Semyon Grigoryevich Firin

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Matwei Berman together with leading GULAG bosses (second from right: Semjon Firin) during the celebration of May 1, 1934

Semyon Grigoryevich Firin ( Russian Семён Григорьевич Фирин * thirtieth June 1898 in Vilnius , Russian Empire as Semyon Matussewitsch Pupko Russian Семён Матусевич Пупко ; † 14. August 1937 in Moscow , Soviet Union ) was a Soviet intelligence officer. He was deputy chief of the Gulag and head of the Belbaltlag penal camp ( Белбалтлаг ) for the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal and Dmitrowlag ( Дмитровлаг ) for the construction of the Moscow-Volga Canal . In 1937, during the Great Terror , he was sentenced to death on false charges and shot.

Life

Early years

Firin was born into a Jewish family. He worked as an unskilled worker in a shoe factory in Vitebsk . In 1916 he was drafted into the tsarist army , fought on the Riga front in World War I and later deserted. He took part in the February Revolution in Petrograd and the October Revolution in Moscow . In 1918 he joined the Communist Party of Russia (B) .

Firin took part in the Russian Civil War. He fought in Belarus and Lithuania in the forests around Vilnius and Kaunas . From January to April 1919 he was in command of a partisan unit of the Red Army . In 1919 he took part in battles against Lithuanian and Polish White Guards at Ukmergė and in Panevėžys district . From February to September 1920 he worked in the political department of the Western Front.

Service in the military intelligence service with the staff of the Red Army

From December 1920 Firin was a member of the reconnaissance department in the staff of the Red Army. In 1921/22 he supported the work of the agent Artur Staschewski in Berlin . He then worked for the Soviet trade agency, the Red Cross and the Union for Returning Home in Bulgaria until 1923 . There he coordinated the work of the residency of the GPU secret police under the leadership of Boris Basarow and Christo Bojew, a spy of Bulgarian origin. Firin was one of the editors of the Russian-language newspaper New Russia in Bulgaria , the aim of which was the return of the White Army soldiers who had fled the Crimean peninsula .

In 1923 he also worked in Paris and from August 1923 to January 1924 in Berlin. There he worked under the pseudonym M. Petrow at the military apparatus of the Representation of the USSR in Germany. Firin was involved in the preparation of the German October , the plan for an armed coup in Germany, and directed the illegal military apparatus of the KPD .

Firin worked in Poland from September 1924 to May 1925, where he created an illegal residence for the Soviet military secret service GRU .

From May 1926 to April 1929 he was Deputy Head of the 2nd Division of the GRU in the Red Army Staff and was available to the GRU in the Red Army staff until January 1930.

From April to September 1930, Firin head of the Department counterintelligence of the GPU. Subsequently, until June 1932, he was first an employee of the bosses and later himself head of the special department of the GPU. From June 1932 he worked for the head of the Soviet prison camp system GULAG . In the same year he became head of the Belbaltlag camp for the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal and one of the editors of the book The Stalin-White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal . In September 1933 he became head of the Dmitrovlag near Dmitrov near Moscow, which was created for the construction of the Moscow-Volga Canal .

Arrest and death

On orders from the NKVD , Firin was arrested in April 1937 and charged with preparing an overthrow with the help of inmates from the Dmitrovlag. He was also accused of having been recruited by an officer of the Polish General Staff during his stay in Warsaw in 1926 and of having given him the resident Ignati Sosnowski. Furthermore, Firin is said to have betrayed the Soviet residences in Warsaw, Vienna and Germany. On June 7, 1937, all medals were stripped from him for “betrayal of secrets and counter-revolutionary activity”. On August 14, 1937, he was sentenced to death by the court martial of the Supreme Court of the USSR and shot on the same day in the Kommunarka execution site in Moscow. His grave is in the Donskoy cemetery .

Just a week after Firin, on August 22, 1937, his wife Sofja Aleksandrovna Zalesskaya, a Soviet agent who had been awarded the Order of the Red Banner, was also shot.

On June 2, 1956, Firin was rehabilitated.

Awards

literature

Web links

Commons : Semyon Firin  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Novaya Rossija, No. 1, October 29, 1922 (accessed September 22, 2019)
personal data
SURNAME Firin, Semyon Grigoryevich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pupko, Semjon Matusewitsch (maiden name); Фирин, Семён Григорьевич (Russian); Пупко, Семён Матусевич (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Soviet intelligence officer
DATE OF BIRTH June 30, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Vilnius , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 1937
Place of death Moscow , Soviet Union