Viktor Vladimirov was a Soviet Lieutenant Colonel

Lieutenant colonel

Lieutenant colonel is a rank of commissioned officer in the armies and most marine forces and some air forces of the world, typically ranking above a major and below a colonel. The rank of lieutenant colonel is often shortened to simply "colonel" in conversation and in unofficial correspondence...

, diplomat, and KGB

KGB

The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...

 officer operating in Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

.

He was the head of KGB assassination

Assassination

To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...

 and sabotage

Sabotage

Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...

 section in the 1960s. It is believed that Vladimirov was involved in a failed KGB operation to murder former KGB officer Anatoliy Golitsyn

Anatoliy Golitsyn

Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn CBE is a Soviet KGB defector and author of two books about the long-term deception strategy of the KGB leadership. He was born in Piryatin, Ukrainian SSR...

 in Canada who had defected from Finland to the United States.
He served in the Soviet embassy in Finland in the 1950s, 1970s, and 1980s. He was the top "kotiryssä" ("home Russian") in Finland. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, he published his memoir "Näin se oli" in 1993. Vladimirov died in 1995.

Sources

• Näin se oli...: Muistelmia ja havaintoja kulissientakaisesta diplomaattitoiminnasta Suomessa 1954–1984., Viktor Vladimirov, 1993, Otava, Helsinki

See also

• Finlandization
  Finlandization
  Finlandization is a term used to describe the influence that one powerful country may have on the policies of a smaller neighboring country.It is generally considered to be pejorative, originating in West German political debate of the late 1960s and 1970s...