Epress.am News from Armenia
Soviet intelligence agent of Armenian origin, Hero of the Soviet Union Gevork Vartanian (Gevorg Vardanyan) died on Jan. 10 in Moscow at the age of 88.
Vartanian was born in present-day Rostov-on-Don on Feb. 17, 1924. His father was a Soviet agent as well, and when Vartanian was 6 years old, the family moved to Iran. It was under his father’s influence that Vartanian decided to become a spy — at the age of 16.
Vartanian is best known for being the person primarily responsible for thwarting Operation Long Jump: the WWII German plot to assassinate the “Big Three” Allied leaders — Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt — at the 1943 Tehran Conference. Vartanian was just 19 at the time.
Later, in 1981, a film was shot based on these events called Teheran 43, which was screened internationally. Vartanian, however, said that there were many “shootings and foolishness” in the film. The only part of the film that corresponded to the truth, he said, was breaking into the embassy building through the sewer.
In 1951, Vartanian returned to the USSR and graduated from the Faculty of Foreign Languages at the Yerevan State University in 1955.
On May 29, 1984, Vartanian was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal.