Rezident: The Espionage Odyssey of Soviet General Vasily Zarubin

By Robert K. Baker

Vasily Zarubin ranked as an important Soviet intelligence officer, but he has received little recognition in the history of intelligence in the United States. In Rezident, author Robert K. Baker, who worked with foreign counterintelligence matters for the FBI during a thirty-three-year career, presents the first English language biography of Zarubin, Stalins principal intelligence officer in this country during World War II.

Rezident recounts the exploits of Zarubins work with Soviet intelligence during the twentieth century narrating how his odyssey extended from the Soviet Far East during the early years of Soviet Russia to deep cover assignments with his wife, Elizaveta, in France, Nazi Germany, and the United States. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin appointed Zarubin as his intelligence emissary to the United States to gather political, military, and technological information. Zarubin was successful in providing valuable information to the Soviet Union during the war years.

This biography of Zarubins life and times provides a greater appreciation and understanding of the role of the security and intelligence services in the sphere of national security.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491742426

Robert K. Baker

Robert K. Baker graduated from Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., with a foreign languages degree. He became an FBI Special Agent specializing in counter-intelligence and served in San Diego, California, New York City, and Austin, Texas. Baker retired in 1999 after nearly thirty-four years of service. Married, he lives in Austin, Texas.

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REZIDENT

THE ESPIONAGE ODYSSEY OF SOVIET GENERAL VASILY ZARUBIN

Copyright © 2015 Robert K. Baker.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-4241-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-4243-3 (hc)

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014914199

iUniverse rev. date: 05/08/2015

CONTENTS

Preface

Abbreviations And Acronyms

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Early Years

Chapter 2 The Cheka

Chapter 3 The Foreign Department

Chapter 4 Finland

Chapter 5 Comrade Liza

Chapter 5 Administrative Section

Chapter 6 Illegal in Denmark

Chapter 7 France

Chapter 8 Germany

Chapter 8 Administrative Section

Chapter 9 United States–1937

Chapter 10 Period of Tribulation

Chapter 10 Administrative Section

Chapter 11 Katyn

Chapter 12 Travels with Liza

Chapter 13 Assignments of Special Importance

Chapter 14 Breitenbach

Chapter 15 The American Citadel

Chapter 16 The American Assignment

Chapter 17 The FBI in War and Peace

Chapter 18 The Zarubin Rezidentura in America

Chapter 18 Administrative Section

Chapter 19 The End of the Odyssey

Chapter 20 The Zarubin Legacy

Afterword

About The Author

Appendixes

Appendix 1: Biografiya (Biography) of Vasily Mikhaylovich Zarubin

Appendix 1a: Translation of Zarubin Biography

Appendix 2: U.S. Passport Application of Edward Joseph Herbert

Appendix 3: Oath of Allegiance by Edward Joseph Herbert

Appendix 4: Diplomatic note informing of the arrival and appointment of Vassily M. Zubilin as third secretary

Appendix 5: Biographical Sketch for Vassily M. Zubilin

Appendix 6: Diplomatic note regarding appointment of Vassili M. Zubilin as second secretary

Appendix 7: Anonymous letter to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover

Appendix 7a: Translation of anonymous letter

Appendix 8: Diplomatic note regarding the termination of duties of Second Secretary Vassili M. Zubilin

Appendix 9: Acknowledgment of receipt of notification of Vassili M. Zubilin’s termination

Appendix 10: SPRAVKA [Certificate] of retirement

Glossary Of Soviet Intelligence Terminology

Bibliography

For Jan

REZIDENT

Soviet term for a high-ranking and experienced intelligence officer who supervises the conduct of subordinate intelligence officers and agent networks in a target country.

PREFACE

I first became interested in the life of Vasily Zarubin after meeting and interviewing his daughter, Zoya Zarubina, in Austin, Texas in January 1996. At the time, Zoya, age seventy-six, was on an extended visit with a friend, Dr. Inez Jeffery, who was an international-education specialist. Because of Zoya’s past official affiliation with Soviet intelligence during the 1940s, the FBI believed that, if willing, she should be interviewed regarding her past and present activities. She was receptive, and during the initial interview stated that she was currently involved in promoting the ideals of an organization that she founded in 1988, the International Educators for Peace and Understanding. In addition, Zoya mentioned that Dr. Jeffery wanted to interview her for background information for a biography she planned to write about Zoya’s experiences in the Soviet Union and present-day Russia.

With regard to her activities with Soviet intelligence, Zoya stated that she served in Soviet state security from 1942 until 1951, principally as a translator. She noted that she was an interpreter for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in unofficial conversations with Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, at the international conferences at Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam. After the war, she translated for the Soviets at the Nuremburg Trials and, still later, was entrusted with translating scientific materials relating to the atomic bomb that Soviet intelligence had obtained from its agents in the United States. She claimed that her father, Vasily, was instrumental in the initial direction of these agents in the theft of these secrets. After resigning from Soviet intelligence, Zoya stated that she was involved in teaching English at the Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages and later training Soviet Russian translators assigned to the United Nations.

In subsequent interviews, Zoya spoke about her father and step-mother, Elizaveta, and their intelligence activities in numerous countries prior to the outbreak of World War II and in the United States during that war. When I showed an interest in learning more about her father and step-mother, Zoya provided me with newspaper articles and books in the Russian language about their exploits. Later, the Zarubins’ son, Peter (Pyotr) gave me additional materials to complete my research. Based on my Russian-language training, I was able to read the materials, and I coupled this gleaned information with the limited information on them available at that time in English publications. I soon realized that the Zarubins were important Soviet intelligence officers who had received little recognition in the history of intelligence in the United States. Vasily Zarubin was, in particular, and without doubt, Stalin’s principal intelligence officer in this country during World War II.

I had primarily worked foreign counterintelligence matters for the FBI during my thirty-three-year career. I became familiar with Soviet/Russian intelligence and espionage activities of their operational officers working under official cover, as well as their deep-cover officers and agents. I received excellent training in this work from experienced FBI supervisors and coworkers in the New York Office, some of whom had investigated various aspects of the espionage cases run by Zarubin.

Shortly before I retired from the FBI in 1999, I decided to write the first biography in English about Vasily Zarubin, since I believed that he deserved more notoriety in the United States than he had received.

