Stanislav Shumovsky

Stanislav Shumovsky (, May 3 1902 - November 4 1984), known as Stan Shumovsky in U.S., was a Soviet former Red Army Soldier, aviator, covert intelligence agent and physicist. Codenamed Agent Blériot, Shumovsky operated in the United States where he along with others leaked aeronautical secrets back to his home country.

Biography Shumovsky was born in a Polish family in Zhytomyr, Volhynian Governorate. His mother, Amalia Fominichna Kaminskaya (1884-1933), was a pianist; his father, Adam Vikentievich Shumovsky (1873-1928), worked in a bank. He is the eldest of the family's three boys. His brother Theodor is a renowned scholar of Arabian studies. During the World War I, his family moved to Shamakhi, Azerbaijan. In 1919, he joined the Red Army and changed his nationality from 'Pole' to 'Ukrainian'. In the late 1920s, he studied at the aeromechanical faculty of Bauman Moscow State Technical University.

Discovery Archives By-Fellow Svetlana Lokhova at Churchill College, Cambridge discovered Shumovsky's real activity after reading documents and papers from the Mitrokhin Archive. In 2018 she published a book on Stanislav called 'The Spy Who Changed History '. He is believed to be a member of a wider Soviet program aimed at technology transfer from the USA.

Legacy

During the early Cold War, once either superpower could produce atom bombs, delivery of such bomb was of crucial importance. Since rocketry was still in its infancy and ICBMs had yet to be developed, long range bombers were the sole method of delivery. Shumovsky's espionage was an important part of providing a Soviet nuclear deterrent.