Alfred Tilton

Alfred Tilton (1897–1942) was a Latvian who was head of Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU) in the United States in the late 1920s. He is best remembered for having recruited Latvian-American communist Nicholas Dozenberg to work for the GRU late in 1927.

Alfred Matisovich Tilton (Latvian: Alfreds Tiltiņš; Cyrillic: Тылтынь) was born March 4, 1897, in Mežotne parish, Latvia, then part of the Russian empire. Tilton was the son of peasants of ethnic Latvian descent.

A well-educated individual, Tilton eventually learned German, French, and English as well as Latvian and Russian.

Tilton graduated from the Alexseev Military College in 1916 and went to the front as a company commander in the Latvian 3rd Infantry Regiment, attaining the rank of Lieutenant. He also underwent machine gun training in 1917.

Tilton joined the Russian Communist Party in 1918 and was a Brigade Commander in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. Tilton was captured by the Poles during the 1920 invasion of Poland and held as a prisoner of war, eventually gaining his repatriation to Soviet Russia in a February 1921 prisoner exchange. Upon his return, Tilton was enrolled in the Military Academy of the Red Army, where he studied until 1922.

Leaving the Military Academy in 1922, Tilton became an active participant in Soviet military intelligence operations abroad. Tilton acted as the GRU's underground rezident (station head) in Paris from 1922 to 1926. During this interval Tilton also took courses at the Polytechnic Institute of Air and Motors in Paris.

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