This biography could not have been written without the assistance of Vasily Zarubin’s daughter and son. Zoya provided the original inspiration and encouragement and followed up with numerous articles and books relating to her father. Peter added to this assistance with personal recollections and photographs prior to and after his sister’s death in 2009.

Ervin Stavinsky [Yevgeny Dmitriyevich Poleshchuk, pseud.], the author of Zarubiny: Semyeynaya rezidentura (The Zarubins: A Domestic Residency), the Russian biography of Vasily and Elizaveta Zarubin, answered questions and provided valuable details about the couple during the author’s visit to Moscow in October 2004.

It should be noted that the author also referred to a largely fictionalized biography of the Zarubins entitled, Reklamnoye byuro gospodina Kocheka (Mr. Koček’s Advertising Agency) by Soviet writer Vartkes Tevekelyan for additional details regarding the Zarubins.

Professor Michael W. Adams, English Department, University of Texas at Austin, reviewed chapters of the book and assisted in gently reminding me about grammatical matters I had forgotten since my university days. His encouragement has been greatly appreciated.

While I translated most of the Russian materials mentioned in the book, I had help with ambiguous sentences, idioms, and colloquialisms from native Russian speakers, Olga Mosqueda, and Polina and Marina O.

George Hawkins and Shannon Baker helped me in resolving what I considered insurmountable computer problems. Without the computer assistance of Charlie Foreman, this book could never have been finished.

Freedom of Information Act officers at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Department of State provided me with those materials necessary to tell the story of Vasily Zarubin’s assignment in the United States.

I am appreciative to those listed above and to others unnamed for their continued interest in my project while writing this biography. I, of course, accept responsibility for any errors and misinterpretations presented in recounting Vasily Zarubin’s odyssey.

ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

INTRODUCTION

Writing the history of intelligence is a tricky and hazardous undertaking. You are entering slippery ground full of traps. *

It should be obvious that writing a biography of an intelligence officer—especially a Soviet intelligence officer—would present many difficulties. First, documentary information is seldom available regarding the officer or his operational activities. Second, no intelligence service maintaining such information wants to reveal its methods of operation or identify its agents to an adversarial security or intelligence agency. In general, intelligence records remain closed to the unauthorized individual, even after decades have passed since they were filed away. It should be noted, however, that in the United States, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), enacted in 1967, required federal agencies, including intelligence and counterintelligence agencies, to release information from its files to researchers and the media if deemed admissible after privacy and security considerations. Such information has proven to be invaluable in researching the activities of Vasily Zarubin in the United States and, to a certain extent, in France and Germany. Unfortunately, no such act exists in Russia, and their records generally remain inviolate.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, however, numerous books and articles recounting the exploits of the Soviet intelligence services and their officers have been published, but few translated into English. The authors of such books are usually retired Soviet and Russian intelligence officers who have been given access to closed files, at least to a limited extent, and it is assumed that any classified information has been sanitized to protect sources and methods. In most cases, I have had to rely on materials published in Russia since the mid-1990s for details about Zarubin’s early life in pre-revolutionary Russia, his involvement in World War I, the Russian Civil War, and early work in the Soviet Far East with the security and intelligence services. To a certain extent I have been able to bolster such details with historical materials that relate to those times and places. In addition, Zarubin’s children, Zoya and Peter, have provided me with extremely valuable information about his parents, siblings, and his youth.

In most instances, I depended heavily on Russian reporting about Zarubin’s early intelligence assignments in Finland, Denmark, and elsewhere whenever I found it plausible and recounted in more than one publication. To determine plausibility, I have relied on my past work experience and knowledge in trying to cull fact from fiction, and I have made every effort to report Zarubin’s life and activities as accurately as possible.

Since no intelligence activity occurs in a vacuum, I have provided a brief account of the historical setting and the operational situation for Soviet intelligence in the country where it would operate. An intelligence officer would certainly study these existing operational conditions before entering the target country. It should be noted that Soviets often refer to the security and counterintelligence system in a targeted country as its regime (rezhim), which is qualified by the strictness of the operating conditions. Nazi Germany, of course, maintained a stricter regime than did France and the United States during Zarubin’s work in those countries.

The reader will note that I have included an Administrative Section to certain chapters. These sections contain information on the Zarubins’ activities that cannot be verified but appear to be creditable based on some supporting facts.

The reader will also note the variations in spelling of Russian given names throughout the text. I have used the spelling of these names as provided by other writers in their citations. Some examples are: Alexander-Aleksandr, Fyodor-Fodor/Feodor, Vassili-Vasily, Pyotr-Peter, Grigory-Gregory, etc. One exception is Zarubin’s son, Pyotr, whom I refer to as Peter throughout.

It is pointed out that intelligence officers are required to use aliases in conducting their operations. Soviet officers are no exception to this rule and, as noted in the text, Vasily Zarubin employed several, for example: in France, he was Jaroslav Koček; in the United States and Germany during the 1930s, he was Edward Joseph Herbert; and in the United States in the early 1940s, he was Vassili Zubilin. His wife, Elizaveta, also used aliases in her assignments. In addition, Soviet intelligence assigned code names to their officers: MAXIM, VARDO; their agents, BREITENBACH, VINTERFELD; and their operations, CHORD, ENORMOZ. The identities of the code name assignments are listed in the chapters.

Chapter 1

The Early Years

May you live in interesting times.

