Elizabeth Zarubina

Elizaveta "Zoya" Yulyevna Zarubina (Russian: Елизавета Юлиевна Зарубина; 1 January 1900 – 14 May 1987), born Ester Yoelevna Rosentsveig (Эстер Иоэльевна Розенцвейг),[1] was a Soviet spy, podpolkovnik of the MGB. She was known as Elizabeth Zubilin while serving in the United States, and also known as Elizaveta Gorskaya.

Elizaveta Yulyevna Zarubina
Elizaveta Yulyevna Zarubina
Born
Rzhavyntsi, Khotinsky Uyezd, Bessarabia Governorate, Russian Empire
Espionage activity
Allegiance Soviet Union

Born in Rzhavyntsi, in the Khotinsky Uyezd of the Bessarabia Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine) to a Jewish family (father Yoel, mother Ita). She studied history and philology at universities in Romania, France, and Austria, and spoke in English, French, German, Romanian, Russian and Yiddish. She was one of the most successful agent recruiters, establishing her own illegal network of Jewish migrants from Poland, and recruiting one of Leó Szilárd's secretaries, who provided technical data. She was the wife of Soviet Intelligence Resident Vasily Zarubin.

Zarubina was an active participant in the revolutionary movement in Bessarabia after World War I. In 1919, she became a member of the Komsomol of Bessarabia. Elizabeth became part of the Soviet intelligence system in 1924.

In 1923, she joined the ranks of the Austrian Communist Party. From 1924 through 1925, she worked in the embassy and trade delegation of the USSR. From 1925 to 1928, she worked in the Vienna Rezidentura.

In 1929, Elizabeth and Yakov Blumkin were posted as illegals in Turkey, where he sold Hasidic manuscripts from the Central Library in Moscow to support illegal operations in Turkey and the Middle East. Soviet intelligence officer Pavel Sudoplatov, who later organized Leon Trotsky's murder, claims in his autobiography that Blumkin gave part of the sale proceeds to Trotsky, who was then in exile in Turkey.[2] According to his account, Elizabeth denounced Blumkin for this and that was the reason why he was recalled to Moscow and executed.[2] Shortly thereafter (1929), Eizabeth married Vasily Zarubin, and they traveled and spied together for many years, using the cover of a Czechoslovakian and USA business couple for work in Denmark, Germany, France and the United States.

In August 1942, Paul Massing notified NKVD that his friend, Franz Neumann, had recently joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Massing reported to Moscow that Neumann had told him that he had produced a study of the Soviet economy for the OSS's Russian Department.[3] In April 1943, Elizabeth Zarubina met with Neumann: "(Zarubina) met for the first time with (Neumann) who promised to pass us all the data coming through his hands. According to (Neumann), he is getting many copies of reports from American ambassadors... and has access to materials referring to Germany".[4]

According to Jerrold L. Schecter and Leona Schecter, Zarubina was "one of the most successful operators in stealing atomic bomb secrets from the United States".[5][2] Together with Gregory Kheifetz (the Soviet vice-consul in San Francisco from 1941 to 1944), she supposedly set up a ring of young communist physicists around Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos to transmit nuclear weapon plans to Moscow.[5] This part of Zarubina’s life as a spy is told in the 2015 video, “Cold War Secrets: Stealing the Atomic Bomb,” directed by Gerard Puechmorel.

Notes
  1. Jerrold L. Schecter and Leona Schecter, Sacred Secrets, How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2002), p. 80
  2. Pavel Sudoplatov, Anatoli Sudoplatov, Jerrold L. Schecter, Leona P. Schecter, Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness -- A Soviet Spymaster (Little Brown, Boston, 1994), p. 189.
  3. Simkin, John (1997–2016). "Elizabeth Zarubina". Spartacus Educational. Retrieved 2018-02-22.
  4. Venona project file 28734 page 28.[3]
  5. Schecter and Schecter (2002), p. 79

References
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