Boris Gudz, 104; Soviet secret police veteran helped nab British spy

Boris Gudz, 104, a veteran of the Soviet secret police who helped track down British spy Sydney Reilly in the early 1920s, died Wednesday in Moscow, said a spokesman for the Federal Security Service, or FSB.

Born in 1902, Gudz joined the Bolshevik OGPU secret police in 1923, and in 1925 took part in its so-called Operation Trust, aimed at luring Reilly, a top British agent, to Russia to join an anti-Bolshevik organization that was in fact an OGPU trap. Reilly was arrested after crossing the border into Russia from Finland in September 1925 and executed several weeks later.

Later in the 1920s, Gudz took part in security operations to disarm antiBolshevik militants in Chechnya and Dagestan.

In the 1930s, he became involved in coordinating espionage operations in the Pacific region and worked as a Soviet resident in Japan from 1934 to 1936, according to the FSB statement carried by the RIA-Novosti news agency. On his return to Moscow, Gudz handled a group led by Richard Sorge, a top Soviet spy in Japan.

After Gudz’s sister was arrested in Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s purges, Gudz was ousted from his job, stripped of his Communist Party membership and had to work as a bus driver. He later got back his party card and held various administrative jobs.

Beginning in the late 1960s, Gudz consulted for Soviet film directors and writers on movies about the Soviet spy service.