Georgii Sergeevich Okolovich
Source

Georgii Okolovich was born in Riga. During the First World War, he studied at the gymnasium in the city of Pernov (Pärnu) and in 1915 was evacuated to Murom. In 1916 he returned back in Pernov, but a year later his family had to leave for the North Caucasus in the village of Ust-Labinskaya.

He joined the Volunteer Army and served as a machine gunner on the armored train “Forward for the Motherland” in the Donbass and on the Tsaritsyn Front. He was commissioned due to illness to Yeysk; later he was moved to Tuapse and then to the Crimea. In Crimea, he served on the Sevastopolets armored train. He later emigrated from Russia to Yugoslavia in 1920. In 1923, he received a matriculation certificate and entered the University of Belgrade. In 1924, for family reasons, Okolovich moved to Lyon, where he worked at a rayon factory and got married. He entered correspondence courses in Paris and received a diploma in electrical engineering before returning to Yugoslavia.¹

After the death of his wife in 1933, Okolovich joined the NTS through the Union Club. Being an ordinary member of the union, Okolovich went to club lectures, wrote notes, and supervised the premises of the union. Members of the organization were preparing to enter the USSR secretly. In August 1938, for the first time, Okolovich secretly visited the. The trip turned out to be very successful for 4 months. Okolovich was appointed by the Executive Bureau as leader and instructor of the members of the union who were sent across the Soviet-Polish border. In August 1941, on the orders of Baidalakov, Okolovich went to Warsaw and later Smolensk.² Until the autumn of 1943, Georgy Okolovich led the local branch of the NTS and the city government. According to the leader himself, the NTS were engaged in the reception of refugees in Smolensk and disseminating the union’s propaganda. In 1944, NKVD agents infiltrated the Gestapo, who had unleashed a hunt for members of the NTS.³ On September 13, 1944, Okolovich was imprisoned by the Gestapo, where he stayed until April 1945. After the war, the KGB continued to look for an opportunity to destroy the main leaders of the solidarist union. In 1951, in Germany, in the city of Runkel, the first attempt on Okolovich’s life was made. In 1954, KGB agent Nikolai Khokhlov met with Okolovich in Frankfurt and informed him of the intention of the USSR special services to liquidate him. In 1961, Okolovich became Chairman of the executive bureau of the NTS. From 1962 to 1970, Georgii Okolovich headed the Posev publishing house. On February 10, 1980, Georgii Sergeevich died in the German city of Darmstadt.⁴