Genrikh Lyushkov

Genrikh Samoilovich Lyushkov (; 1900 – 19 August 1945) was a Soviet secret police officer. A high-ranking officer of the NKVD, he played a role in implementing Stalin's Great Purge. When, in 1938, he suspected he would soon fall victim to the purge, he fled to Japan, becoming the highest-ranking NKVD defector in the organization's history. Thereafter, he acted as a major source of intelligence for Imperial Japan about the Soviet Union. At the end of World War II, he was killed by the Japanese in order to prevent him from falling back into Soviet hands.

Early life Lyushkov was born in Odessa in the Russian Empire in 1900. His Jewish father supported him and his siblings as a tailor. He began his education in 1908 in a state-owned, six-classroom school, continuing there until 1915. While in school, he was influenced by his brother (a member of the Bolshevik underground) to join the Bolshevik Party and take part in the Russian Revolution several years later.

In April 1919, he received political training in Kiev for the Ukrainian People's Republic. During this time, the Russian Civil War broke out and after his graduation in September of that year, Lyushkov was assigned to the Red Army's 14th Army for political work, where he saw combat against Poles and the White Russian forces of Anton Denikin. By then, he was a fully-fledged political commissar and had received the Order of the Red Banner.

His defection was initially kept a state secret by Japan, but the revelation of his defection was judged to have a high propaganda value, so the decision was made to release the news to the world. A press conference was arranged at a Tokyo hotel on 13 July, a month after Lyushkov had defected. He "categorically denied Moscow's allegation that he was an imposter" but some news agencies, such as the New York Times wondered if he was telling the truth.

During subsequent interviews and interactions with Japanese military personnel, Lyushkov adopted an anti-Stalinist position. However, his professed political views remained socialistic in nature according to the recollections of some Japanese intelligence officers, with Lyushkov calling himself a Trotskyite, but some Japanese officers believed that he had later become a liberal communist. Though Lyushkov was anti-Stalinist, he was resistant to the idea of creating a new regime led by Russian émigrés. He was, however, willing to include them in a proposed plan for assassination of Stalin.

A resistance group of Russian emigrants would travel across the Turkish-Soviet border when Stalin would travel south to a resort in Sochi, which he had visited previously to swim in the Matsesta River. Lyushkov's intimate knowledge of NKVD procedures and the way Stalin's guard detail would be organised encouraged the Japanese to support the plan. However, a Soviet agent had infiltrated the group of Russian exiles and foiled the plan, which was considered the only serious attempt to assassinate Stalin.

Kuksin, Ilya. "ПОБЕГ СТОЛЕТИЯ" ("Escape of the Century"). Vestnik. Vol. 17, No. 224. 17 Aug 1999. Retrieved 3 March 2009. http://www.vestnik.com/issues/1999/0817/win/kuksin.htm (Russian)