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This is a list of Soviet secret police officers and agents who have defected.

Name	Defection date	Country of defection	Comment
Georgiy Sergeyevich Agabekov	1930	France	Disappeared around August 1937. Body never recovered
Ignace Reiss	July 1937	Switzerland	Gunned down by an NKVD hit squad on 4 September 1938
Walter Germanovich Krivitskiy	October 1937	France	Found dead in his hotel room on 10 February 1941 with a gunshot wound to the temple. Suspected foul play
Genrikh Samoilovich Lyushkov	1938	Japan	Executed by Japan in 1945 to prevent his recapture by the Soviets
Aleksandr Mikhailovich Orlov	1938	Canada	Authenticity of defection disputed
Lev Borisovich Helfand	1940	Italy
Igor Grigoryevich Orlov	1943	Germany	Re-recruited as Soviet agent in 1949
Viktor Andreyevich Kravchenko	1944	United States	Not an intelligence officer
Anatoliy Mikhailovich Granovskiy	1946	Sweden
Petr Sergeyevich Deryabin	1953	Austria
Nikolay Yevgenyevich Khokhlov	1954	West Germany	Victim of thallium poisoning in 1957. Survived
Yuriy Aleksandrovich Rastvorov	1954	Japan
Vladimir Mikhaylovich Petrov	3 April 1954	Australia	Led to the Petrov Affair in Australia
Yevdokiya Alekseyevna Petrova	19 April 1954	Australia	Led to the Petrov Affair in Australia
Reino Häyhänen	1957	France	Died in an automobile accident in 1961. Accident considered suspicious
Anatoliy Mikhailovich Golitsyn	15 December 1961	Finland
Bohdan Mykolayovych Stashynsky	1961	West Berlin
Yuri Vasilevich Krotkov	1963	United Kingdom	KGB agent, not an officer
Yuriy Ivanovich Nosenko	January 1964	Switzerland	Authenticity of defection disputed
Yuriy Aleksandrovich Bezmenov	1970	Canada	Intelligence agent, not an officer
Sergey Nikolayevich Kourdakov	4 September 1971	Canada	Intelligence agent, not an officer
Oleg Adolfovich Lyalin	1971	United Kingdom
Imants Lešinskis	1978	United States
Aleksei Alekseyevich Myagkov	1974	West Berlin
Stanislav Aleksandrovich Levchenko	1979, October	Japan
Oleg Agraniants	1986	Tunisia
Ilya Grigoryevich Dzhirkvelov	1980	Switzerland
Viktor Ivanovich Sheymov	1980	United States
Vladimir Anatolyevich Kuzichkin	1982	Iran
Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky	19 July 1985	United Kingdom	Suspected poisoning in 2007. Survived
Vitaly Sergeyevich Yurchenko	1985	Italy	Disputed (later returned to USSR)
Igor Nikolayevich Cherpinskiy	1990	Belgium
Sergey Sergeyevich Illarionov	1992	Italy
Vasiliy Nikitich Mitrokhin	1992	Latvia
Viktor Alekseyevich Oshchenko	July 1992	United Kingdom
Aleksandr Nikolayevich Poteyev	26 June 2010	United States	KGB colonel, later SVR officer. Multiple assassination attempts

See also

• List of Cold War pilot defections
• List of GRU defectors
• List of Soviet and Eastern Bloc defectors
• Petrov Affair

References

1. ^ FBI, Soviet Defectors: A Study of Past Defections from Official Soviet Establishments Outside the USSR, January 1955.
2. ^ Knight, Amy (2004) "Defectors, Soviet Era" in Encyclopedia of Russian History
3. "Meeting with past (Russian)". Archived from the original on 27 July 2006. Retrieved 19 November 2006.
4. ^ "Petrov Affair". Defining Moments. National Museum of Australia. 2023. Retrieved 17 February 2024.
5. New York Times
6. Rosenbaum, Ron (2007-02-12) The Spy Who Came in From Geneva: Nosenko, the K.G.B. Defector. observer.com
7. Bezmenov, Yuri; Griffin, G. Edward. (1984). Soviet Subversion of the Free Press: A Conversation with Yuri Bezmenov . Westlake Village, CA: American Media. OCLC – Soviet subversion of the free press: a conversation with Yuri Bezmenov
8. Shifting interpretations of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, Prof. Emeritus Dr. Andrew Ezergailis, retrieved 1-January-2015.
9. Richey, Warren. "KGB defector talks about former job in 'ethnic espionage'", The Christian Science Monitor. 1984, June 14.
10. Associated Press (June 20, 1986) Key Soviet Spy in N. Africa Defects to U.S.
11. Sheymov, Victor (1993) Tower of Secrets: A Real Life Spy Thriller, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press.
12. Gray, Sadie (6 April 2010). "Double agent Gordievsky claims he was poisoned by the Kremlin". The Independent. London. Retrieved 18 December 2010.
13. Richelson, Jeffrey (January 1999). The U.S. Intelligence Community. Westview Press. pp. 337–. ISBN 978-0-8133-6893-1.
14. Prokhorov, Dmitriy Petrovich (2005) Сколько стоит продать Родину? (What is the Cost of Betraying One's Homeland?) Moscow, OLMA-Press, pp. 463-466.
15. Savill, Annika (1992-08-13) 'Missing' Russian spy defects to Britain. independent.co.uk.
16. "More of Kremlin's Opponents Are Ending Up Dead". The New York Times. September 13, 2018.
17. "The attempted assassination of a Russian spy defector". Newsnight. October 2, 2018 – via YouTube.
18. "Russia Sought to Kill Defector in Florida". New York Times. June 19, 2023.

Further reading

• Richelson, Jeffrey. (1999). The U.S. Intelligence Community: Fourth Edition . WestView Press, ISBN 978-0-8133-6893-1

• People of the KGB
• Soviet defectors
• Cold War-related lists
• Lists of defectors
• Soviet Union-related lists
• Soviet spies
• Lists of Soviet people