Boris Bazarov

Boris Yakovlevich Bazarov (Russian Борис Яковлевич Базаров; born May 27, 1893 in Kelmė, Kovno Governorate, † February 21, 1939 in Moscow) was a Soviet intelligence officer who served as chief resident from 1935 to 1937 in New York.

Bazarov was born as Boris Yakovlevich Schpak 1893 in the district of Kaunas in Lithuania, which was in the western part of the Russian Empire at that time. He spoke German, Bulgarian, French and Croatian. Bazarov worked from 1921 for the Gossudarstwennoje Polititscheskoje Uprawlenije ( OGPU ) and was on a secret mission to 1924 in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia on the go. Prior to 1927, he worked in the Russian representative in Vienna.

From 1927 he was executive director of Balkan activities of the OGPU. In 1928 he resigned for health reasons back of it, but was sent the same year by the OGPU to Berlin, where he representative of the embassy headed illegal groups.

1935-1938 he worked for the management of the Russian Embassy in the United States.

Bazarov was shot probably during the " Great Purge " in 1939. Posthumously, he was rehabilitated in 1956.