Lev Ivanovich Spivachuk

Lev Ivanovich Spivachuk was born in 1926 in the Khmelnitskiy Oblast of Ukraine. He was drafted into the Soviet Army in 1944. By 1948, he was working as a German language interpreter in the MGB Counterintelligence Directorate in the Eighth Guards Mechanized Division. On 29 August 1948, he was received orders transferring him to a military counterintelligence unit in Radebeul, Germany. However, he never arrived at his new unit and he disappeared. As of 1969, the KGB had no further information about his whereabouts; the most recent photo the MGB had of him was from 1948.

This may be the individual whom U.S. forces interrogated in September 1948 in Germany. An MGB counterintelligence employee defected to British Zone of Germany on about 1 September 1948, and British forces allowed U.S. CIC to interrogate him within days of his defection. He told CIC interrogators about the organization and personnel of the counterintelligence sections of the First Guards Mechanized Army and the Eighth Guards Mechanized Division. He noted in particular that the OKR and the MGB operational directorate usually shared identities of new recruited sources, but professional jealousy between them inhibited complete information sharing. Although CIC expected to receive a more detailed report from the British, no further information is available.

[i] “KGB Wanted List,” 1969, p. 363.
[ii] CIC interrogation report, dated 7 September 1948, NARA, RG 319, Entry 134A, Box 105, Soviet Army Counterintelligence Directorate, Vol. 1. This interrogation report is mixed in the file with reports from Rafael Ilich Goldfarb (see separate entry in this database), but the description is of a defector other than Goldfarb.