Dmitri Aleksandrovich Bystrolyotov (January 4, 1901 – May 3, 1975) () was a Soviet Russian intelligence officer, a polyglot, a writer and a

Gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...

prisoner. As a Soviet undercover operative, Bystrolyotov worked in

Western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's extent varies depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the Western half of the ancient Mediterranean ...

between

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

and II, recruiting and controlling several agents in

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France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, and

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

. His greatest achievement was breaking into the British Foreign Office files years before

Kim Philby Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 191211 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963, he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring that had divulged British secr ...

, as well as procuring diplomatic ciphers of many of European countries. In the 1930s, he fell victim of

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

purges In history, religion and political science, a purge is a position removal or execution of people who are considered undesirable by those in power from a government, another, their team leaders, or society as a whole. A group undertaking such an ...

. Arrested by the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

on drummed up charges, he was tortured severely. While serving his term, he spent over 16 years in various Gulag camps. There, at great risk to himself, he wrote and smuggled his memoirs to the outside world, which were an indictment of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),. Abbreviated in Russian as КПСС, ''KPSS''. at some points known as the Russian Communist Party (RCP), All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party, and sometimes referred to as the Soviet ...

's crimes against humanity.

Early life and career

He was born to out-of-wedlock parents in the village of Aibory, in the

Crimea Crimea ( ) is a peninsula in Eastern Europe, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, almost entirely surrounded by the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. The Isthmus of Perekop connects the peninsula to Kherson Oblast in mainland Ukrain ...

, to Klavdiya Bystrolyotov, a provincial clergyman's daughter. In his memoirs, Bystrolyotov identifies his father as a vice-governor of

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

and governor of

Vitebsk Vitebsk or Vitsyebsk (, ; , ; ) is a city in northern Belarus. It serves as the administrative center of Vitebsk Region and Vitebsk District, though it is administratively separated from the district. As of 2025, it has 358,927 inhabitants, m ...

, Count Alexander Nikolaevich Tolstoy, a brother of Aleksei Tolstoi. Raised in an impoverished foster family of aristocrats in Saint Petersburg, with the outbreak of the

Russian Civil War The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...

, Bystrolyotov was first drafted into the

White Army The White Army, also known as the White Guard, the White Guardsmen, or simply the Whites, was a common collective name for the armed formations of the White movement and Anti-Sovietism, anti-Bolshevik governments during the Russian Civil War. T ...

but after its defeat, he was recruited as a "sleeper" by the

Cheka The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə, links=yes), ...

, the Soviet secret police. He was sent to the West with the flow of Russian refugees and he was activated after he settled in

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

. Capitalizing on his knowledge of several European languages and his aristocratic upbringing, he operated amid the upper layers of European societies and became one of the " Great Illegals", a squad of outstanding Soviet spies who worked undercover in Western countries between World War I and II. With the growing threat of

fascism Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hie ...

and

nazism Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During Hitler's rise to power, it was fre ...

, Bystrolyotov successfully hunted for Italian and German military secrets. He also stole British secrets for the Soviets years before

and made Stalin privy to the contents of French, Italian, Swiss, and American diplomatic cables. The

modus operandi A (often shortened to M.O. or MO) is an individual's habits of working, particularly in the context of business or criminal investigations, but also generally. It is a Latin phrase, approximately translated as . Term The term is often used in ...

of Bystrolyotov involved seduction and recruitment of women as Soviet agents, among them a French diplomat, a German countess, and a

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

officer. As a result, he provided Stalin with minutes of Hitler's meetings with Western diplomats, as well as German, Italian, Spanish, British and French diplomatic. Bystrolyotov also procured Hitler's four-year plan for the rearmament of Germany for the Soviets and he helped identify the Nazis'

fifth column A fifth column is a group of people who undermine a larger group or nation from within, usually in favor of an enemy group or another nation. The activities of a fifth column can be overt or clandestine. Forces gathered in secret can mobilize ...

in pre-World War II France. In 1935, he smuggled samples of the latest models of German and Italian weaponry across European borders. During a mission to probe the feasibility of the French government's secret promise to Stalin in the event of German aggression in Europe, which was to bring an army of mercenaries from Africa, he crossed the Sahara Desert twice and he crossed the jungles of the Belgian Congo.For a short description of Bystrolyotov's career, see Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev, ''The Crown Jewels'' (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 63-88.

Arrest and imprisonment

In 1937, at the height of Stalin’s purges, he was recalled to the Soviet Union and soon arrested and tortured until he “confessed” to selling out to the enemy. He was sentenced to twenty years of hard labor. His wife and his mother committed suicide after they were ostracized and deprived of food because they were relatives of an “

enemy of the people The terms enemy of the people and enemy of the nation are designations for the political opponents and the social class, social-class opponents of the Power (social and political), power group within a larger social unit, who, thus identified, ...

