Boris Rybkin

Boris Arkadyevich Rybkin (Russian: Бори́с Арка́дьевич Ры́бкин; born Boruch Aronovich Rivkin Russian: Борух Аронович Рывкин; 19 June 1899 – 27 November 1947) was a Soviet diplomat and a secret agent of the NKVD. He worked as a junior diplomatic official under the name Boris Yartsev at the Soviet Union embassy in Helsinki. Rybkin was born Boruch Aronovich Rivkin in Novovitebsk, in the Khersonsky Uyezd of Kherson Governorate, into a Ukrainian Jewish family on June 19, 1899. Rybkin joined the Soviet secret police, the Cheka, in 1921 and the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1922. He served in the Stalingrad district from 1924 to 1929. In 1931, he was sent to Tashkent, in Central Asia, and later to Iran. He also made business trips to France, Bulgaria, and Austria. In September 1935, Rybkin was posted as a second-class secretary to the Soviet embassy in Helsinki under the name Boris Yartsev. In April 1938, Joseph Stalin gave Rybkin the mission of starting secret negotiations with the Finnish government to address the threat from Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union offered all possible economic and military assistance if Finland fought against Germany in the event of German invasion while demanding that Finland cede or lease some islands near Leningrad to the Soviet Union and agreeing to permit the Finnish fortification of Åland.