Isaiah Oggins

Isaiah Oggins (also known as Ysai or Cy) (July 22, 1898 – 1947) was an American-born communist and spy for the Soviet secret police.

After working in Europe and the Far East, Oggins was arrested, served eight years in the GULAG detention system, and was summarily executed on the orders of Joseph Stalin.

Classmates included publishers Bennet Cerf, Donald Klopfer, and Richard Simon; historian Matthew Josephson; novelist Louis Bromfield, critic Kenneth Burke, and author William Slater Brown.

[1] As of August 26, 1926, when he applied for his U.S. passport, Oggins had joined the Soviet underground and was readying for his first overseas assignment, probably in Germany and France.

Their job was to maintain a low profile and inhabit their residence, so that other Soviet agents could periodically use it as a safe house for various espionage related activities.

In Neuilly-sur-Seine, they watched White Russians, Trotskyites including Trotsky's Paris-based son, Lev Sedov, and the family of Michael Feodorovich Romanov.

[2]) On February 20, 1939,[2] the Soviet NKVD arrested Oggins at the Hotel Moskva and took him to the Lubyanka, accusing him of being a traitor.

On April 15, 1942, the US Department of State indicated to the US embassy in Moscow "It is possible that he [Oggins] has been acting for years as an agent of a foreign power or of an international revolutionary organization.

[1] During his time in the GULAG, Oggins's wife and son pled with US Secretary George C. Marshall to help gain his release.

By mid-summer, Oggins was taken to Laboratory Number One (the "Kamera"), where Grigory Mairanovsky injected him with the poison curare, which takes 10–15 minutes to kill.

[1] A death certificate claimed Oggins had died of "sclerosis" and had received burial in a Jewish cemetery in Penza.

[1][8][9][10][11] In 2008, Andrew Meier, formerly Moscow bureau chief for TIME magazine, published a biography of Oggins called The Lost Spy.

[7] On April 23, 1924, he married Nerma Berman (1898–1995), a Rand School student and Communist activist, born in the Skapiskis shtetl (also near Kovno).

[2] She became secretary of the New York division of the National Defense Committee of the Rand School for Red Scare victims Scott Nearing and other professors.

The American Thread Company 's Jillson Mills in Willimantic, Connecticut , where Oggins was born and grew up
Early 20th-century photo of Harbin , site of Oggins' last posting before his arrest by the Soviets
21st-century photo of Norillag (the Norilsk GULAG), where Oggins spent most of his imprisonment
Oggins died while under observation by Grigory Mairanovsky of the effects of curare (here, as part of a South American hunting kit)
Juliet Stuart Poyntz , a teacher at the Rand School , where Oggins's wife Nerma Berman studied, became a fellow Soviet spy and "disappeared" in New York City in 1937