—Chinese curse

Vasily Mikhaylovich Zarubin was born on February 4, 1894, in the Russian village of Panino, Moscow Province, which is located approximately forty miles southeast of Moscow. His father, Mikhail, was employed as a conductor and a coupler on freight trains for the Moscow-Kursk Railroad, and his mother, Praskovia, was a housewife and a mother of twelve children. Of the twelve, only six survived, the others having died in infancy.¹

In all likelihood, Mikhail Zarubin was recruited from the village by the Moscow-Kursk Railroad, since the majority of railroad workers during this period was obtained from the provinces.² Although railroad work was dangerous, Mikhail Zarubin was undoubtedly attracted to the good salary, subsidized housing, health care, and schools that the railroad lines offered to their employees and family members. The Zarubin family may have later moved to Podolsk, a nearby industrial city on the Moscow-Kursk line and center for the Zarubin clan.³ Still later, the family moved to Moscow since it had become the hub of Russian railroads for both state and privately owned lines. Specifically, the family relocated to the Taganka section of Moscow, where Vasily spent most of his youth. Taganka was (and remains) an industrial section situated in southeast Moscow and, at the turn of the century, numerous textile and garment factories were spread throughout this area. Also, the Moscow-Kursk Freight Station, where Mikhail Zarubin worked, was nearby. It is likely that the family lived in subsidized housing provided by the railroad. In many cases, this housing was substandard and seriously overcrowded, leading to unsanitary conditions, infectious diseases, and other health problems.⁴

In Taganka, Vasily’s mother worked as a charwoman, laundress, and worker in a candy factory as well as in various textile shops. She was a religious woman and an active member of the Russian Orthodox Church.⁵

Vasily Zarubin was the second-oldest child in the family and began his education at the age of seven when he attended a two-class school run by the Ministry of Public Education for the Moscow-Kursk Railroad. ⁶ This was an advanced elementary five-year school system that was called two-class because one teacher taught grades one through three in one classroom while a second teacher instructed the fourth and fifth grades in another. In addition, Vasily attended a church-run school for two years and reportedly sang in its choir.⁷ Based on this and his mother’s active participation in the church, it is likely that Vasily was baptized as a child in the Russian Orthodox Church.

Regarding his education, Zarubin would later recall that when he attended Communist party conferences as a major general in Soviet state security, he would often be asked if he had mistakenly listed only elementary education under the category higher education on the registration forms. He would tell the inquiring registrar that it was correct, wryly adding that he even attended church school and sang in its choir.⁸

Vasily Zarubin began working at the age of seven when he was employed as a candy-wrapper at the Lezhin Brothers candy factory. This was an odd job, and one that his mother obtained for him through her own work at that factory. At approximately the same time, he glued wrapping papers at the Gubkin-Kuznetsov tea-packing factory in Moscow. Later, he began formal employment at age thirteen as an apprentice for the Vladimir Lyzhin Company, a wholesale-cloth firm located on Bol’shoy Cherkassky, a lane located just east of the Kremlin.⁹ The exact nature of his work there is unknown; however, the apprenticeship system was in effect at that time in virtually all the artisanal trades. Oral contracts between shop owners and the parents of young children were often concluded wherein the children would remain under the control and supervision of the owner and older workers for a period of several years. Completion of the contract would then allow the apprentice to move on to adult work at the firm.¹⁰

Life for the apprentice was often harsh: hours were long, and the apprentice ordinarily worked without pay. Often his duties had nothing to do with learning a trade or skill, but involved physical labor such as sweeping the floors, delivering packages, and unpacking goods. Health and working conditions were usually poor and of no concern to the owner.¹¹ In any event, apprenticeship was the first step in preparing a young person for a lifetime of work in such trades in Moscow, and this appeared to be Zarubin’s lot in life.

Zarubin remained with the Lyzhin firm until 1914, working his way from apprentice to assistant packer and finally to clerk.¹² Older employees were paid more for their skills and experience; however, salaries for those with five-to-nine years of experience amounted to only five-to-eight rubles per month, a very low wage since the Russian ruble equaled approximately $.51 at that time. Also, an older salesclerk was reportedly valued for having a knack, that is, knowing how to attract customers and sell goods at higher prices. The guiding principle in Russian business before the revolution was that if you didn’t cheat, you wouldn’t sell.¹³

It was to be expected that with the introduction and expansion of the industrial revolution into the large cities of Russia by the end of the nineteenth century there would be serious abuses. In general, wages were low throughout the country, work hours were long, and little or no consideration was given to the worker’s health or the possibility of serious accidents. There was a great deal of discontent and desperation, and many Russians were impoverished. Still, the aristocracy, industrialists, plant, and shop owners failed to recognize the pressing problems caused by industrialization. Labor strikes, while common in the West, had been declared illegal in Russia as early as 1870. The strike movement, however, would greatly increase by the end of the century, leading to destabilization of the government by the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. In 1894, there were sixty-eight strikes in the country, but by 1903 there were over five hundred, with nearly ninety thousand workers involved.¹⁴

In Russian history, the year 1905 was to become one of storm and stress. The turmoil began on Sunday, January 9, when an Orthodox priest, Father Georgy Gapon, led a mass demonstration of workers and their families in St. Petersburg to present a petition to the tsar, seeking justice and redress from factory owners and plant managers. The demonstrators were met at the Winter Palace Square and attacked by the tsar’s armed guards. Between 150 and 200 men, women, and children were killed, with many hundreds wounded; consequently, this infamous day became known in Russian history as Bloody Sunday.

By the fall of 1905, the Russian Empire had come to a virtual standstill with millions of workers, most especially railroad men, on strike throughout the country. Finally, Tsar Nicholas II, on the recommendation of his advisors, was forced to issue the so-called October Manifesto that granted civil rights to all Russians. Perhaps most important, the manifesto created the Duma, or national assembly, which would have final approval of all laws.

Still, the general unrest had not ended. In December 1905, Moscow workers called a general strike that resulted in armed conflict between them and government troops. Shortly thereafter, radical workers and students set up barricades across major streets in Moscow, and the government responded with machine guns and artillery. Finally, the insurgents were forced back into Presnya, a district west of the center of the city and known for its many textile mills, including the large Trekhgornia cotton mill. In mid-December, government troops from the capital bombarded the positions held by workers, students, and revolutionaries with high-explosive and incendiary shells. Over nine hundred insurgents and one hundred government troops lost their lives in this battle that became known as Red Presnya.¹⁵

It is unlikely that the events of the Revolution of 1905 had much effect on Zarubin since he was only eleven years old at that time. He would, however, undoubtedly been aware of his father’s participation in the widespread railroad strike movement. While it is not believed that Mikhail was heavily involved in politics, he held liberal views that caused him to be ostracized by the management of the state-owned Moscow-Kursk Railroad.¹⁶ He was apparently attracted to the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDRP), although it is unlikely that he was a member.¹⁷ Founded in 1888, the RSDRP split into two factions in 1903 due to differences in political strategy: the Bolsheviks (majority) and the Mensheviks (minority). The Bolsheviks were led by Vladimir Lenin.

