Alexander Ulanovsky

Alexander Petrovich Ulanovsky (a.k.a. Ulrich, William Joseph Berman, Bill Berman, Felik, Long Man, Nathan Sherman) (1891–1970) was the chief illegal "rezident" for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU), who was rezident the United States from 1931 until 1934 and later, with his family, prisoner in the Soviet gulag.

Born to a Jewish family in Chişinău, (Bessarabia), as Izrail Khaykelevich Ulanovsky, he joined the anarchists as a young man. In 1907, his family moved to Kerch (Crimea). Arrested for radical activity, he was deported to Siberia, where he was confined to the same village as Joseph Stalin. While in exile, he made a daring escape and "on his way out" entered Stalin's flat and took his fur coat, as was customary among fellow-exiles in such a situation.

Following the October Revolution, Ulanovsky returned to Russia and enlisted in the Red Army. He served as the deputy-commander of an armored train (under anarchist revolutionary Anatoli Zhelezniakov) and took part in fighting against White armies in Ukraine and Crimea. After the Russian Civil War, he joined Soviet military intelligence and served as a secret agent in, among other places, Buenos Aires and Shanghai.

Together with his wife Nadezhda, Ulanovsky came to America on the maiden voyage of the SS Bremen in 1931. His mission was to take over the GRU (military intelligence) apparatus assembled by his predecessor, Manfred Stern, who was moving on to China. Some of the known members of the group were Lydia Stahl, Robert Gordon Switz, Leon Minster, Robert Osman, Joshua Tamer, and Whittaker Chambers.

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