Yakov Serebryansky
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October 8, 1891
Yakov Serebryansky | |
|---|---|
| Born | Yakov Isaakovich Serebryansky October 8, 1891 |
| Died | March 30, 1956 (aged 64) |
| Other names | “Yasha”, “Uncle Yasha” |
| Spouse | Polina Belenkaya |
| Espionage activity | |
| Allegiance |  Soviet Union |
| Service branch | Cheka, OGPU, NKVD |
| Service years | 1920–1946 |
| Operations | Spanish Civil War The Great Terror |
Yakov Isaakovich Serebryansky (Russian: Яков Исаакович Серебрянский) (born 11 December 1891 – died 30 March 1956) was an agent of the Soviet security services who created the first Soviet spy network in Palestine, and conducted special operations including the kidnapping and murder in Paris of a former Russian General Alexander Kutepov.
Yakov Serebryansky was born in Minsk, in present-day Belarus, the son of a Jewish apprentice watchmaker. His date of birth is various given as 8 December (26 November old style 1891,[1] 11 December (29 November old style)[2] or 1892 [3] He joined a student revolutionary group as a schoolboy in 1907, and in 1908 joined the Socialist Revolutionary (SR) Party. In 1909, he was arrested as a suspected accomplice in the assassination of the head of the Minsk prison. He was held in prison in 1909–1910, then exiled to Vitebsk.[4] Drafted into the Russian Imperial Army in 1912, Serebryansky was seriously wounded at the start of the war with Germany, in August 1914, and was demobilised after long treatment in hospital.[2] In 1915, he obtained a job as an electrician in Baku. After the February Revolution in 1917, he rejoined the SR Party. He moved to Moscow in spring 1920, and joined the Cheka, but was dismissed in 1921, and arrested as a member of the SR party.[4] In October 1923, he applied to join the Communist Party and was enrolled by the foreign department of the OGPU (previously known as Cheka), and sent to Palestine, where he infiltrated the underground Zionist movement and recruited a group of operatives known as "Yasha's Group". In all, he is credited with recruiting more than 200 agents, in Palestine and western Europe.[5] In 1925–28, he was an 'illegal' OGPU resident, based in Brussels and Paris. In 1929, he was appointed head of a section whose mission was to prepared sabotage and terrorism abroad, in the event of war. In 1929, he was appointed head of the 'special group' answering directly to the Chairman of the OGPU, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky.[2]
