with poisons that had been tested on humans [...]. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. After serving the full term (he was housed with a number of Stalin's top assistants who were also imprisoned), he was duly released in August 1968. Later life and memoirs Sudoplatov worked for some time as a German and Ukrainian translator and also published, under the pen name "Anatoliy Andreev", three books based on his activities during World War II. After an extensive letter writing campaign, including a publicity effort during the glasnost era of the late 1980s, he was finally rehabilitated and cleared of wrongdoing on 10 January 1992, after the December 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. In his memoirs, he wrote with bitterness about his rehabilitation: The Soviet Union—to which I devoted every fiber of my being and for which I was willing to die; for which I averted my eyes from every brutality, finding justification in its transformation from a backward nation into a superpower; for which I spent long months on duty away from Emma and the children; whose mistakes cost me fifteen years of my life as a husband and father – was unwilling to admit its failure and take me back as a citizen. Only when there was no more Soviet Union, no more proud empire, was I reinstated and my name returned to its rightful place. In 1994, Sudoplatov's autobiography, Special Tasks, based partly on Sudoplatov's own memories and partly on some KGB documents, written with the help of his son Anatoliy and two American writers, was published and caused a considerable uproar. In addition to extensive details of many Soviet intelligence-operations during Sudoplatov's career and a similarly-extensive discussion of the political machinations in the intelligence services and the Soviet government, it claimed that a number of Western scientists who had worked on the atomic bomb project, such as Robert Oppenheimer, although not recruited agents for the Soviets, had provided important information. The American media initially treated the revelation as a scoop, but the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and the American Federal Bureau of Investigation would later dispute such claims, while American and Russian scientists and historians have dismissed them. Sudoplatov died on September 24, 1996 and was buried next to his wife in the New Donskoy Cemetery in Moscow. Honours and awards On 1998, President of Russia Boris Yeltsin signed a decree on the