Yezhovshchina-Era Defectors, 1937–1940

Abstract

The second group includes eight officers who were the first to violate the new rules regarding defection. Their revelations identify Soviet political intelligence priorities directed toward Great Britain, followed by Germany, while foreign science and technology collection cast a wider net, to include the United States. Most of the officers in this group had joined a Soviet intelligence or state security service at about the same time as the defectors in Chapter 1, but they persevered through most of the 1930s, sometimes participating in the very actions that led earlier officers to defect. The Great Purge, or what came to be known as the Yezhovshchina, prompted these officers and their families to defect. They left because they saw their own colleagues being arrested and executed, and they felt the need to save their own skins.