agents, who were directed by Yan Berzin, the service chief for more
than a decade. Illegals began operating in Western Europe and Asia
in the early 1920s, and in the United States in 1923. Illegal agents, in-
cluding Maria Polyakova, Richard Sorge, and Leopold Trepper,
organized intelligence rings in China, Japan, Nazi Germany, France,
and Switzerland. GRU illegals in Great Britain and the United States,
including Ruth Wernerand Arthur Adams, recruited and ran im-
portant sources in the nuclear weapons program, as well as in the mil-
itary and defense industries.
In the late 1930s, over half the cadre of the GRU was arrested and
shot during the Yezhovshchina, including Berzin and several of his
senior colleagues. Following Berzin’s arrest, four other GRU chiefs
were purged and shot in the next three years. The NKVDespecially
targeted foreigners who had been GRU illegals. Leopold Trepper
wrote in his memoirs: “As a Polish citizen, as a Jew who had lived in
Palestine, as an expatriate, and as a journalist on a Jewish paper, I was
ten times suspect in the eyes of the NKVD.”
The contribution of the GRU during the Great Patriotic Warwas
impressive. Sorge, Trepper, and other illegals produced detailed in-
formation on German military planning. During this period, GRU
rezidenturasproduced military, scientific, and industrial intelligence
from a score of countries. In Canada, Nikolai Zabotinand his staff
of 13 ran agents in the Canadian parliament, the British High Com-
mission, and the Anglo-American nuclear weapons program. GRU
officers also collected thousands of pieces of unclassified informa-
tion for the Soviet war effort. According to a study by the Federal Bu-
reau of Investigation, the GRU rezidenturain Washington acquired
41,800 American patents.
Following World War II, the GRU expanded its network of mili-
tary attachés and reduced its dependency on illegals. One of the ser-
vice’s greatest successes was the recruitment and running of Stig
Wennerstrom, a Swedish military intelligence officer. The GRU suf-
fered a massive loss of prestige in the 1950s and 1960s, however, due
to the decision of two officers, Petr Popovand Oleg Penkovskiy, to
spy for the United States. As a result of the latter’s defection, the
chief of the GRU, General Ivan Serov, was fired and reduced in rank
by three grades. He was replaced by General Petr Ivashutin, a KGB
veteran who remained as head of the GRU for the next 23 years. Un-106 •GRU (GLAVNOE RAZVEDIVATELNOE UPRAVLENIYE)06-313 G-P.qxd 7/27/06 7:56 AM Page 106