Jan Chernyak

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Grave in the Preobrazhenskoye cemetery

Jan Tschernjak ( Russian Ян Петрович Черняк , Yiddish Yankel Pinkhusovitch Chernyak) (born April 6, 1909 in Chernivtsi , Austria-Hungary , now Ukraine ; † February 19, 1995 in Moscow ) was a Soviet spy who served from Switzerland during the Second World War controlled the Krone agent network . Among other things, he provided information about radar developments , Operation Barbarossa and the Citadel operation . He later spied in Great Britain and Canada , from where he passed on knowledge of nuclear weapons research to Moscow.

biography

Tschernjak lost both parents in anti-Jewish pogroms during the First World War and grew up in an orphanage. Due to his talent for languages ​​and his academic successes, he was able to start studying at the Technical University in Prague and became an electrical engineer. Presumably he later continued his studies in Berlin, where he joined the Communist Party and was approached by the Soviet secret service, which operated under the guise of the Comintern .

Before the war he worked in the administration of a Romanian artillery regiment with the rank of non-commissioned officer. From 1934 he was resident of the Soviet espionage in Romania. Due to the threat of exposure, he was evacuated to Moscow, where he learned Russian and was trained in secret service techniques. He then traveled to Switzerland in 1936, where he officially worked as a correspondent for TASS .

During the Second World War, he led a total of 35 spies on behalf of the GRU , including high-ranking sources in the high command of the Wehrmacht and in the private sector. He later spied on nuclear arms projects in the UK and Canada.

After the cryptographer Igor Gusenko defected, revealing the Soviet Union's espionage activities against the West, Chernyak was withdrawn to Russia and no longer used as an intelligence service. From 1950 he worked in Moscow as a translator for the TASS news agency . Ten days before his death he was honored with the Order of Hero of the Russian Federation  . At this point he was already in a coma due to illness.

In an article for the World Jewish Congress , the author Vladimir Levin writes that Jan Tscherniak is the model for the literary figure of Stierlitz . He is referring to the funeral address of Chief of Staff Mikhail Kolesnikov . According to this, it was Tschernjak who had forwarded the attack plans for the Citadel company to the Soviet Union.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Kate Connolly: Star of postwar German cinema was Soviet spy, declassified files show The Guardian, February 20, 2017.
  2. ↑ YAN CHERNYAK, A FORMER SOVIET INTELLIGENCE AGENT WHO RAN AN ELABORATE SPY NETWORK, DIED AP, February 20, 1995.
  3. ↑ Jan Tschernjak: The Soviet James Bond Russia Beyond the Headlines, May 5, 2016.
  4. ↑ Vladimir Levin: Stierlitz, first name Yankel June 2, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Tschernjak, Jan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Soviet spy, mainly in Germany during the Nazi era
DATE OF BIRTH April 6, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Chernivtsi , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH February 19, 1995
Place of death Moscow