While a semblance of stability and order had returned to Russia by 1910, the country was still to experience continued labor unrest. By 1914, disgruntled Russian workers protested with demonstrations and numerous strikes throughout the empire. Then, on Sunday, June 28, 1914, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, precipitating Russia’s eventual entrance into the Great War. On August 1, 1914, Germany declared war on Russia, since the latter had ordered a mobilization of its forces in order to prevent Germany’s ally, Austria-Hungary, from destroying Serbia. Even though the Russian populace was beginning to lose its faith in Tsar Nicholas II because of his general incompetence and ineptitude in handling labor unrest and the country’s disastrous defeat in the Russo-Japanese War in August 1905, a full, and perhaps astounding, 96 percent of all eligible draftees called up in the mobilization reported for military service.¹⁸ Vasily Zarubin, age twenty, was among those who answered the call, and his world was about to be turned upside down.

World War I

With its entry into the war, the Russian army in the field totaled 3.5 million soldiers and was described by the British press as the Russian steam roller.¹⁹ It was anticipated that Russia would constitute a formidable force against the German war machine and, consequently, the war would be a short one. These considerations, however, would prove to be completely unfounded due to very serious problems that the army would encounter in a relatively short period of time. While the Russian army had some early successes in the autumn of 1914, by the end of that year it had suffered the loss of over one million soldiers killed or wounded in action. In addition, shortages in supplies, weapons, and munitions greatly affected the morale of the army. These losses and shortages were to continue throughout the various campaigns.

After three months of marching in a training battalion,²⁰ Vasily Zarubin began his military service as a private and was assigned to the Thirty-third Yeletsky (variation of Eletsky, below) Regiment, Ninth Infantry Division, on the southwestern front.²¹

While very little is known about Zarubin’s military service, one writer, Bernard Pares, a roving Red Cross official, and later British historian embedded with Russian forces during World War I, wrote about his own encounter with the Yeletsky Regiment in battle against Austrian forces in Galicia in 1915 in his book, My Russian Memoirs:

This particular regiment, the Eletsky, while standing in these trenches, had suffered almost as many casualties as one might have in action, and no wonder. It held a long but very shallow bridgehead beyond the river. At one point, the Austrians were eight yards off. It was connected with our bank by three bridges, all of which were continuously under fire every day and at night the Austrians fired pretty frequently on chance. We got across in a lull, and I was round the works. At one point, they told me to look up just for a minute and then duck my head, and as I ducked it a bullet flew over it. One could look through the embrasures, but not direct as they were covered by the enemy with fixed rifles; the men had invented clever little mirrors for themselves, through which they could see sideways. Between the two lines lay a whole mass of Russian and Austrian dead, who had been there for many days and were bound to poison the air. A proposal from the Austrian side to remove them was refused from ours—a responsible enough decision, and later, after we had lost Galicia I heard that many of these corpses were dragged away for burial with hooks fixed into them because no one dared touch them. As we were going to sleep in my companion’s shelter we heard the bullets thudding into the earth of our trenches, and it occurred to me to ask if our shelter was proof against shrapnel. I don’t know, said my young host casually, and on that we went to sleep.²²

Pares reported that some time later he again ran into the Eletsky Regiment and learned that only about eight or nine of the thirty or so officers whom he had previously met had survived.²³

Based on the above description of warfare on the southwestern front, it can be assumed that Zarubin had seen some intense and brutal fighting while assigned to that unit. In fact, during this assignment, he was wounded on the battlefield, probably in February 1915, and sent to a hospital in Voronezh, approximately ninety miles south of the city of Yelets. He was later assigned to the Fifty-eighth Reserve Infantry Regiment since, in all probability, those wounded soldiers who had recovered were placed in that unit.²⁴

Up until 1915, there is no indication that Zarubin had become involved in revolutionary or anti-government politics, either as a civilian or as a soldier. The war, however, was to have had a profound effect on him in this regard since it is reported that while serving in the army he became involved in carrying out anti-war propaganda and consequently was sent to a penal company.†²⁵ The exact period for this activity is not known but was probably in late 1916 or early 1917.

In the biographical novel, Reklamnoye byuro gospodina Kocheka (Mr. Koček’s Advertising Bureau), the fictional hero, Vasily Maksimov, who is identifiable with Vasily Zarubin, reminisces about his wartime experiences. In a flashback, he is assigned to an automobile company as a chauffeur and, when the officers are not around, he and others in the company are able to talk freely. One soldier, Zabrodin, a former participant in the insurgency connected with Red Presnya and who was then jailed for eight years for this activity, identifies himself to the others as a Bolshevik. Maksimov recognizes that Zabrodin has seen and read a great deal and admires him for being the first person who has opened his eyes to the true state of affairs. Maksimov doesn’t know who the Bolsheviks are and is afraid to ask.

On one occasion, Zabrodin begins talking to the others about the difficulties of the soldiers’ lives because they have to sit in damp trenches, freeze, and eat lice so that others can live comfortably in warmth. Other soldiers recognize the hopelessness and injustice of it all and wonder aloud if there is any way out. Zabrodin replies that the answer is to end the war and go home! Another soldier asks whether the Germans wouldn’t desecrate their homeland if they abandoned the fight? Zabrodin replies that the Germans are soldiers, too, and these hapless creatures would understand if told to end the war and return home. That night, Maksimov mulls over what Zabrodin has said earlier about ending the war—could it be so simple to end it by simply dropping their weapons?²⁶

Later, in a second flashback, Maksimov recalls the February days (February Revolution of 1917) when the soldiers had become fed up with the senseless carnage, the damp trenches, the cold, hunger, [and] the filth. The tsar had been overthrown, but still the newly established Provisional Government wanted to continue the war to the end. Zabrodin is no longer around because he was removed from the unit by the military command and sent to the forward positions. Still, there are Bolshevik sympathizers in the company who, along with Maksimov, begin to shout, Down with war! He also participates in a demonstration and carries a red cloth bearing the slogan, All power to the Soviets! When asked by one of the soldier-mechanics which party he supported, Maksimov responds without thinking, Lenin’s Party! This individual then asks why he doesn’t join the Bolsheviks, and Maksimov replies that he doesn’t know how. He is then told to get an application and write that he wants to become a member of the party of the Bolsheviks in order to fight against the bourgeoisie and landowners, all the way to world revolution. The soldier realizes that Vasily comes from a worker’s family, and that his place is with the Bolsheviks. And so, the fictitious Vasily Maksimov returns to Moscow from the war as a young Communist.²⁷

