Giorgi Agabekov: The first treacherous officer of the Soviet intelligence service
He was one of the 'children' of the Russian Revolution. He was a heroic fighter in the First World War and the Russian Civil War. He was instrumental in establishing Soviet rule in Central Asia and expanding Soviet intelligence in the Middle East. He was fluent in Russian, Armenian, Turkish, Persian and English. But in the irony of fate, that child of the Russian Revolution betrayed the Soviet state with the birth of a daughter and became the ultimate enemy of the state.
Giorgi Agabekov's real name was Giorgi Sergeyevich Artuyunov. He was born in 1795 in the city of Ashgabat, the capital of the then Russian Empire Jakaspikskaya Oblast (Закаспийская область, 'Trans-Caspian Territory'). The city of Ashgabat is now the capital of Turkmenistan. Agabekov's family was ethnically Armenian.Agabekov studied at a gymnasium in Tashkent, the capital of the then Russian Empire's Turkestan Governorate-General (генерал генерал-губернаторство). The city of Tashkent is currently the capital of Uzbekistan.
When Germany declared war on Russia on August 1, 1914, Russia became embroiled in World War I. Agabekov, 19, was recruited into the Russian army under compulsory martial law and sent to the battlefield. After fighting against German and Austro-Hungarian troops as a general for more than two years, he was sent to the Tashkent Soldiers' School in October 1918 for advanced military training.
After training, Agabekov was sent back to the battlefield, this time in Romania. In Romania, Agabekov was appointed commander of a platoon of the 46th Infantry Regiment of the Russian Army, and also worked as a Turkish translator at the regiment's headquarters. The March 1917 revolution in the Russian capital, Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), led to the fall of the Russian monarchy, and Agabekov enthusiastically supported the revolution.During this time, Russia's new government introduced the practice of electing officers to the Russian army through elections, and soldiers from Agabekov's regiment selected him as battalion commander.
In November 1917, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, seized power in Russia and completely disbanded the Russian army. Agabekov left the army and returned to Turkestan, and in March 1917 he joined a unit of the Turkish Red Guards (Красная).The Red Guards were a voluntary decentralized paramilitary force of workers, peasants and Cossacks, and a number of soldiers and sailors, formed after the Russian Revolution, under the supervision of local Bolsheviks in various parts of Russia.
A few months later, Agabekov joined the Red Army of Workers and Peasants (Рабоче-Красная Красная). It was the armed forces of Soviet Russia. From 1917 to 1920 he served as the commander of various units of the Red Army.He first fought against various Bolshevik anti-Bolshevik groups in Turkey and later against the commander of the anti-Bolshevik White Army (армия) in Siberia and the Urals and the internationally recognized Russian head of state, Admiral Alexander Kolchak. In February 1920, Kolchak was captured by the Bolsheviks and executed.
The same year, Agabekov joined the Bolshevik Party, and shortly thereafter joined the Soviet intelligence agency, the Cheka. It was at this time that he was given the pseudonym 'Agabekov'. During this time he was first appointed Military Commissioner of the Red Army's Internal Military Battalion in Ekaterinburg and later served as an officer in the Ekaterinburg Provincial Cheka. He actively participated in the annihilation of anti-Soviet forces in the Ekaterinburg region and in suppressing a peasant uprising in the Tyumen region.
Agabekov was fluent in Turkish and Persian. He was summoned to Moscow in October 1921 and assigned to the Oriental section of the Cheka. In 1922, he was again sent to Central Asia and was appointed operations officer on the Turkestan Front under the head of the Cheka, the Latvian Bolshevik Jacobus Peters. During this time he fought against anti-Soviet Muslim guerrillas in Turkestan.