5/8: The Spy Who Changed History: The Untold Story of How the Soviet Union Won the Race for America’s Top Secrets by Svetlana Lokhova (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.6 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 1 July 2025
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On a sunny September day in 1931, a Soviet spy walked down the gangplank of the luxury transatlantic liner SS Europa and into New York. Attracting no attention, Stanislav Shumovsky had completed his journey from Moscow to enrol at a top American university. He was concealed in a group of 65 Soviet students heading to prestigious academic institutions. But he was after far more than an excellent education.
Recognising Russia was 100 years behind the encircling capitalist powers, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had sent Shumovsky on a mission to acquire America’s vital secrets to help close the USSR’s yawning technology gap. The road to victory began in the classrooms and laboratories of MIT – Shumovsky’s destination soon became the unwitting finishing school for elite Russian spies. The USSR first transformed itself into a military powerhouse able to confront and defeat Nazi Germany. Then in an extraordinary feat that astonished the West, in 1947 American ingenuity and innovation exfiltrated by Shumovsky made it possible to build and unveil the most advanced strategic bomber in the world.
Following his lead, other MIT-trained Soviet spies helped acquire the secrets of the Manhattan Project. By 1949, Stalin’s fleet of TU-4s, now equipped with atomic bombs could devastate the US on his command. Appropriately codenamed BLÉRIOT, Shumovsky was an aviation spy. Shumovsky’s espionage was so successful that the USSR acquired every US aviation secret from his network of agents in factories and at top secret military research institutes.
In this thrilling history, Svetlana Lokhova takes the reader on a journey through Stalin’s most audacious intelligence operation. She pieces together every aspect of Shumovsky’s life and character using information derived from American and Russian archives, exposing how even Shirley Temple and Franklin D. Roosevelt unwittingly advanced his schemes.
1935
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor. |
| 0:12.0 | Continuing with the author Svetlata Lokova, the book, The Spy who changed history, the |
| 0:17.2 | untold story of how the Soviet Union stole America's top secrets. Well, they did |
| 0:22.1 | it in plain sight. The man Stanislav Shomovsky is a hero. However, at the same time, he has a |
| 0:29.9 | supervisor who's also a hero, born in Armenia in 1898. His name is Gaik of Akhmian. And he is a revolutionary early on and arrested by the |
| 0:41.9 | Armenian Tsarist regime and jailed until he's liberated by the Soviet army, the 11th Red Army, |
| 0:50.7 | and he becomes a chemist studying in Moscow, until one day he's called the Lelubianca |
| 0:57.2 | by Artuzov, the only member of the NKVD, who had any scientific training at all. |
| 1:04.3 | Here comes Avakmian, the Armenian, the wily Armenian, who's trained in chemistry. |
| 1:10.2 | And what's his task? |
| 1:12.6 | He's given to go to America in 1933 with his wife and daughter and study chemistry, but actually to supervise Shumovsky and all the other agents. |
| 1:23.5 | Svetlana, a very good evening to you. We continue with the amazing Wily Armenian. |
| 1:28.2 | Is he Armenian? |
| 1:29.2 | You raise the possibility that he's not, but he's born in Saras, near Saras, Aravan. |
| 1:36.9 | And he arrived in America as a student and a scholar. |
| 1:42.9 | And you tell me he publishes scientific documents. |
| 1:46.2 | Why? |
| 1:46.7 | What was chemistry in 1933 when he arrived? |
| 1:49.9 | Thank you. |
| 1:51.8 | First of all, thank you. |
| 1:53.6 | First of all, the wily Armenian and the possibility he might not be Armenian at all |
| 1:58.3 | actually comes from FBI records. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.