Nikolai Leonov (1928-2022) *94

was a Russian politician, senior KGB officer, and Latin America expert in the Soviet Union. In 1953, at the age of 25, Leonov was posted to Mexico City, where he learned Spanish at the Autonomous University. In the course of the sea voyage, he met Raúl Castro, who was returning from a European youth festival. On arrival in Mexico he took up a junior post in the Soviet embassy.

In 1955, Leonov met Che Guevara in Mexico City through Raúl Castro. Leonov violated embassy rules by visiting Guevara, who was fascinated with Soviet life. After answering some of Guevara's questions, Leonov gave him Soviet literature. When Guevara went to the embassy to pick up the books the two men talked again, the last time they talked in Mexico. Recalled to Moscow in November 1956, Leonov was discharged from the foreign service and deciding to pursue a career as a historian of Latin America, went to work as a translator for the official Soviet Spanish-language publishing house, Editorial Progreso. In the late summer of 1958, he was invited to join the KGB. On 1 September, he began a two-year intelligence training course, which was interrupted, according to him, by the Cuban Revolution. In October 1959 his superiors ordered him to leave his studies and accompany Anastas Mikoyan to Mexico.

In February 1960, he accompanied Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan on his visit to Havana, where he renewed his contact with Guevara to whom he gave a precision marksman's pistol "on behalf of the Soviet people." During the 1960s, he served as a senior KGB officer stationed in Mexico. During the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, he received regular reports from agents in Florida with respect to American military preparations. He felt sure at the time that a nuclear confrontation would not be the result of the crisis. He served as interpreter on Fidel Castro's visit to the Soviet Union in 1963. In 1968, Leonov was recalled to Moscow, where he became a senior analyst.