Acting chief of the GRU, Soviet military intelligence, in 1935-1936 while Yan K. Berzin was in the Far East carrying out a purge of NKVD officials and then in Spain supporting the Republican government in the Spanish Civil War and recruiting GRU agents.
Born a Polish nobleman, Unshlikht was active in left-wing Polish politics and a leader of the October 1917 revolution in Russia. Immediately after the revolution he helped form the secret police, which soon became the Cheka, founded by fellow Pole Feliks Dzerzhinsky.
In 1920 Unshlikht was a member of the short-lived Polish revolutionary government. From 1921 to 1923 he was a deputy chairman of the GPU, after which he became a deputy chief of the GRU. He traveled abroad regularly to organize agent activities in Germany, Lithuania, and Poland. In 1935-1936, while Berzin was out of Moscow, Unshlikht acted as chief of the GRU. Subsequently, he was assigned as director of the main administration of the Red Air Force and was a candidate member of the Central Committee of the USSR.
He was arrested in the Stalinist purges and on July 29, 1939, he was shot, with Berzin.
