Vartanyan

Gevork Andreevich Vartanian (1924—2012) was the first employee of our illegal intelligence service to receive the title Hero of the Soviet Union during his work abroad in peacetime. Together with his wife, Goar Levonovna, he worked for 45 years in “special conditions”—far from his homeland—turning, according to the operational legend, into a successful and very wealthy businessman. The intelligence officer would have to visit and work in about a hundred countries around the world—and in several of them, his “contacts” were the highest leaders of states, special services, and armed forces. Until recently, our knowledge of Gevork Vartanian’s work was limited to the events of ensuring the security of the “Big Three” during the Tehran Conference in 1943. The author of the book, Nikolay Dolgopolov, managed to significantly expand the time and geographic scope of the biography of the legendary intelligence officer. He did this with the help of Gevork Andreevich’s students, colleagues, and superiors— as well as Goar Levonovna Vartanian…