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![]() | A fact from Nikolai Skoblin appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 3 May 2006. The text of the entry was as follows:
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editArthur Grozovsky and Lydia Grozovskaya
The following paragraph was deleted from the article:
"(Skoblin) and his wife even took periodic trips back to the Soviet Union to perform internal missions tasked to them by the NKVD as 'Mr. and Mrs. Grozovsky', in order to expose 'enemies of Stalin'. Working under a variety of guises for the Soviet Central Executive Committee and Foreign Trade Comissariat, Nadezhda Plevitskaya, under the pseudoymn "Mrs. Grozovsky", would appear for work as an extremely well-dressed temporary typist-clerk to a Soviet government office, where she reported on the actions and statements of its personnel." (Citing Barmine's One Who Survived as the source.)
This is false. It confuses Skoblin and Plevitskaya with Arthur and Lydia Grozovsky. The Grozovksys were NKVD agents working in Paris in 1937.. Lydia's cover was as secretary to the Soviet Trade Mission, but her task was to function as a courier for "illegals." She was the courier for the defector Ignace Reiss.and she played a role in his murder.. The French police questioned Lydia on December 11, 1937 as part of their investigation into the murder of Reiss. On December 17, 1937 she was arrested on a warrant from the Swiss government (again related to the murder of Reiss.). The Soviet embassy secured her release on the modest bond of 50,000 francs. Shortly afterward, she made her escape from France in a high-powered Cadillac automobile. More on the Grozovskys can be found in Dewar Assasins at Large (1951), Poretsky, Our Own People, (1969), Duff, A Time for Spies (1999), and Kern's A Death in Washington (2004).