Dmitri Aleksandrovich Bystrolyotov ( January 4 , 1901 – May 3 , 1975 ) ( ) was a Russian/Soviet intelligence officer , a sailor and painter , a doctor and lawyer , a traveler and polyglot , a writer and a Gulag prisoner . One of the most outstanding Soviet undercover operatives , Bystrolyotov acted in Western Europe in the period between the great wars , recruiting and controlling several important agents in Great Britain , France , Germany , and Italy . His greatest achievement was breaking into the British Foreign Office files years before Kim Philby , as well as procuring diplomatic ciphers of scores of European countries . Despite his personal courage and heroism , he fell victim of Joseph Stalin 's purges of the 1930s . Arrested by the NKVD on drummed up charges , he was severely tortured and turned into an invalid . Serving his term , he spent over 16 years in various Gulag camps . There , at great risk to himself , he wrote and smuggled to the outside world his voluminous memoirs , an indictment of Communist Party of the Soviet Union 's crimes against humanity . He was born to out-of-wedlock parents in the village of Aibory , in the Crimea , Ukraine , to Klavdiya Bystrolyotov , a provincial clergyman ’s daughter . In his memoirs , Bystrolyotov identifies his father as a vice-governor of Saint Petersburg and governor of Vitebsk , Count Alexander Nikolaevich Tolstoy , a brother of Aleksei Tolstoi
purges
Great Purge
Dmitri Bystrolyotov