In reality, Vasily Zarubin (like Zabrodin in the flashback) was sent to a penal company and onto the front for his subversive activities. In March 1917, he was again wounded and subsequently returned to Voronezh for treatment. Upon his return to his unit, Zarubin was elected to a Company Committee for Soldiers’ Deputies.²⁸ This, and similar committees, were formed on the basis of Order No. 1 issued by the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers’ Deputies on March 1, 1917. The deputies were, in fact, revolutionary leaders who intended to guide the revolution. In essence, all military units would elect representatives from the rank and file who would be subject to the authority of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Also, all weapons were to remain under the control of the committees and not the officers loyal to the government.²⁹

Based on his election to the military committee, Zarubin was obviously respected by his peers and, by this time, known for his own revolutionary zeal and sympathies with the Bolsheviks. No information is available regarding Zarubin’s activities with respect to the committee; however, it must be assumed that he would have followed the Soviet’s directives and worked against anything considered to be of benefit to the bourgeoisie or capitalist position in Russia. The Bolshevik position called for demobilization and an immediate cessation to the war.

After the initial revolution of February 1917, many soldiers deserted their units or simply refused to fight. Russia’s participation in the war came to a virtual end in early November with the overthrow of the Provisional Government by the Bolsheviks.

Zarubin was dismissed from the Russian army for health reasons by January 1918, and he returned to Moscow where he worked as a clerk for the firm Volzhskaya Manufaktura, a textile mill. Later, in February 1918, he returned to work at the Lyzhin cloth firm as an assistant storekeeper of a warehouse.³⁰

Civil War and War Communism

On November 6–7, 1917, Lenin and the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government in Petrograd and seized power. Shortly thereafter, pro-Bolshevik Red Guards seized Moscow. Because of their radical agenda, it was to be expected that the Bolsheviks would acquire a conglomerate of adversaries: the so-called Whites or White Guard, comprised of monarchists, former tsarist officers and soldiers; Mensheviks and members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR), a party representing the interest of peasants in the countryside; the bourgeoisie; and the Russian Orthodox Church. In addition, the Bolsheviks ended the war with Germany and ratified the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918, which, as a consequence, brought thousands of Allied soldiers from Great Britain, France, and the United States into Russia to support the anti-Bolshevik Whites. These were, of course, all labeled as counterrevolutionaries and regarded as serious threats to the new Soviet regime.

In order to counter their numerous opponents, the Bolsheviks proclaimed the dogma of War Communism in 1918. This was essentially a call for mobilization for support in the civil war and based on Communist ideology for the transformation of Russian society. War Communism continued to the end of the civil war in 1920.

In April 1918, at the age of twenty-four, Vasily Zarubin became a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) [VKP (b)].³¹ Obviously, his initiation into the party was based primarily on his work in the military committee and, following Lenin’s dictum, his desire to devote his entire life to the revolution. He was undoubtedly a true believer in the Communist worldview and would remain one his entire life.

It was during this period (i.e., 1917–18) in Moscow, that Zarubin met the woman who would become his first wife, Olga Georgievna Vasilyeva. She resided with her parents in a log-cabin house near Plyushchevo, a village several miles west of the center of Moscow. The couple met at some sort of festival that took place at a park with a nearby monastery, possibly the Spaso-Andronikov Monastery. When he courted her in the city, Zarubin would take her home in a horse-drawn cab but then return on foot to his residence in Taganka to avoid an additional expense. Olga’s mother, who often referred to Zarubin as commissar, wanted the couple to be married in the church; however, since the Bolsheviks had abolished religious marriage ceremonies in 1917, they were married in a civil ceremony.³²

During the Russian Civil War, Zarubin began his service in the Red Army in September 1918 as a commander of a detachment of the Thirty-fifth Reserve for the Rogozhko-Samonovsky Regiment of the elite Eighth Army of the Southern Front. From February until June 1919, he was chief of Mounted (Calvary) Communication and assistant to the chief of staff for the operational section of the First Brigade, First Moscow Workers Division of the Southern Front.³³ Zarubin was wounded during this latter assignment and subsequently hospitalized for a considerable period of time in Voronezh and Moscow. Specifically, while engaged in organizational work in Voronezh, he sustained a very serious spinal wound that required him to be tied down on his back on a flat, hard bed for seven months.³⁴ After recovery, Zarubin was assigned as an instructor-inspector (instructor-kontrolyor) for the Twenty-fourth Brigade of the Troops of Internal Security of the Republic, an auxiliary armed guard for the Orlovsky Sector. From October 1920, Zarubin was an assignments officer under the chief of the Fifth Division of the Internal Security Forces in the city of Kozlov.³⁵

By all accounts, fighting between the Reds and the Whites was brutal and based on the simple premise that the opposition had to be completely annihilated. Countless atrocities were committed by both sides, and neither could claim any moral high ground because of their brutality, violence, and inhumanity toward the other. It is estimated that during the civil war approximately five hundred thousand people, both combatants and civilians, lost their lives through killings and executions.

Zarubin’s official duties during the civil war are not specifically known. An article regarding Zarubin in a Russian periodical dealing with intelligence and security issues, however, mentions in passing that he took part in the fight against banditism in the Tambov and Voronezh Provinces.³⁶ This activity presumably coincided with his duties after recovery from his spinal injuries and involved the Bolshevik struggles against the Green Movement in the black-earth or fertile agricultural region of southeastern Russia. Zarubin was no longer involved in actual fighting since he was assigned to assisting commanders in the field to ensure that their orders were carried out.³⁷

In 1918, the Bolsheviks realized that the revolution’s survival depended on peasant grain to feed the masses. Instead of purchasing the grain through concessions from the peasants, the Bolsheviks relied on coercive requisition during the entire period of War Communism. Gangs of armed workers, peasants, and Red Army soldiers attacked wealthy peasants (kulaks) and confiscated their grain as well as seed for the following year’s harvest. The ordinary peasant was not exempt from the requisitioning. Eventually, the peasants organized, and many turned against the Soviet regime out of fear and distrust. Many peasants joined with bandits (armed partisans) in the Tambov area (located approximately 250 miles southeast of Moscow) who called themselves Greens, presumably because they lived in the nearby forests. The Greens and their movement were led by Aleksandr Stepanovich Antonov, a former member of the SR who was opposed to the Bolsheviks. The peasants also formed another anti-Bolshevik organization, the Union of the Working Peasants in May 1920. This organization opposed the Bolsheviks for, among other things, their anti-religion position and, of course, their policy of forced requisition of peasant grain.

