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Agence France Presse
January 11, 2012 Wednesday 1:47 PM GMT
Legendary Soviet WWII spy dies at 87: official
MOSCOW, Jan 11 2012
One of the legendary Soviet agents of World War II, who infiltrated a
British spy school and protected the "Big Three" in the Tehran
conference, died aged 87, Russia's intelligence service said
Wednesday.
Gevork Vartanyan, working under the codename Amir, in 1942 managed to
attend an entire British training course for Russian-speaking spies in
Tehran whom London then wanted to send all over the Soviet Union.
According to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) -- the
successor to the Soviet KGB -- his work helped expose the British
network which existed despite London's wartime alliance with Moscow.
But Vartanyan's greatest exploit was his role in ensuring security at
the 1943 conference in Tehran between the Allied "Big Three" of Soviet
tyrant Joseph Stalin, British prime minister Winston Churchill and US
president F.D. Roosevelt that started to draw up the map of postwar
Europe.
Vartanyan -- aged just 19 at the time -- led a group of young Soviet
agents who exposed in its early stages a Nazi plot codenamed
"Operation Long Jump" to assassinate the three Allied leaders at the
conference.
"Everyone in foreign intelligence will remember Gevork Andreyevich for
his overwhelming love for the motherland and his fidelity to his
duty," the spokesman of the SVR, Sergei Ivanov, said in a statement.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev described Vartanyan as a "legendary
spy, a true patriot of his country and an extraordinary personality."
"He participated in stunning special operations which have gone down
in the history of our foreign intelligence," he said in a letter of
condolence to Vartanyan's family.
The SVR said in a statement on its website that Vartanyan died on
Tuesday. A source in the service told the state RIA Novosti news
agency that he died at a Moscow hospital Tuesday afternoon.
During a life remarkable even by the standards of a spy and parts of
which are still shrouded in secrecy, Vartanyan worked in tandem with
his wife Goar, who was also an agent.
According to the SVR, they worked undercover together for 30 years in
different foreign countries as "illegals" after World War II.
The SVR still gives no specifics about this work, saying only that it
was in "extreme conditions" and in "complicated circumstances".
They only returned to the Soviet Union in 1986 with Gevork Vartanyan
continuing to work in the service until 1992.
"Everything we did was important for the motherland. But the most
important things cannot be discussed at the moment," he said before
his death in comments broadcast by Channel One television.
He was born in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, the son of an
Iranian factory owner of Armenian origin, and received top honours
from the Soviet Union as well as Russia and Armenia for his work.
His father had also carried out espionage work for the Soviet Union
and it was for this that he took the family back to Iran in the 1930s.
By the age of 16 the young Gevork was already working to expose
"Fascist spies" in Iran.
From: Baghdasarian
January 11, 2012 Wednesday 1:47 PM GMT
Legendary Soviet WWII spy dies at 87: official
MOSCOW, Jan 11 2012
One of the legendary Soviet agents of World War II, who infiltrated a
British spy school and protected the "Big Three" in the Tehran
conference, died aged 87, Russia's intelligence service said
Wednesday.
Gevork Vartanyan, working under the codename Amir, in 1942 managed to
attend an entire British training course for Russian-speaking spies in
Tehran whom London then wanted to send all over the Soviet Union.
According to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) -- the
successor to the Soviet KGB -- his work helped expose the British
network which existed despite London's wartime alliance with Moscow.
But Vartanyan's greatest exploit was his role in ensuring security at
the 1943 conference in Tehran between the Allied "Big Three" of Soviet
tyrant Joseph Stalin, British prime minister Winston Churchill and US
president F.D. Roosevelt that started to draw up the map of postwar
Europe.
Vartanyan -- aged just 19 at the time -- led a group of young Soviet
agents who exposed in its early stages a Nazi plot codenamed
"Operation Long Jump" to assassinate the three Allied leaders at the
conference.
"Everyone in foreign intelligence will remember Gevork Andreyevich for
his overwhelming love for the motherland and his fidelity to his
duty," the spokesman of the SVR, Sergei Ivanov, said in a statement.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev described Vartanyan as a "legendary
spy, a true patriot of his country and an extraordinary personality."
"He participated in stunning special operations which have gone down
in the history of our foreign intelligence," he said in a letter of
condolence to Vartanyan's family.
The SVR said in a statement on its website that Vartanyan died on
Tuesday. A source in the service told the state RIA Novosti news
agency that he died at a Moscow hospital Tuesday afternoon.
During a life remarkable even by the standards of a spy and parts of
which are still shrouded in secrecy, Vartanyan worked in tandem with
his wife Goar, who was also an agent.
According to the SVR, they worked undercover together for 30 years in
different foreign countries as "illegals" after World War II.
The SVR still gives no specifics about this work, saying only that it
was in "extreme conditions" and in "complicated circumstances".
They only returned to the Soviet Union in 1986 with Gevork Vartanyan
continuing to work in the service until 1992.
"Everything we did was important for the motherland. But the most
important things cannot be discussed at the moment," he said before
his death in comments broadcast by Channel One television.
He was born in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, the son of an
Iranian factory owner of Armenian origin, and received top honours
from the Soviet Union as well as Russia and Armenia for his work.
His father had also carried out espionage work for the Soviet Union
and it was for this that he took the family back to Iran in the 1930s.
By the age of 16 the young Gevork was already working to expose
"Fascist spies" in Iran.
From: Baghdasarian