Vasily Mikhailovich Sarubin

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vasily Mikhailovich Sarubin ( Russian Василий Михайлович Зарубин ; * 1894 in Moscow , † 1972 ) was a Soviet intelligence officer.

Life

From 1920 to 1948 Sarubin was mainly in the service of Soviet foreign espionage. Together with his wife Elisabeta Sarubina, née Liza Rosenzweig , he was used as an illegal resident (agent leader). After brief assignments in South America, Japan and the USA, he went to Denmark for two years in 1927. He then moved to Paris with his wife, where he a. a. was involved in spying on the anti - Soviet All - Russian Military Union , an association of former officers of the tsarist army in exile. In 1930 he was involved in the kidnapping of General Alexander Kutepov , who emigrated to the Soviet Union.

In Berlin , his next post (1934–1938), he led, among other things, the Gestapo officer responsible for counter-espionage at the RSHA and SS-Hauptsturmführer Willy Lehmann (1884–1942). He officially worked in Berlin as a representative of the US film producer Paramount Pictures , according to legend, he was a US citizen of Czech origin.

After his return to Moscow in 1939, the new NKVD chief Lavrenti Beria accused him of spying for the Gestapo. On the website of the Russian foreign intelligence service SWR , which sees itself in the tradition of the Soviet services, it is noted that it survived the investigation "with great dignity".

After completing the investigation, Sarubin worked in the Moscow Lubyanka in the 7th Department, which was responsible for the Balkans and Greece. At the beginning of 1940 he conducted the questioning of the Polish officers interned there in the Koselsk special camp . After his stay in Koselsk, he wrote an instruction with precise instructions as to who among the Polish officers could be recruited for the NKVD and how. However, he had not recommended the overwhelming majority of the officers captured in Koselsk for further questioning. These were shot in Katyn in April and May 1940 . Polish historians therefore accuse Sarubin of having contributed to the extermination of the Polish elite in this way.

From 1941 to 1944 he was a resident in Washington, DC (as Vasily Zubilin ). Before he was sent to Washington, Stalin had personally explained to him his most important task: to work against rapprochement between the United States and the Third Reich , there must by no means be a separate peace in the West. At the same time, Sarubin was supposed to win informants in the American arms industry, especially in the atomic bomb project.

1943 was when FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover , an anonymous letter in Russian one, whose author several Soviet diplomats as agents of foreign intelligence NKGB called and called her real name. Among them was Sarubin alias Zubilin. He was said to have been involved in the shooting of 10,000 Poles near Molensk (sic !, obviously meaning Smolensk ).

The FBI observed Sarubin, who was also in contact with American communists and who, according to the US authorities, illegally sent them funds from Moscow. He had to leave the USA as a persona non grata .

He was awarded the Order of Lenin twice.

literature

  • Christopher Andrew : The Mitrokhin Archive . London 1999, pp. 162-165.
  • Tadeusz Grzesik, Wasilij Zarubin - cichy patron polskiej wymiany elit, in: Fronda , 55 (2010)
  • Robert J. Lamphere: The FBI-KGB War . 1986, pp. 27-29.
  • Zbrodnia katyńska w świetle dokumentów . Wyd. Gryf. London 1982, pp. 26-28.
  • GA Andrejenkowa, WM Sarubin i katynskoje delo, in: Westnik Katynskogo Memoriala , 14 (2014), pp. 67–80.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c G.A. Andrejenkowa, WM Sarubin i katynskoje delo, in: Westnik Katynskogo Memoriala , 14 (2014), pp. 70–73.
  2. ↑ Allen Weinstein / Alexander Vassiliev: The Haunted Wood. Soviet Espionage in America - the Stalin Era. New York 1999, pp. 111-114.
  3. ↑ Sluschba Vneschnej Raswedki Rossijskoj Federatsii - Sarubin Wassili Michailowitsch , accessed on July 14, 2015.
  4. ↑ Krzysztof Jasiewicz, Dwie twarze kombriga Zarubina, in: W sieci historii , 9.2015, p. 22.
  5. ↑ Piotr Lysakowski, Prasa niemiecka o Katyniu. Jak niemiecka propaganda przedstawiała w 1943 roku sprawę mordu popełnionego na polskich oficerach, in: Zeszyty katyńskie , 1.1990, p. 96.
  6. ↑ Janusz Zawodny: Katyn. Paris 1989, pp. 116-117.
  7. ↑ Wasilij Zarubin - cichy patron polskiej wymiany elit Fronda , 55 (2010).
  8. ↑ Christopher Andrew: The Mitrokhin Archive. The KGB in Europe and the West. London 1999, pp. 161-162.
  9. ↑ Stalin i cholodnaja vojna. Izd. Institute vseobščej istorii. Moscow 1998, pp. 147-148.
  10. ^ Copy of the letter with translation from the FBI archives on livejournal.com , accessed September 28, 2015.
  11. ↑ Joseph E. Persico: Roosevelt's Secret War. FDR and World War II Espionage. New York 2002, p. 377.
  12. ↑ Allen Weinstein / Alexander Vassiliev: The Haunted Wood. Soviet Espionage in America - the Stalin Era. New York 1999, p. 276.
personal data
SURNAME Sarubin, Vasily Michailowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zarubin, Vasily Mikhailovich; Зарубин, Василий Михайлович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Soviet intelligence officer
DATE OF BIRTH 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Moscow
DATE OF DEATH 1972