The insurrection or revolt began in August 1920 in Tambov Province but quickly spread to Voronezh Province and, ostensibly, areas immediately adjacent, including Orlovskiy (Orel Province) and the city of Kozlov (now Michurinsk) where, as noted above, Zarubin served.

Initially, the new government sent internal security units as well as the elite troops from the Special Purpose Detachments to quell the revolt. They were not successful, and Lenin himself, having recognized the threat, demanded that the revolt be swiftly and completely eliminated. In February 1921, the Bolshevik Central Committee established the Plenipotentiary Commission for the Liquidation of Banditry in Tambov Province, and earnest preparations were made to crush the insurrection. By early May 1921, the Bolsheviks managed to destroy Antonov’s Green Movement, and most of the Union of the Working Peasants’ leaders were arrested and their effectiveness nullified.³⁸

During the period of his absence in the civil war, Zarubin’s daughter, Zoya, was born on April 4, 1920, in the village of Plyushchevo. In the same year, his father, Mikhail, died of typhus,³⁹ a disease that was common among railroad workers who frequently traveled to the countryside where such diseases were widespread.⁴⁰ As Vasily Zarubin noted in a handwritten biography, his father died while on assignment on the eastern front during the civil war as chief of a head-technical train.⁴¹

And so, within in a period of six years, Vasily Zarubin had survived two violent wars, serious wounds, one of which left him incapacitated for several months, and a revolution. Prior to this, he had had a somewhat difficult childhood with perhaps little more than a primary education and civilian work experience as a clerical employee. Nevertheless, he had certain innate abilities which would serve him well in the future and, perhaps more important, he considered himself privileged to be a Bolshevik, a member of the Russian Communist Party.

NOTES

¹ Biographical data for Vasily Zarubin and members of his family was obtained from several sources:

• Aleksandr Kolpakidi and Dmitry Prokhorov, Vsyo o vneshney razvedke [Everything about foreign intelligence] (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo OLIMP, 2002), 37–38.

• Peter Zarubin, (son of Vasily Zarubin), e-mails to the author: May 18, 2005, August 11, 2005, September 8, 2005, and April 29, 2007.

• Zoya Zarubina, (daughter of Vasily Zarubin), interview by the author in Moscow, Russia on October 8, 2004.

• Peter Zarubin, interview by the author in Moscow, October 8, 2004.

• As an attachment to the e-mail dated August 11, 2005, Peter Zarubin forwarded a two page handwritten document dated October 6, 1946, and signed by his father, Vasily Mikhaylovich Zarubin entitled Biografiya. This brief (auto) biography and translation is found in the Appendixes section.

It is noted that some biographies list Vasily Zarubin’s birthdate as January 22, 1894. This is the Old Style based on the Julian calendar that was thirteen days behind the New Style or Gregorian calendar. The New Style calendar was adopted in the Soviet Union in February 1918.

In his handwritten autobiography, Zarubin lists his place of birth as Moscow while other biographies list Podolsk. The most detailed biography is found in the cited Vsyo o vneshney razvedke, (supra), and lists Panino, Moscow Province. This may be the most accurate since the writers of this book are presumed to have had access to Zarubin’s personnel file maintained by Soviet/Russian intelligence.

The following information regarding Zarubin’s four sisters and brothers was obtained during interview with Zoya Zarubina in Moscow, October 8, 2004, and Peter Zarubin’s e-mails to author on August 11, 2005, and September 8, 2005:

1. Aleksandra Mikhaylovna Zarubina, the eldest, was one year older than Vasily Zarubin. She was married, no children, and served as the second mother to the other children. She worked in the Strela (Arrow), a food distribution shop located near the Lubyanka, headquarters for the Cheka, the Soviet security and intelligence services. This shop provided rationed food for the personnel and families of the Moscow state security headquarters during World War II. The shop was the largest one in the Third Expedition, which is described below. In the early 1920s, her husband was employed by the local Moscow Cheka in its Railroad Department, later known as the Transport Department. He may have assisted Vasily Zarubin in beginning his Cheka career.

2. Varvara Mikhaylovna Zarubina became an invalid after her son was killed during World War II. She had attempted suicide during the war years.

3. Anna Mikhaylovna Zarubina was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and was employed as an assistant chief in the Secretariat, the administrative staff for state security. Later, she worked in the Second Chief Directorate (counterintelligence) of the KGB, while her husband was involved in technical intelligence collection for the KGB. Their son, Alexander, who died in 2003, had been a Soviet expert on Chinese affairs.

4. Olimpiada Mikhaylovna Zarubina was a member of the CPSU who, during World War II, directed the Third Expedition, the rationed-food distribution system for the Soviet state security headquarters in Moscow. She was married to Pavel Vrangler, a prosthodontist employed at the KGB polyclinic located near the Lubyanka.

5. Sergei Mikhaylovich Zarubin, brother, a candidate member of the CPSU and a junior military officer who was killed at the front during the early period of World War II. Specifically, he was a military intelligence officer assigned to the Moscow Military District. Sergei was married and his wife, Yevgeniya Ivanovna Zarubina, became very close to members of the Zarubin family. Sergei reportedly always looked up to his older brother, Vasily.

² Henry Reichman, Railwaymen and Revolution: Russia, 1905 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 44.

³ Zoya Zarubina, interview by the author, Moscow, October 8, 2004.

⁴ Reichman, Railwaymen and Revolution, 108.

⁵ Peter Zarubin, interview by the author, Moscow, October 8, 2004.

⁶ Peter Zarubin, e-mail to the author, August 11, 2005.

⁷ Zoya Zarubina, interview by the author, Moscow, October 8, 2004.

