Victor Kravchenko (defector) - Suicide or Assassination

Suicide or Assassination

Kravchenko's decision to abandon the Soviet Union condemned family members he left behind to harassment, imprisonment and worse. It was alleged that some of his family were killed. It is known that Kravchenko's whereabouts, was discovered in 1944 by NKVD agents, notably Mark Zborowski, and subsequently monitored very closely by the NKVD and later, the KGB special operations.

Kravchenko's 1966 death from a gunshot wound to his head at his desk in his apartment in Manhattan was officially ruled a suicide. This view is widely accepted, including by author Gary Kern. FBI files obtained by Kern after a six-year lawsuit show that President Lyndon B. Johnson had taken a strong interest in Kravchenko's suicide and had demanded that the FBI determine if his suicide note was authentic or a Soviet fabrication. The FBI ruled that it was authentic. Yet some details concerning Kravchenko's last days remain questionable, and his son Andrew believes he was the victim of a KGB assassination. Andrew Kravchenko produced a documentary film in 2008, The Defector, about his father.