Yuriy Aleksandrovich Rastvorov (Russian: Юрий Александрович Растворов; 11 July 1921 – 19 January 2004) known after his defection under the alias of Martin F. Simons, was a Russian former KGB agent and later CIA agent who defected from the Soviet Union to the west while in Japan in 1954.
His father served as a Red Army commander and fought during the Russian Civil War later the military commissar of the Tagansky District in Moscow.
[1] In 1939, Rastvorov was conscripted into the military and participated in the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states in Latvia and Lithuania.
In early 1954, Rastvorov was once again recalled, but at the time when a purge of KGB members, such as Lavrentiy Beria, in the wake of Joseph Stalin's death, was going on.
His defection was publicly announced in August 1954, and later at the urging of the CIA, he wrote four articles for Life magazine.