.” Still in the camps, he overcame his poor health and the risk of severe punishment, to begin writing his eyewitness account of Stalin’s Gulag. The memoir was smuggled outside the camp by his fellow inmates and his second wife, whom he had met and married in the camps.

Later life

After his release in 1954, he worked at various medical research organizations in Moscow as a translator and medical consultant. In 1963, the journal ''Asia and Africa Today'' () published a series of sketches about his trips in Africa. In 1973, a film titled ''A Plainclothes Man'' () based on his script was released. In 1974, the journal ''Our Contemporary'' () published his short novel ''Para Bellum'', a thinly-disguised account of one of his pre-World War II foreign operations. None of his memoirs was published in his lifetime. Bystrolyotov died on May 3, 1975, and was buried at the

Khovanskoye Cemetery Khovanskoye Cemetery (), also known as Nikolo-Khovanskoye Cemetery (Николо-Хованское кладбище), is a large and expanding cemetery servicing Moscow, Russia. It is located in the Leninsky District, Moscow Oblast, Leninsky Dist ...

, Moscow. Currently, he is considered one of the heroes of Russian foreign intelligence. His portrait is displayed on the walls of the secret “Memory Room” at the

Russian Foreign Intelligence Service The Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is the civilian foreign intelligence agency of Russia. The SVR succeeded the First Chief Directorate of the KGB in December 1991.The Security Organs of the Russian Federation: A Brief History 1991–2004' ...

headquarters. On November 21, 2011, the

International Spy Museum The International Spy Museum is an independent non-profit history museum which documents the tradecraft, history, and contemporary role of the intelligence field and espionage. It holds the largest collection of international espionage artifacts ...

in Washington, D.C. unveiled an exhibit devoted to him.

Notes

References

*Bystrolyotov D.A. (1996) "A Journey to the Edge of the Night" (Быстролетов Д.А. "Путешествие на край ночи"), Moscow, ''

Sovremennik ''Sovremennik'' ( rus, «Современник», p=səvrʲɪˈmʲenʲːɪk, a=Ru-современник.ogg, "The Contemporary") was a Russian literary, social and political magazine, published in Saint Petersburg in 1836–1866. It came out f ...

'', 550pp — An anthology of works and manuscripts

Quotes

“One of the most successful Soviet illegals” ''Historical Dictionaries of Intelligence and Counterintelligence'', Vol.. 5 (Robert W. Pringle, ed.) “ nextremely versatile intelligence officer was indeed legendary in the 1930s; in fact, with his espionage history, he is the nearest thing to James Bond." ''

Oleg Gordievsky Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky (; 10 October 1938 – 4 March 2025) was a colonel of the KGB who became KGB resident-designate (''rezident'') and bureau chief in London. Gordievsky was a double agent, providing information to the British Secret ...

'', former KGB Colonel and author (together with Christopher Andrew) of ''KGB: The Inside Story''; ''Instructions from the Centre: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations, 1975-8'', and other books on Russian intelligence. “ e of the most prominent undercover operatives, a mega-spy, brave and talented. In fact, he was the best Russian spy ever, eclipsing even the legendary Richard Sorge.” Mikhail Lyubimov, KGB veteran, historian of Russian secret service, author of the book ''Spies I Like and Spies I Hate'' and many other books on espionage. “Thanks to Bystrolyotov and others, oviet intelligencereceived more assistance from espionage than any similar agency in the West.” Christopher Andrew and Vassili Mitrokhin, in ''The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB''. “His skill at adopting the identity of an aristocrat came useful during his years as an illegal.” Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev in ''Crown Jewels: The British Secrets at the Heart of KGB Archives''. “ nexperienced and colorful operative... Possessed of great personal courage and a dashing manner, he was a master of many languages and disguises and used a variety of identities when traveling between the countries of Western Europe.” William E. Duff, Special Agent of the FBI (Foreign Counterintelligence Department), author of the book ''A Time for Spies: Theodore Stephanovich Mally and the Era of the Great Illegals''.

External links

The Remarkable Rise and Fall of the KGB's Most Daring Operative, The True Life of Dmitri Bystrolyotov
* ttp://svr.gov.ru/smi/2006/01/novrkr20060130.htm ДМИТРИЙ БЫСТРОЛЕТОВ — РАЗВЕДЧИК В ШТАТСКОМ {{DEFAULTSORT:Bystrolyotov, Dmitri 1901 births 1975 deaths People from Pervomaiske Raion People from Perekopsky Uyezd NKVD officers Soviet spies Norillag detainees Inmates of Sukhanovo Prison