Stanislav Levchenko

Stanislav Alexandrovich Levchenko (born July 28, 1941) is a former Russian KGB major who defected to the United States in 1979. He obtained U.S. citizenship in 1989.

Levchenko was born in Moscow, obtained an education at the Institute of Asia and Africa of Lomonosov Moscow State University, and pursued graduate studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences. His first KGB work came in 1968, after he had worked for the GRU for two years. He became fully employed by the agency in 1971. In 1975, he was sent undercover abroad, as a journalist working for the Russian magazine New Times (Novoye Vremya) in Tokyo, Japan.

Levchenko defected to the United States in October 1979, and was instrumental in detailing the KGB's Japanese spy network to the U.S government, including in Congressional testimony in the early 1980s.

After his defection, Levchenko supplied the names of about 200 Japanese agents who had been used by the KGB. Included in his list were a former labour minister for the Liberal Democratic Party, Hirohide Ishida (石田 博英), and Socialist Party leader Seiichi Katsumata (勝間田 清一). Takuji Yamane of the newspaper Sankei Shimbun was also mentioned.

A Soviet court condemned Levchenko to death in 1981. Svetlana and Nikolai Ogorodnikov tried to hunt him down in the United States, but they were exposed in the Richard Miller spy case.

Levchenko published his English-language autobiography, On the Wrong Side: My Life in the KGB, in 1988. A Japanese version, KGB no Mita Nihon ("The KGB's View of Japan") was published in 1985.

Japanese agents

 * Gabba or Gabber
 * Takuji Yamane (山根 卓二).


 * Hoover
 * Hirohide Ishida (石田 博英).


 * Kant
 * Seiichi Katsumata (勝間田 清一).


 * Krasnov
 * Ryuzo Sejima (瀬島 龍三). The code name "Krasnov" was Ryuzo Sejima, and was also a KGB official agent. Levchenko testified that Ryuzo Sejima was intimate with Ivan Kovalenko who was a boss of the agent activities in the Soviet Union against Japan. Yuri Rastvorov who defected from the Soviet Union to the United States by way of Japan as well as Levchenko had trained Ryuzo Sejima as an espionage agent in the Soviet Union. Ivan Ivanovich (Ivanović) Kovalenko (Russian: Иван Иванович(Ивановић) Коваленко; February 13, 1919 – July 27, 2005) was born in Vladivostok, RSFSR (now in Vladivostok, Russia), in charge of a secretary and the interpreter of Aleksandr Vasilevsky who was Marshal of the Soviet Union during World War II, and deputy director of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee and a firm proponent of dealing with Japan from a position of strength during the Cold War (1945–91). Ivan Kovalenko made friends with Japanese of Akira Kato（加藤 昭）, Yohei Sasakawa and Buntarou Kuroi（黒井 文太郎）, etc. in Japan, and has left the report about Ryuzo Sejima's secret. Kovalenko severely criticized the ability as the espionage agent of Rastvorov and Levchenko for their defections to the United States, and helped Japanese who had come in contact with the Soviet Union side from the suspicion that was the espionage agent in the Soviet Union. Kovalenko died of chronic diseases such as gangrene and diabetes mellitus at his home in Moscow, Russia. Kovalenko published "" about his short biography and memoirs of the agent activities in the Soviet Union against Japan. Incidentally, Ryuzo Sejima took part in the Toshiba-Kongsberg scandal. Ryuzo Sejima also worked with Yoshio Kodama who was intimate with the U.S. Government and the CIA. When Yoshio Kodama died on January 17, 1984, Ryuzo Sejima was also intimate with the U.S. Government and the CIA as if Ryuzo Sejima succeeded the work of Yoshio Kodama. Therefore, the double agent theories of the United States and the Soviet Union were referred to Ryuzo Sejima. By the way, the U.S. Government and the CIA severely criticized the ability as the espionage agent of Masanobu Tsuji and Yoshio Kodama who were intimate with Ryuzo Sejima for their egoism though the criticism of Ryuzo Sejima was uncertain.