On May 23, 1938, a Soviet intelligence agent named Pavel Sudoplatov assassinated the Ukrainian nationalist leader Yevhen Konovalets in Rotterdam. The order for the murder had come personally from Josef Stalin. The method was none too subtle: Sudoplatov had given his victim a box of chocolates, containing a bomb.Subtler forms of liquidation had been in the works for some time in Soviet Russia. In 1921—the year Sudoplatov was recruited at age 14 into the Cheka, the Soviet security organization formed by Vladimir Lenin—the Soviets established their first laboratory for the study and testing of poisons. They made rapid progress. From …read more
Source: The American Interest
