Volodarsky, Iosif Vulfovich (1903-?)

An operative of the Soviet OGPU/NKVD foreign intelligence (INO) in the United States from 1933 to 1938. Also known as Armand Lavis Feldman.

According to the available information, Volodarsky was born in Kiev, then part of the Russian Empire, on April 23, 1903. (Some accounts say he was born in Poland, then also part of the Russian Empire.) In 1930, he was sent to Great Britain to work at the Russian Oil Products office in Bristol, where he was recruited or co-opted by the OGPU foreign intelligence. According to the British security files, “in September 1932, calling himself Olsen and pretending to be Romanian journalist, he tried to buy commercially-sensitive information” from an employee of Shell-Mex company – for which he was convicted of corruption, fined and deported to the USSR. ¹

Back in Moscow, Volodarsky was enlisted as an officer of the INO OGPU. A few months later, in mid-1933, he was sent to the United States as an “illegal” operative under the name Feldman, with the cover name “Brit.” According to the British security service personal files, Volodarsky/Feldman “next appeared in Canada during 1935-1936 using variations on the names Labis and Feldman,” as part of an operation known in Britain as the Woolwich Arsenal/Glading espionage case. His role was to provide documentation for the Soviet “illegal” who was at the center of the operation. ² In 1937, Volodarsky/Feldman was in New York again – serving as case officer or courier for a number of sources, including a newly acquired source at the U.S. Department of Justice with the cover name “Maurice.” His other known mission was to provide logistics support for the operations of Soviet intelligence in the event of war in Europe. Reportedly, Volodarsky/Feldman was so successful in the role of a native English speaker that by the late 1930s he had trouble writing a memo in Russian.

On April 25, 1938, Volodarsky suddenly disappeared – having taken along some sensitive files and cashed the checks of his cover enterprise. He moved to Canada, where in November 1940 he was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and interned. ³ After refusing to return to the United States, he provided limited information to the FBI, including identification of the NKVD foreign intelligence “legal” resident in New York, Gajk Ovakimyan, who was placed under surveillance and subsequently arrested on May 5, 1941. He also identified a Soviet source at the U.S. Department of Justice with the cover name “Moris” (Maurice).  Soon after, the FBI’sVolodarsky/Feldman case was closed. Volodarsky’s former NKVD colleagues had been looking for him for a long time, but did not discover his betrayal until 1945, when they managed to obtain the FBI investigative file, “Armand Lavis Feldman”. ⁴