⁸ Zoya Voskresenskaya [Zoya Rybkina], Tayna Zoyi Voskresenskoy [Zoya Voskresenskaya’s secrets] (Moscow: OLMA-PRESS, 1998), 271–272. Zoya Rybkina served in Soviet military intelligence during World War II and in March 1945 received the title Hero of the Soviet Union. See Anatoly Valentinovich Dienko, comp., Razvedka i kontrrazvedka v litsakh: Entsiklopedichiskiy slovar’ ’rossiyskikh spetssluzhb [Intelligence and counterintelligence portraits: Encyclopedia of Russian special services] (Moscow: Russkiy Mir’, 2002), 431.

⁹ Peter Zarubin, e-mail to the author, August 11, 2005.

¹⁰ Victoria E. Bonnell, ed., Introduction, in The Russian Worker: Life and Labor under the Tsarist Regime (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 8–9.

¹¹ E.A. Oliunina, The Tailoring Trade in Moscow and the Villages of Moscow and Riazan Provinces: Material on the History of the Domestic Industry in Russia, 178; and A.M. Gudvan, Essays on the History of the Movement of Sales-Clerical Workers in Russia, 188–189, in The Russian Worker, ed. Victoria E. Bonnell.

¹² Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Vsyo o vneshney razvedke, 37–38.

¹³ A.M. Gudvan, Essays on the History of the Movement of Sales-Clerical Workers in Russia, in The Russian Worker, ed. Victoria E. Bonnell, 202–203.

¹⁴ W. Bruce Lincoln. In Wars Dark Shadow: The Russians before the Great War (New York: Dial Press, 1983), 285.

¹⁵ Ibid., 305–309.

¹⁶ Peter Zarubin, interview by the author, Moscow, October 8, 2004.

¹⁷ Ervin Stavinsky [Yevgeny Dmitriyevich Poleshchuk], interview by the author, in Moscow on October 14, 2004. Stavinsky is the author of Zarubiny: Semyeynaya rezidentura [The Zarubins: A domestic residency]. This book contains information regarding the intelligence exploits of Zarubin and his wife, Elizaveta, in various countries and is referenced throughout this book.

¹⁸ W. Bruce Lincoln, Passage through Armageddon: The Russian in War and Revolution, 1914-1918 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), 47.

¹⁹ Nicholas N. Golovin, The Russian Army in World War I (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1969), 53.

²⁰ Varteks Tevekelyan, Reklamnoye byuro gospodina Kocheka [Mr. Koček’s advertising agency] (Moscow: Moskovskiy pisatel’, 1970) available at http://www.lib.ru/RUSS_DETEKTIW/TEWEKELYAN/buro.txt, 17 (originally accessed July 18, 2002; accessed on numerous other occasions and dates not noted). The author utilized the electronic site for translating from the original Russian due to the limited availability of the book in the United States; see also Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Vsyo o vneshney razvedke, 38.

²¹ Bernard Pares, My Russian Memoirs (London: J. Cape, 1931), 300–301.

²² Ibid., 307.

²³ Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Vsyo o vneshney razvedke, 38; also Peter Zarubin e-mail to author, April 29, 2007, in which he noted that his father was probably first wounded on the battlefield in February 1915 and hospitalized in Voronezh. He added that his father was wounded twice during World War I, once by shrapnel and then by contusion or psychological trauma that was common among soldiers involved in intense artillery battles.

²⁴ Kopalkidi and Prokhorov, Vsyo o vneshney razvedke, 38.

²⁵ Ibid., 38

²⁶ Tevekelyan, available at www.lib.ru/RUSS_DETEKTIW/TEWEKELYAN/buro.txt, 17.

²⁷ Ibid., 44–45.

²⁸ Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Vsyo o vneshney razvedke, 38.

²⁹ Lincoln, Passage through Armageddon, 349–350.

³⁰ Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Vsyo o vneshney razvedke, 38; also Peter Zarubin, e-mail to author, April 29, 2007.

³¹ Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Vsyo o vneshney razvedke, 38.

³² Peter Zarubin, e-mail to the author, July 17, 2005; also, Zoya Zarubina interview by the author, Moscow, October 8, 2004.

³³ Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Vsyo o vneshney razvedke, 38.

³⁴ Peter Zarubin, interview by the author, Moscow, October 8, 2004; also, Peter Zarubin, e-mail to author, April 29, 2007.

³⁵ Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Vsyo o vneshney razvedke, 38.

³⁶ Vladimir Karpov, Nelegali Zarubiny: Sovetskaya razvedka v litsakh, [The Zarubin illegals: Soviet intelligence portraits], Novosti razvedki i kontrrazvedki [Intelligence and counterintelligence news], No. 1, (58), 1996. According to the article, Vladimir Karpov is described as being a consultant with the press office of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia, the successor of the foreign intelligence branch of the former KGB.

³⁷ Peter Zarubin, interview by the author, Moscow, October 8, 2004.

³⁸ Seth Singleton, The Tambov Revolt (1920-1921) Slavic Review 25 (September 1980): 497–512.

³⁹ Peter Zarubin, interview by the author, Moscow, October 8, 2004.

⁴⁰ Reichman, Railwaymen and Revolution, 103–104.

⁴¹ Peter Zarubin, e-mail to author, September 8, 2005. According to Peter Zarubin, a head-technical train was some type of mobile repair facility found on a train that could be sent wherever needed to perform repair work.

Chapter 2

The Cheka

A good Communist is, at the same time, a good Chekist.

—Vladimir Lenin, April 3, 1920¹

One of the very first organizations to be established by the Bolshevik government after the November Revolution was the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya: VChK) known as the Cheka‡, the new political police and state security agency geared to combat counterrevolutionaries. Lenin realized the necessity of preserving the new order that he and the Bolsheviks had created in Russia. He also recognized that terror would be needed to suppress and exterminate any and all opposition that was considered to be counterrevolutionary. The opposition was any organization, political party, or group of individuals that had roots in the former monarchy or bourgeoisie.

