Sobol, Raisa Romanovna (1904-1988)

An officer of the Soviet State Security (GB) and a popular writer.

Sobol was born in Kiev to the family of a manager of a large factory. She began her Soviet career in the early 1920s as a functionary in the Soviet Communist youth organization (Komsomol), and then worked in courts from 1923 to 1926. She became an officer of OGPU Moscow headquarters in 1926 and served in its counterintelligence department until 1938, when she was arrested on the testimony of her husband and sentenced to an eight-year prison term as “an espionage suspect.” After the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, she was released that September and her case was closed.

From October 16 to July 27, 1942, Raisa Sobol served as an operative of the Special Department (Osobyj otdel) of the South-Western Front. In August 1942, she was assigned to be an instructor to the reconnaissance department of the Northern Group of guerilla brigades, which were fighting the Nazis behind the front line. In May 1945, she was discharged from the NKVD with the rank of Captain. For her wartime service, she was awarded two Orders of the Patriotic War and many medals, including two medals “For Courage.”

Raisa Sobol became a popular writer and published a number of novels under the pseudonym Irina Guro.