Shebarshin, Leonid Vladimirovich

(1935– )

   After joining the KGB’s First Chief Directorate in 1962, Shebarshin served in India as deputy chief and then in Iran as rezident during the Iranian Revolution. In 1989 Communist Party boss Mikhail Gorbachev appointed Shebarshin to head the First Chief Directorate. According to his own and other KGB memoirs, Shebarshin tried to keep the foreign intelligence directorate neutral during the 1991 August putsch. As a reward, he was appointed KGB chair immediately following the coup, but he was forced to resign within a few weeks. Shebarshin was a competent and brave intelligence officer; he met agents on the streets of Tehran during the Iranian Revolution. It was his fate to be promoted to the top of his service when the system he had served for three decades was collapsing. His memoirs, Ruka Moskvy (The Hand of Moscow), portrayed the problems of the KGB both operationally and politically.