Passov, Zalman Isaevich (1905-1940)

A Soviet state security (GB) operative and leader in the 1920s and 1930s, and a Senior Major of the GB.

Zalman Passov was born to the family of a salesclerk in the town of Staraya Russa, in the Pskovskaya gubernia of the Russian Empire. There is no information about his early life, except that he completed only three grades of primary school. In 1919, he volunteered to fight with the Red Army during the Russian Civil War, but he was soon discharged when his actual age was discovered. He then studied at the secondary school in Staraya Russa but never completed the course. He changed jobs several times until May 1922, when he was employed by the local branch of the GPU, which was a Cheka successor agency in 1922 and 1923.

Passov rose through the GPU local hierarchy until 1928, when he was sent to the OGPU higher party school. In October 1929, he became an officer at the OGPU central apparatus in Moscow, assigned to its counterintelligence department and then to its Special Department (Osobyj otdel), where he rose to deputy division head. By 1937, Passov had become head of one of the Special Department’s divisions; in August, he became head of the Third Department of the agency, which was then called the GUGB NKVD.

In March 1938, following the death of Abram Slutsky, the head of the GUGB foreign intelligence department, Passov was appointed head of that department. But on October 23 he was arrested on charges of participation in an anti-Soviet conspiratorial organization at the NKVD. On February 14, 1940, he was sentenced to death and executed the next day. Passov was not rehabilitated, since in 1957 he was found guilty of using illegal methods of investigation and of falsifying criminal cases. ¹