Nikolai Khokhlov

Nikolai Evgenievich Khoklov (1922-2007) was a KGB officer who defected to the United States in 1953. He testified about the KGB terrorist activities.

Nikolai Khohlov was a member of a successful military unit that fought behind the enemy lines during World War II. He was disguised as a Nazi officer, after parachuting into German-occupied Belarus. He played a part in assassination of Wilhelm Kube, a Nazi Gauleiter. After the war, Khokhlov became a prototype of the main character in famous Soviet movie "Feat of a Scout" ("Подвиг разведчика") made in 1947. However, he never killed anyone and tried to refuse an order from Sudoplatov to be an assassin, according to his interview to Radio Free Europe.

He was sent by KGB to supervise two other men whose task was to kill George Okolovich, a chairman of National Alliance of Russian Solidarists. He decided not to follow the order and discussed the situation with his wife, Yana. She said: "If this man is killed, you will be a murderer. I cannot be the wife of a murderer" [1]. Khokhlov came to Okolovich's flat in Frankfurt and told him: "Georgi Sergeevich, I have come to you from Moscow. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has ordered your assassination. The murder is entrusted to my group... I can’t let this murder happen. " .

His wife was arrested and sentenced to five years of involuntary settlement in the Soviet Union.

He had been treated for radioactive thallium poisoning in Frankfurt in 1957 . That was a failed assassination attempt by Thirteenth KGB Department . American consultants to promote the idea that radioactive thallium was likely responsible. However, there was never a positive identification, or at least a public disclosure, of a particular isotope of thallium as the culprit. In fact, many of the symptoms that Khokhlov suffered were consistent with stable thallium poisoning. Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko, neither of whom are specialists, claim that gamma rays emitted by the radioactive thallium were readily detected, unlike in the case of Alexander Litvinenko who was poisoned by polonium emitting only low-energy alpha-particles

From 1968 to 1992, Dr. Khoklov taught undergraduate and graduate psychology classes at California State University, San Bernardino, retiring as an emeritus professor in 1993. He later made e-mail contact with, then eventually met, a son in Russia that he was not aware of. His other son, Misha, died several years ago due to kidney failure. Nikolai Khokhlov lived in San Bernardino, California, until his death in September 2007.

Notes

• [2] Obituary

Books

Nikolai Evgenievich Khokhlov. In the name of conscience . Translated by Emily Kingsbery. New York : David McKay, 1959. In the name of conscience (Russian)

Further Reading

• Newspaper Article: Times Online

Interviews (Russian)

• to Radio Free Europe
• to Novaya Gazeta with Anna Politkovskaya
• to Novaya Gazeta

Links

• A brief history of Soviet torturers and assassins, some of whom had second thoughts. By Katya Drozdova, Hoover Institute
• I led KGB hit squad by Ros Wynne Jones
• One more time on the Alexander Litvinenko case by Vadim Birstein