Lev Mykolaiovych Zadov (; 1893–1938), also known by his nom de guerre Lev Zinkovskyi (), was chief of military intelligence of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (RIAU) and later an operative of the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU).
After joining the Ukrainian anarchist movement, Zadov was arrested and imprisoned for a series of robberies he committed in Donbas. He was released during the February Revolution and returned to Donbas, where he became involved in the local Soviet and joined the Red Guards, which he fought with until November 1918, when he joined Nestor Makhno's Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine.
He became the de facto chief of the Kontrrazvedka, the Makhnovist military intelligence division, and carried out a campaign of terror against the Bolsheviks and the White movement. After the defeat of the Makhnovists, he retreated to Romania, before re-entering Ukraine in 1925 and joining the OGPU. He used his position to carry out subversive activities, for which he was arrested and executed during the Great Purge.
Biography
Lev Zadov was born in Veselaya, a small Jewish agricultural colony in the Alexandrovskii District.
Early revolutionary activity
During the 1905 Revolution, Zadov joined the Ukrainian anarchist movement and quickly became a committed activist. After Zadov went to work in the metallurgical factories of Yuzivka, in 1910, he joined a local anarcho-communist group and began to participate in a series of armed robberies, known as "expropriations". After robbing a post office in Karan and a bank in Debaltseve, in 1913, he was arrested for his activities as a "bezmotivnik" () and imprisoned. He was released during the February Revolution and adopted the revolutionary pseudonym of "Zinkovskyi".
Zadov then returned to Yuzivka, where he became a deputy of the local Soviet in September 1917. Following the invasion of Ukraine by the Central Powers, he became a member of the general staff for the Red Guards in Donbas. Zadov's detachment led a fighting retreat from Luhansk to Tsaritsyn, where they encountered Pyotr Krasnov's Don Army. During the course of the Battle of Tsaritsyn, Zadov rose through the ranks to become the chief of staff for Maksim Cherednyak's detachment. In late 1918, the Southern Front ordered Zadov to return to Ukraine and foment an insurgency against the occupation forces. In Yuzivka, Zadov established an anarchist combat group, which immediately joined up with Nestor Makhno's partisans in Huliaipole and helped establish a number of other insurgent detachments throughout Donbas.
Chief of the Kontrrazvedka
In March 1919, following the integration of the insurgents into the 1st Zadneprovsk Ukrainian Soviet Division, Cherednyak was dispatched to the Katerynoslav region to carry out requisitioning. This requisitioning detachment formed the basis of the Kontrrazvedka, the counterintelligence service of the Makhnovshchina, of which Zadov became a founding member. In April 1919, Zadov established sections of the Kontrrazvedka in Mariupol and Berdiansk, which were concerned with securing provisions for the army from the civilian population, either through expropriations or levies. Zadov was soon joined by former members of the Union of Poor Peasants, including Hryhory Vasylivsky, who had experience in gathering intelligence. Following the break between the Makhnovists and the Bolsheviks, and the subsequent retreat to Uman, Zadov became the Kontrrazvedka's chief of staff for the 1st Donetsk Corps of the reorganised Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine. From this position, Zadov reportedly participated in the assassination of Nykyfor Hryhoriv, who had been charged with antisemitism and collaborationism.