25. The Soviet Engineer With a Motive to Rain Cold Justice Upon the USSR
NIIR, which later became known as Phazotron and is now Russia’s largest developer of military radars and avionics, had been formed in 1917 to produce aviation instruments. In the 1950s, an electronics engineer named Adolf Tolkachev joined its ranks, just as it was expanding from simple aviation instruments, and into the research and development of sophisticated military radars and complex guidance systems. By the 1970s, Tolkachev had risen to become one of NIIR’s chief designers. He was an unlikely spy. By the 1970s, when he began to contemplate the betrayal of his country, Tolkachev was a middle-aged, successful, and highly respected engineer. He led what was, by Soviet standards, a comfortable and privileged life.
At about five and a half feet tall, Tolkachev was a quiet figure, who was so reserved that not even his son knew his profession. Yet, beneath the quiet reserve lay a seething resentment of the Soviet government, that he traced back to the persecution suffered by his wife’s family. Tolkachev’s wife’ had been raised in an orphanage because her mother had been executed during Stalin’s purges. Her father had been sent to a gulag, to toil for years as a slave laborer, until he was broken in body and spirit. For years, Tolkachev itched for an opportunity to payback and stick it to the Soviet system that had perpetrated such injustices.