Heifetz Grigory (Grimmeril) Mendelevich (Markovich) (7 May 1899, Dvinsk, Vitebsk Province — 1984) — revolutionary activist, Soviet intelligence officer, diplomat, and Comintern operative.
Grigory Heifetz was the son of Mendel Yakovlevich Heifetz, a prominent figure in Russian Social Democracy and the Bund, and a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Mensheviks).
From 1915, Heifetz was an active participant in the Jewish revolutionary movement and a member of the Bund. He was administratively expelled from Riga and settled in Bogorodsk, Moscow Province.
From 1916, he served as secretary of the Jewish Workers’ Club, and from 1917 worked with the organization of the “United Social Democrats” — the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Internationalists). In the same year, he graduated from the Bogorodsk Real School.
In 1918, he became an employee of the Extracurricular Education Department of the People's House under the People’s Commissariat of Education (Narkompros) in Moscow. In 1919, he served as assistant director of the P. A. Alekseyev House of Nations under the Moscow Soviet Department of Education.
Grigory Heifetz participated in the Russian Civil War. In June 1919, following the direction of the Central Committee of the Bund, he joined the Red Army and became a member of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
He served as an instructor-organizer in the Political Department of the 16th Army of the Western Front, participating in operations against Polish forces in the Slutsk region and on the Borisov front.
From March 1920, he was assistant commissar of the Moscow District Military-Sanitary Administration.
In 1920, he studied at the Moscow Commercial School and at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Moscow State University.
From January 1921, he served as political commissar of the Kislovodsk resorts administration in the Caucasian Mineral Waters region and participated in operations against anti-Soviet armed groups, during which he was wounded.
Subsequently, he worked as a political consultant in the Political Administration of the Red Fleet, political inspector, head of the Organizational and Instruction Department of the Moscow Regional Administration of Higher Educational Institutions, secretary to Nadezhda K. Krupskaya, member of the Collegium of Narkompros, employee of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (Comintern).
From 1922, he worked in the Department of International Relations of the Comintern Executive Committee (ECCI) and was later transferred to the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the USSR.
He served in the diplomatic courier service, the legal division of the economic department and had various foreign assignments.
Between 1924 and 1927, he conducted intelligence work abroad under diplomatic cover.
In 1924, he served as head of the diplomatic courier section, acting head of a Soviet consulate, consular agent in Liepāja and Riga. At the same time, he was the Comintern resident representative in Latvia.
From April 1925, under the cover of secretary and later acting consul-general, he became the Comintern resident in Constantinople (Istanbul).
From 1927 to 1929, under the surname Grimmeril, he carried out special assignments for the Comintern in China, Germany, Austria, France, and other countries.
While working illegally in Germany, he posed as a refugee student from India. During this period he completed engineering studies at the Jena Polytechnic Institute, receiving an engineering diploma in 1926, and organized several intelligence networks.
From April 1927, he served as the Comintern representative in Shanghai, and from 1928 in Berlin.
He maintained a close friendship with the German writer Lion Feuchtwanger.
From February 1929, he worked in Moscow as director of the publishing house of the magazine Ogonyok and editor-in-chief of the journal Inventor.
From June 1931, he was again assigned abroad, working in France and the United States.
After returning to the USSR in 1935, he became assistant head of a section within the Foreign Department (INO) of the NKVD Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB).
In July 1936, he was appointed Soviet intelligence resident in Italy.
One of his most significant achievements was the recruitment of Bruno Pontecorvo, who later became one of the most important scientific intelligence sources of the Soviet Union.
In the summer of 1938, Heifetz was recalled to Moscow.
In July 1938, without explanation, he was removed from his position in the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) and transferred to the disposal of the GULAG Administration of the NKVD, where he was assigned to Vorkuta. Owing to illness, he refused the appointment.
In September 1938, he was dismissed from the NKVD and appointed Deputy Chairman of the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS).
In October 1941, Grigory Heifetz was reinstated in the First Directorate of the NKVD and sent to San Francisco as a Soviet intelligence resident under the operational codename “Charon” (Kharon). His official cover was that of Vice Consul of the Soviet Consulate General.
He played an important role in intelligence gathering related to the Soviet atomic project.
In December 1941, “Charon” became the first Soviet intelligence officer to establish a confidential relationship with J. Robert Oppenheimer, then one of the leading American physicists working on atomic research. He prepared an early psychological assessment of Oppenheimer for Soviet intelligence.
His assignment in San Francisco concluded in July 1944.
From December 1944, he served as Senior Operations Officer and Head of a Section within the First Directorate of the NKGB of the USSR.
In the same year, he received the rank of Lieutenant Colonel of State Security.
From May 1946, he was Head of a Section in Department “S” of the Ministry of State Security (MGB), the division responsible for atomic intelligence.
In April 1947, Heifetz was dismissed from the MGB. He subsequently became Deputy Executive Secretary and Member of the Presidium of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC/EAK).
Grigory Heifetz was awarded the Order of the Red Star and several medals.
On 13 November 1951, Heifetz was arrested in connection with the so-called Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee Case. On 8 August 1952, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced him to 25 years of imprisonment.
In October 1952, the case was reopened and expanded. Additional accusations included terrorism, participation in an alleged conspiracy within the MGB.
On 2 February 1953, the investigator informed Heifetz that he had been sentenced to the death penalty.
Following the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953, the prosecution collapsed. The case against the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was abandoned.
On 28 December 1953, Grigory Heifetz was released, fully rehabilitated, and exonerated due to the absence of any criminal offense.
After his rehabilitation, he lived as a personal pensioner of all-Union significance until his death in 1984.