Genrich Lyushkov: The story of the most high-ranking traitor of the Soviet intelligence service
5:30 p.m. June 13, 1936. Two Manchukuo border guards patrol the Changlintzu Plateau on the border between the coastal provinces of the Russian Federation of the Soviet Union (Приморский край, Primorsky Krai ') and the Japanese-controlled Manchukuo State in northeastern China. The site is located about 60 miles from Vladivostok, the capital of the Soviet "coastal province" and east of the city of Hunchun in Manchukuo.Patrolling border police spotted a suspect. The man looks not like the local Chinese or Koreans. As soon as the man in the coat and hunting cap moved within 15 feet of the border guards, they ordered the man to stop. The strange man obeyed the instructions and threw two pistols at the border guards, raised both hands and began to say something in an unknown language intended for the border guards.
The two border guards did not understand anything, but guessed that the man was probably speaking Russian. They arrested the man and took him to their headquarters. After questioning the man there, Manchukuo border police officers realized that the man they had arrested was no ordinary person. The man is the head of the entire Far East of the Soviet intelligence agency, a Soviet spymaster! The man's name is Genrich Lyushkov.
Lyushkov's full name was Genrich Samoilovich Lyushkov (Генрих Самойлович). Lyshkov was born in 1900 in the port city of Odessa in the then Russian Empire to an ethnically Russian and religiously Jewish family. His father, Samuel Lushkov, was a tailor by profession.According to the 1897 census, the city of Odessa had 36 Jewish inhabitants, and there were frequent anti-Semitic riots in the city. After 161, many Jews from Odessa migrated to Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, and Odessa was a stronghold of Zionism. Currently the city belongs to Ukraine.