Kaminsky, Ivan Nickolaevich (1896-1944)

Soviet NKVD foreign intelligence officer.

Kaminsky was born into a peasant family in the village Korni in the Kievskaya gubernia of the Russian Empire (now Ukraine). Until the age of 14, he lived in his native village, studying at the village school and working in the fields. In 1911, he moved to Moscow, where he worked as an errand boy at a publishing house and managed to graduate from the gymnasium, which provided a classic high school education. In 1915, he was drafted into the army, graduated from a warrant officer school and fought at the Rumanian front in World War I, where he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant.

Kaminsky eventually became a Red Army commander during the Civil War in Ukraine, where he was a regiment commander, was wounded and was sent to a hospital in Moscow. After his discharge from the hospital, he was sent to the Cheka Special Department (Osobyj otdel). In early 1922, he was transferred to the Foreign Intelligence Department (INO) of the GPU, the name of the Cheka’s successor agency in 1922-1923. In his first foreign postings, Kaminsky worked as a “legal” operative in Poland (1922-1924), Czechoslovakia (1924-1925) and Latvia (1925-1927), where he served as the resident – followed by postings as the “legal” resident in Italy (1927) and Finland (1929-1930). During this time, he learned several languages and studied the countries where he worked. In 1930, Kaminsky was recalled to Moscow, and in the spring of 1934, he was sent to France, this time, as an “illegal” resident, to work against the Russian émigré organizations in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland and Germany.

In Switzerland Kaminsky was arrested and imprisoned, but eventually released. He then returned to Moscow, where he was arrested again, on false information, in 1938, and sentenced to a long prison term. In 1944, he was released for a second time and sent back to NKGB headquarters. That same year, he was sent to Western Ukraine to work behind the lines against Ukrainian nationalists (the so-called “Banderovtsy,” from the name of their leader, Stepan Bandera). Betrayed by a traitor, Kaminsky committed suicide when the Abwher (German military intelligence) tried to arrest him in Zhytomir. [[1.Razvedka i kontrrazvedka v litsakh. Encyklopedicheskij slovar’ rossiiskikh spetssluzhb. (Intelligence and Counterintelligence in Person, The Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Russian Special Services.) http://rusrazvedka.narod.ru/base/htm/kamins.html.]]