Rudolf Abel

Rudolf Abel — spy with roots in the Russian Empire

Rudolf Abel (born William August Fisher) was a Soviet intelligence officer born in the UK to Russian revolutionary parents who became the KGB's most important illegal resident in the United States. Arrested in 1957 and exchanged for U-2 pilot Gary Powers in 1962 on the Glienicke Bridge, he became one of the Cold War's defining figures — portrayed in Spielberg's Bridge of Spies.

Tracing the roots — USA

Born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1903 to Russian political exiles — his father Heinrich Fisher was a Russian revolutionary — Abel grew up between England and Russia and became a committed Soviet intelligence officer. He lived undercover in New York for years, running a spy network under the cover of a commercial artist. He never betrayed a single agent.

A career defined by ambition