11 Facts About Georges Agabekov

Georges Sergeevich Agabekov was a Soviet Red Army soldier, Chekist, OGPU agent and Chief of OGPU Eastern Section.

Georges Agabekov fought in the Russian army from 1914 to 1916 during World War I In late 1916, he was sent to the Tashkent Praporshchiks school.

Georges Agabekov joined the Bolshevik Party in 1920 and soon afterward joined the Cheka.

Georges Agabekov partook in the Red Terror at Ekaterinburg and in the suppression of a peasant revolt in Tyumen.

In late 1926, Georges Agabekov was posted in Tehran as rezident of the OGPU Foreign Branch in Persia, where he was successful in obtaining foreign powers' secret codes, recruiting agents and fomenting animosity against the British by the local tribal leaders, but he failed in the task of dispatching back to the Soviet Union the defector Boris Bazhanov, Joseph Stalin's former assistant.

In late October 1929, Georges Agabekov left Odessa for Constantinople as an "illegal" rezident in Turkey, where he replaced the Trotskyist Yakov Blumkin, who was executed in Moscow.

Besides, Mikhail Trilisser, the chief of the OGPU Foreign Branch, whose patronage Georges Agabekov enjoyed, envisioned Constantinople as a base of future Soviet espionage activity for the entire Near East.

Georges Agabekov published two Russian-language books in Berlin, which had an autobiographical element.

Georges Agabekov stated that in 1929, the OGPU Foreign Branch actively used Armenian Apostolic Church clergy from both the Soviet Union and abroad for espionage.

Georges Agabekov is believed to have been killed by Soviet NKVD agents in the Pyrenees in August 1937 after a series of unsuccessful attempts on his life.

Georges Agabekov then served the Romanian secret police, which had provided him with a fortified house and a bodyguard near Bucharest.