Shpigelglas, Sergei Mikhailovich

(1897–1941)

   One of the few early Chekists with a university education was Sergei Shpigelglas, who studied law at the university in Warsaw prior to the Bolshevik Revolution. He was drafted out of the university in his final year by the tsarist army and found his way into the Red Army and the Cheka. Originally, Shpigelglas worked in the military counterintelligence section of the Cheka, but he entered foreign intelligence in the 1920s.

   A natural recruit for foreign intelligence officer, Shpigelglas, who spoke French, German, and Polish, served as an illegal in Mongolia, China, and Western Europe. In 1936 he was made deputy chief of foreign intelligence and undertook missions in Germany, France, and Spain. In February 1938, Joseph Stalin promoted him to head the component. One of his most important achievements was the establishment of a school to train foreign intelligence officers. Shpigelglas did not survive Lavrenty Beria’s purge of the NKVD. He was arrested in late 1938 and shot in 1941. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1988.

   See also Andropov Institute.