Genrikh Lyushkov

Genrikh Samoilovich Lyushkov was a Soviet secret police officer. A high-ranking officer of the NKVD, he played a role in implementing Stalin's Great Purge. When, in 1938, he suspected he would soon fall victim to the purge, he fled to Japan, becoming the highest-ranking NKVD defector in the organization's history. Thereafter, he acted as a major source of intelligence for Imperial Japan about the Soviet Union. At the end of World War II, he was killed by the Japanese in order to prevent him from falling back into Soviet hands.