On December 20, 1917, only six weeks after the November Revolution, the Council of People’s Commissariat (Sovnarkom), which was essentially the new Soviet government under Lenin’s chairmanship, created the Cheka. It is important to note that, since it was subordinate to the Sovnarkom, the Cheka was destined to be controlled by the Communist Party. The person chosen to organize and direct the new political police agency, or organ in Soviet parlance, was Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, a close friend of Lenin who wholeheartedly agreed with his vision of terror.² In describing the revolution, Dzerzhinsky made the following speech to the Sovnarkom on December 20:

We need to send to that front—the most dangerous and cruel of fronts—determined, hard, dedicated comrades ready to do anything in defense of the Revolution. Do not think that I seek forms of revolutionary justice; we are not now in need of justice. It is war now—face to face, a fight to the finish. Life or death!… I propose, I demand an organ for the revolutionary settlement of accounts with the counter-revolutionaries. And we must act not tomorrow, but today, now…³

Originally, the Cheka was divided into three departments:

(1) Information, (2) Organization, and (3) Department for Combating Counterrevolutionaries. On December 24, the Department for Combating Speculation was added.⁴ As with all organizations, numerous additional departments would be created in the future to meet its requirements. It is noted that by the end of 1917 there were only twenty-three individuals assigned to it, and by mid-January 1918 the number had risen to approximately one hundred.⁵ By December 1921, however, the Cheka’s personnel numbered 143,000, and this did not include its nearly 100,000 frontier troops.⁶

On January 1, 1919, the Cheka created a Special Department (Osobiy otdel), commonly abbreviated as OO) to ensure party control of the military as well as to combat counterrevolution and espionage in the army and the navy.⁷ In the field, the OOs participated in the suppression of peasant insurrections such as the Tambov Revolt.⁸ It was, in fact, this department that spotted and recruited Zarubin for the Cheka while he was an assignment’s officer in the internal security forces. According to available and specific biographical information, Zarubin, a young, capable Red Army man, caught the attention of the Chekist Special Department of the Army and, in 1920, by its recommendation, was sent to work in the organs of the VChK.⁹ During this period, officers (sotrudniki) were recruited from among workers, soldiers, and sailors who had shown their value in the struggle for Soviet power. Cheka workers were expected to be brave, incorruptible, and devoted to the revolution. According to Dzerzhinsky’s well-known and quoted description, a Chekist had to have a warm heart, cool mind, and clean hands.¹⁰

Vasily Zarubin’s first assignment was with the Moscow Cheka, where he participated in the organization for the reconstruction of the collapsed military railroad-transport system. The Russian railway system was in a shambles after World War I and the ensuing civil war. By 1921, many of the locomotives and much of the rolling stock were rusting away and awaiting repairs. In addition, the condition of the track was poor since much of the civil war was fought along the railroad lines. The lack of railroad-technical workers, repair shops, and the military mismanagement of the railroads very likely wreaked havoc on the entire system. From a practical standpoint, the virtual loss of the system meant that there was little movement of fuels for industry and distribution of grains.¹¹ To make matters worse, a devastating famine was spreading across Russia.

Because of these obstacles and impending hardships, the Sovnarkom had originally established the Cheka Railroad Department (Zheleznodorozhniy otdel) in August 1918 and assigned its main task as combating counterrevolution, speculation and sabotage on the railways.¹² Speculation in Soviet terminology essentially meant private trade which, because of the existing acute shortages of many goods, resulted in a thriving black market in numerous sectors of the economy.¹³ In addition, a principal concern for the Cheka in this area related to corrupt public officials in state enterprises who engaged in misappropriation, forgery, and other economic crimes. To gauge the importance that the Cheka placed on controlling and reconstructing the transport system, Felix Dzerzhinsky himself was appointed to an additional position as people’s commissar of Ways of Communication in April 1921. At this post, he would have intensified efforts against mismanagement and corruption in the Russian transportation system.¹⁴

Zarubin’s specific first assignment in the Cheka began in January 1921, when he was named assistant to the representative for combating speculation with the Regional Transport Cheka in Moscow. It is not known for certain how Zarubin was recruited and placed in this unit; however, a brother-in-law may have been instrumental, since he worked in this same unit during this period.¹⁵ In any event, within five months, in May 1921, he was appointed authorized agent (upolnomochenniy§) and assistant chief of the Secret-Operational Section¶ (Sekretno-operativnaya chast’) and then promoted to chief of this section with the Cheka Rail-Transport Department in Moscow.¹⁶

Zarubin resided in Moscow with his family during 1921–22, years that coincided with a great famine, causing the death of millions as it spread across Russia. To help his family survive, he joined a musical group that performed local concerts and accepted food as compensation. He would bring home whatever was available, for example, herring, cooking oil, etc.¹⁷ He was by nature musically gifted and had learned to play the balalaika while he was a teenager. Before World War I, he played this instrument in a semiprofessional musical company. In addition, he had learned to play the piano and guitar and reportedly never had any specific musical instruction, always playing be ear, never by printed music.¹⁸

GPU–OGPU

On February 6, 1922, the Cheka was abolished and reorganized into the GPU, the State Political Directorate (Gosudarstvennoye politicheskoye upravleniye). In general, it maintained the powers of the Soviet state security organ, and Dzerzhinsky remained its chairman. In July 1923, the GPU was renamed the OGPU, the United State Political Directorate (Obyedinennoye gosudarstvennoye politicheskoye upravleniye) with Dzerzhinsky continuing on as chairman. The OGPU was under the direct control of the Executive Committee of the Communist Party (Politburo) of the Soviet Union. Zarubin, of course, continued on as junior officer of the GPU and then the OGPU.

Zarubin’s next assignment would require him to travel across the immense land mass of Russia to the Primorye Territory (Primorskiy kray) in the Soviet Far East. In April 1922, he was assigned to the Seventeenth Primorsk Corps in Nikolsk-Ussuriisk and served as deputy chief of the OO, or Special Department.¹⁹ This corps was under the GPU’s Far Eastern Department and was essentially a military counterintelligence unit.

Soviet Far East–Vladivostok

While the White Guards in Siberia had been largely defeated by Red forces in January 1920 at Irkutsk, numerous anti-Bolshevik groups banded together a year later in Vladivostok to confront the Reds and attempt to create a real counterrevolution against the Bolsheviks. These White insurgents (belopovstantsy) had some initial brief successes but were ultimately defeated during the late fall of 1922 at Spassk and Nikolsk-Ussuriisk, where it is probable that Zarubin’s unit saw military action.²⁰ In November 1922, the Far Eastern