Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher - Early Career

Early Career

Fluent in English, Russian, German, Polish and Yiddish, Fisher worked for the Comintern as a translator, following his family's return to Russia. Trained as a radio operator, he served in a radio battalion of the Red Army in 1925 and 1926. He then worked briefly in the radio research institute before being recruited by the OGPU, a predecessor of the KGB, in May 1927. That year he married Elena Lebedeva, a harp student at Moscow Conservatoire. They would have one child together, a daughter named Evelyn who was born on October 8, 1929. Following his recruitment, Fisher worked for the OGPU as a radio operator in Norway, Turkey, United Kingdom, and France. He returned to Russia in 1936, as head of a school that trained radio operators destined for duty in illegal residences. One of these students was the British-born Russian spy Kitty Harris, who was later more widely known as "The Spy With Seventeen Names".

Despite his foreign birth and the accusation that his brother-in-law was a Trotskyite, Fisher narrowly escaped the Great Purge, which took place during 1936–1938. He was, however, in 1938 dismissed from the NKVD, which in 1934 replaced the OGPU. During World War II he again trained radio operators for clandestine work behind German lines. Having been adopted as a protégé of Pavel Sudoplatov, Fisher took part in Operation Scherhorn (Операция Березино) in August 1944. Sudoplatov later described this operation as "the most successful radio deception game of the war". Fisher's role in this operation was rewarded with what his superiors regarded as the most prestigious posting in Russian foreign intelligence, the United States.