Red Banner for his work there, and that same year the couple left for the United States on a special assignment.
This phase was defined by forged identities, penetration of civilian businesses, and operations organized around a married couple. His wife Yelizaveta used the surname Koček in Denmark and France and the surname Gutshneker in Germany, and their son Pyotr, born in Paris in 1932, later became a scientist in laser technology.