sacrifice, and the Cheka’s heritage was important for succeeding gen-
erations of Soviet intelligence and security officers. They received
their pay on the 20th of the month—the service was founded on 20
December—and they referred to themselves throughout the Soviet
period as Chekists. See also GPU; KGB; NKVD; MGB; OGPU.CHEKHOVA, OLGA KONSTANTINOVNA (1895–1980). Married
to the nephew of Anton Chekhov, Olga Konstantinovna immigrated
to Germany during the Russiancivil war. She was almost immedi-
ately contacted by members of her family, who had been co-opted by
the Cheka,and convinced to work as an agent for the security ser-
vice. In return for exit visas for members of her family, she promised
to act as an agent within the émigrécommunity and the rising Nazi
establishment. In the 1930s, Chekhova became a major movie star in
Nazi Germany, and a personal favorite of Adolf Hitler and Nazi prop-
aganda boss Joseph Goebbels. The Russian archives suggest that she
was a “sleeper agent,” maintained first to report on the Nazi leader-
ship and later, during the Battle of Moscow, as part of the NKVD’s
plans to assassinate German leaders. Following World War II, she
was flown to Moscow and debriefed by Smershdirector Viktor
Abakumov. Chekhova’s reputation as a femme fatale was greatly ex-
aggerated by Western journalists after the war, some of whom styled
her as Hitler’s lover.CHEKIST.Beginning in the 1920s, Soviet security and intelligence of-
ficers referred to themselves as Chekists. (The Russian plural is
Chekisty.) This has continued to some extent since the collapse of the
Soviet Union and the disbanding of the KGB. Russian intelligence
officers continue to use the honorific.CHEREPANOV, ALEKSANDR NIKOLAEVICH (1915–1964). In
late November 1963, Aleksandr Cherepanov, a disgruntled KGB
officer, persuaded American tourists to carry sensitive documents
about KGB operations against the American embassy to the Central
Intelligence Agency chief of station (COS) in Moscow. When the
chargé d’affaires was informed of the incident, he ordered the COS
to hand over the documents so they could be returned to the Soviet
Foreign Ministry: the U.S. State Department would not traffic inCHEREPANOV, ALEKSANDR NIKOLAEVICH (1915–1964)•4506-313 A-G.qxd 7/27/06 7:55 AM Page 45