Rudolf Abel

In 1896, he was arrested for sedition and sentenced to three years internal exile.

As Heinrich Fisher had served a sentence for offenses against the Russian Imperial Crown, he was forced to flee to the United Kingdom in 1901, the alternative being deportation to Germany or imprisonment in Russia for avoidance of military service.

While living in the United Kingdom, Fisher's father, a keen Bolshevik, took part in gunrunning, shipping arms from northeast England to Russia's Baltic coast.

Fisher and his brother, Henry, won scholarships to Whitley Bay High School and Monkseaton High School.

Though Fisher was not as hard-working as Henry, he showed aptitude for science, mathematics, languages, art and music, inherited in part from his father's abilities.

Encouraging their son's love of music, Fisher's parents gave him piano lessons; he also learned to play the guitar.

It was during this period that Fisher developed an interest in amateur radio, constructing rudimentary spark transmitters and receivers.

Rudolf Ivanovich Abel (Рудольф Иванович Абель), real name William August Fisher (11 July 1903 – 15 November 1971), was a Soviet intelligence officer.

Fisher was born William August Fisher on 11 July 1903, in the Benwell area of Newcastle upon Tyne, the second son of Heinrich and Lyubov Fisher.

Revolutionaries of the Tsarist era, his father was of German origins and his mother was of Russian descent.

Fisher's father, a revolutionary activist, taught and agitated with Vladimir Lenin at Saint Petersburg Technological Institute.

He moved to Russia in the 1920s, and served in the Soviet military before undertaking foreign service as a radio operator in Soviet intelligence in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

He later served in an instructional role before taking part in intelligence operations against the Germans during World War II.

After the war, he began working for the KGB, which sent him to the United States where he worked as part of a spy ring based in New York City.

Fisher became an apprentice draughtsman at Swan Hunter, Wallsend, and attended evening classes at Rutherford College before being accepted into London University in 1920.

Though Fisher qualified for university, the costs prohibited him from attending.

In 1921, following the Russian Revolution, the Fisher family left Newcastle upon Tyne to return to Moscow.

Fluent in English, Russian, German, Polish and Yiddish, Fisher worked for the Comintern as a translator following his family's return to the Soviet Union.

Trained as a radio operator, he served in a Red Army radio battalion in 1925 and 1926.

He then worked briefly in the radio research institute before being recruited by the OGPU, a predecessor of the KGB, in May 1927.

That year he married Elena Lebedeva, a harp student at Moscow Conservatoire.

They had one child together, a daughter named Evelyn who was born on 8 October 1929.

During his interview with the OGPU, it was determined he should adopt a Russian-sounding name and William August Fisher became Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher.

Following his recruitment, he worked for the OGPU as a radio operator in Norway, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and France.

He returned to the Soviet Union in 1936, as head of a school that trained radio operators destined for duty in illegal residences.

One of the students was the Canadian-born Russian spy Kitty Harris, who was later more widely known as "The Spy with Seventeen Names".

Despite his foreign birth and the accusation that his brother-in-law was a Trotskyist, Fisher narrowly escaped the Great Purge.

However, in 1938 he was dismissed from the NKVD, which the OGPU had been renamed to in 1934.

During World War II, he again trained radio operators for the clandestine work behind German lines.

Having been adopted as a protégé by Pavel Sudoplatov, he took part in Operation Scherhorn (Операция Березино, Operatsiya Berezino) in August 1944.

Sudoplatov later described this operation as "the most successful radio deception game of the war".

Fisher's role in this operation was rewarded with what his superiors regarded as one of the most prestigious postings in Soviet foreign intelligence, the United States.

After rejoining the KGB in 1946, Fisher was trained as a spy for entry into the United States.

He adopted his alias when arrested on charges of conspiracy by the FBI in 1957.

Fisher was born and grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne in the North East of England in the United Kingdom to Russian émigré parents.

In 1957, Fisher was convicted in US federal court on three counts of conspiracy as a Soviet spy for his involvement in what became known as the Hollow Nickel Case and sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in Georgia.

He served just over four years of his sentence before he was exchanged for captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers.

Back in the Soviet Union, he lectured on his experiences.

He died in 1971 at the age of 68.

His real identity and country of birth were only revealed after his death.